The Rick & Dorothy Piano-Keyboard Hour --> "It Don't Mean A Thing" Nov. 2017

The CONCEPT I conceived, consistent with Dorothy's "Play Like a Band"© that has not been replicated by anyone else I know of to this day is demonstrated in this 3 minute video. Dorothy is on a KEYBOARD ENSEMBLE doing the bass, rhythm and lead brass section, while I'm on an 88 key digital piano playing traditional left and right hand piano styles. I have both of us mic'd up. Our voices are both in the same octave so you can hear me trying to harmonize a third or fifth above Dorothy when I can. Dorothy (1935-2025) understood the idea perfectly and we traded positions on keybaord and piano frequently. "It Don't Mean a Thing" was one of or go-to numbers in every gig since it was easy and fun. We're doing a Halloween gig here in side-by-side layout during a lunchtime Hallooween Blast at a retirement residence where everyone dressed in a costume. The video camera, a Canon ZR40 lost its picture generation but audio was still excellent. Be sure to use big speakers and wattage to get the best effect of "being there" with u! MP3 INSTANT PLAY [Click on the photo below for Archive.org video]

The Rick & Dorothy Piano Sing-Along Hour ...a 15 min. sample from 2018

Click on Dorothy's  photo below to go to the Archive.org page to download an Mp4 or other format for 15 minutes of old-fashioned sing-along fun. Tunes include My Blue Heaven, I'm Looking Over a Four Leave Clover, When You Word a Tulip, You Are My Sunshine, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and My Wild Irish Rose. Dorothy Motto is 83 here and leading an enthusiastic retirement residence crowd after lunch at 1:30 one fine day in March 2018. I'm co-leading. The songbooks are from a previous gig at LuLu Belles in Scottsdale that Dorothy played in the late 1980's.

Clicking on the photo below will take you to a website that describes the history of Lulu Belle's in Scottsdale. I think Dorothy must have played there in the late 1980's since she moved to Phoenix in 1987 after gigs in New Orleans and Vegas, both of those gigs after she regretfully, she told me, left the Bay Area where she played at the "Top of the Mark" Mark Hopkins Hotel, famous in the area, among other Bay Area famous venues. As a piano player / vocalist/ salesperson myself, I found her travelling piano musician history fascinating. It was the inspiration, actually, behind my concept of the Rick and Dorothy Piano-Keyboard Hour that we took "on the road" around the valley, here in Phoenix, from 2013 to 2019.  The Sing-Along-Show always came in handy from Sun City down to Chandler. -Rick

Happy Lunar New Year 2025from Dorothy Motto in 2017! MP3 audio 30 min/13GB

Clicking on the image of Dorothy (1935-2025) below will take you to the Archive.org page where you'll see an MP3 download link as well as other audio formats. This audio runs about 30 minutes taking 13MB of digital space. 

Dorothy had many Chinese students because we began advertising piano lessons in Asian newspapers here in Phoenix after Schroeder's Organ and Piano closed in 2002. Our studio had many Chinese students come through from 2003 to 2019.

Dorothy grew up in Oakland, California and knew many Chinese families in that area at the time in the 1950's, 60's and 70's. She was always fond of the culture and the people and thoroughly enjoyed teaching piano lessons to very attentive and respectful Chinese children.

It's interesting that we played for six years at the Steven and Stan's Golden Buddha Restaurant through a contact made amongst our Chinese and Taiwanese friends in Phoenix. Other Chinese restaurants Dorothy and Rick played at include Joyful Chinese Restaurant and Tony's Shangri-La Restaurant. Of course the Chinese, Taiwanese and South Koreans love popular American Music but Rick and Dorothy learned a number of Asian tunes too, written in a number format that they had to learn to read!

Happy New LUNAR Year Jan 29, 2025 to all our Chinese, Taiwanese, South Korean and Viet Namese friends! Dorothy is watching us from up there, I know it. You can look up in the air and wave, and she'll see you too.

Dorothy Motto's Left Hand Stride Style 20 Minute Demo with 1920's Revu

Dorothy's left hand stride piano styling is shown clearly here at a camera angle 45 degrees up from center as we can see clearly down upon her moving hands. A number of famous tunes are covered in this studio session on her Technics PR903 digital piano ensemble in 2013 at age 78.

