Memoir of a Singing Waiter

After dinner, “ice cream orgies” were a must. Planks again, only this time they were piled high with ice cream and fudge and nuts and whipped cream -- your basic Weight Watchers dream! If it was someone‘s birthday, the waiter would shout for the attention of everyone in the room.

“It’s Who-who‘s birthday,” he’d cry. “On the count of one, I want everyone to bang on the table lightly. On the count of two, I want everyone to bang on the table a little harder, and on three, everybody shout, ‘Eat it, Who-who!’”

If Who-who was a woman, there‘d be a protruding banana dripping with hot fudge presented to be bitten. Men were given a