From 2013, Dorothy and Rick played many "Rick and Dorothy Piano-Keyboard Hour" shows for retirement residences around the valley, the Greater Phoenix Area, Arizona... until 2019 at Dorothy's age 84. Dorothy passed on peacefully at home on Jan. 16, 2025 at 90.

Rick is currently putting  together a new CD from a dozen 3.5" floppy discs that Dorothy recorded on her Technics PR903, a top of the line digital piano ensemble, a type of instrument that Dorothy sold throughout her sales-awarded career with Schroeder's Organ and Piano and Fletcher Music Centers.

This Blogger.com blog page no longer hosts videos Rick can see with his MacG4 TenFourFox browser, and he can no longer post to Youtube with that dated desktop browser either so he has archived the following demo by Dorothy at Archive.org for download in a variety of formats including H.264, the latest "best" format (?!), and Quicktime. Clicking on the image will take you to that download page. It's 56 MB and plays for 15 minutes.

Dorothy Motto 1935 - 2025... 90 Musical Years.... Extended with Rick's 30 Year Partnership from 1995

Here war at Golden Buddha Restaurant in 2011 where we took turns playing 7-nites-a-week!

Immediate HOTLINK to MP3 of 2016 CABARET by Dorothy in concert at a retirement center

from Rick on Sun. Jan. 26, 2025 - I'll be posting selected samples of our work over the past quarter century in coming weeks. They'll likely have some thematic purpose such as "concept rehearsals" or "live performances" or "the best of" or "the final shows", I haven't decided yet. All videos will be hosted at archive.org, likely the mp3's as well. Blogger can host photos but not music or video, at least given my own browser at this time.

Dorothy's left hand patterns for stride and some other work were unique to her and highly developed and provided the basis for the full sound she produced on 88 keys. The muscle-memory she trained herself to carry those patterns with are still ones I'm struggling with, although I have obviously have left hand patterns that work for me in the context of my own playing.  Her's were more mezmerizing & dazzling for sure. I often tried to get her to slow them down so I could "get" them but when she did, somehow it vanished. She refused to teach them to her students as I tried to notate them because, she said, they're her trademarked secrets. Only now might I have some time to recreate them.

I noticed too that when she played, she'd used the entire 88 key range in a fuller way, playing lower on the low end and higher on the high end whereas I was more playing in the middle between left and right extremes. Sure, I could definitely go low and high too but the effect of her continually hitting higher highs and lower lows simultaneously definitely brought favorable comments from customers and more tips too! I myself found it quite amazing to watch her do that. When customers would marvel at her playing while I monitered, I would freely admit "she plays more notes than I do!". I'll try to offer more commentary on the coming links to the Archive.org download pages as I find material I'd like to have up here.

__________________________________________________________________________________
Cabaret, played by Dorothy in 2012 at the Golden Buddha Restaurant where Rick and Dorothy played from 2007 to 2012, 7 nights a week for 4 hours. Restaurant Owners Steven Wong & Stanley Ho. Golden Buddha was well attended for evening dinner during our playing as well as lunchtime for their city-famous wandering carts of Chinese deserts called Dim Sum. We stayed open during all holidays which meant city-wide, people gravitated to our restaurant since many others were closed. Here's Dorothy playing Cabaret. You'll have to take moment to download a usable file from Archive.org. I use Quicktime but there are several other formats there.

Archive.org Download Formats for Dorothy's Cabaret

Played at Golden Buddah Restaurant in 2012 at age 77

__________________________________________________________________________________

Archive.org download in several formats inc. Quicktime

Recorded in 2013 Jul at age 78 with VOCALS at home.

__________________________________________________________________________________
Link to Archive.org for different format downloads

Recorded in 2016 at age 81 at Madison Meadows... with Vocals, handling piano AND keyboard and with attentive audience present.

Dorothy lived for live audiences.... and applause and tips! No sooner would we finish one gig and she'd be on my case looking for the next gig. I was befuddled. Wait... no break? As the roadie who set up and tore down the gear, I liked stopping, reflecting, RECORDING & EDITING, thus this sample, and then waiting for another call out of the blue via ESP. Those DID occur!  On our best gigs, I felt a bit like Sonny and Cher, Dorothy being the diva, me being the comic. I facilitated what she wanted and it kinda worked out. I was still operating inside that bubble until just last week until it popped. What a bubble it's been. Here's Dorothy doing one of the most dangerous things a piano player can do... stand up while playing. I couldn't stop her. That's the Jerry Lee Lewis and vibraphone player in her. Yikes. I still hold my breath when I watch this 2016 recording. She always took it to the limit. Incredible woman I'm glad I met. Dorothy Motto. Actually a legend in Phoenix Arizona to some extent with everywhere she played, sold pianos, and hundreds she taught to play. I'm proud to have helped her manage that end-of-a-lifelong career. --Rick.

__________________________________________________________________________________

What good is sitting alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

Put down the knitting, the book and the broom
It's time for a holiday
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret

Come taste the wine
Come hear the band
Come blow your horn, start celebrating
Right this way, your table's waiting

What good's permitting some prophet of doom
To wipe every smile away?

Life is a cabaret, old chum
So come to the cabaret

I used to have this girlfriend known as Elsie
With whom I shared four sordid rooms in Chelsea
She wasn't what you'd call a blushing flower
As a matter of fact, she rented by the hour
The day she died the neighbors came to snicker:
"Well, that's what comes from too much pills and liquor"
But when I saw her laid out like a queen
She was the happiest corpse I'd ever seen

I think of Elsie to this very day
I remember how she'd turn to me and say:

"What good is sitting all alone in your room?
Come hear the music play
Life is a cabaret, old chum
Come to the cabaret!"

And as for me, ha, and as for me
I made my mind up back in Chelsea
When I go
I'm going like Elsie

Start by admitting from cradle to tomb
It isn't that long a stay

Life is a cabaret, old chum
It's only a cabaret, old chum
And I love a cabaret!

The Final Rick & Dorothy Show (Organ + Snare + Sing-Along) Jan. 2019 @ 62 & 84

Blogger takes my MP4 videos but won't play them back for me on my dated browser. I don't know what's wrong but I uploaded them to Archive.org and you can download them from there in one of several formats including MP4 and that new H253, whatever that is.

The next two 30 minute videos were recorded at Madison Meadows Residence in Phoenix in Jan 2019. Dorothy taught till March 2020 and finally shifted gears into the quantum-sphere in Jan. 2025 after watching many hours of musicals and westerns on TV. Her TV watching 'gig' lasted almost 5 years and she would have turned 90 in April 2025. Just click on the big link above the Archive.org image to access the download links on the right.

I'll take credit for facilitating the extension of her perfoming and teaching career by a quarter century from her age 59 to 84. It takes a musician to know a musician.

Madison Jan 2019 PART I

Madison Jan 2019 PART II

Rick & Dorothy's Piano-Keyboard Show ....the final concerts in 2018/2019 at ages 61-62/83-84.. HELLO DOLLY

I can't seem to get Blogger.com to see MP4 or H264 videos so here is what my download page on Archive.org looks like. You can download a 3 minute quicktime or other formats, whatever works for you, from there. https://archive.org/details/piano-hello-dolly is the URL to copy/paste or click here [Hello Dolly] ..or click on the Archive.org image below:

Dorothy used Hello Dolly as her signature sign-off tune whenever possible which was a lot. It's as if she and I were thinking Hello Dorothy, Dorothy will never go away, Dorothy will never go away, Dorothy will never go away, again!.... as if to say we'll be back again soon. She started implementing it for birthdays for specific people too. And of course, she would watch the movie whenever it played on either cable or the Movies! channel on over-the-air here in Phoenix.

This particular performance must have been late 2018 at age 83. We did gigs until early 2019 and she taught until March 2020. I'll try to post some more MP3's and MP4's as I'm able to in coming weeks. I had a request for the last Rick & Dorothy Piano Keyboard Hour as a duet so I'll work on that Blogger/Archive.org post next as well as Dorothy's last straight piano performance which was a medley of her favorite song writer, George Gershwin.

I take credit for extending her piano career from her age 59 to 84, which is 25 years, a quarter century. Without me, it simply would not have happened.... so as a promoter, manager and facilitator, I did pretty good actually with this talented artist, Dorothy Motto, or stage named DOROTHEA! OLEE!!!!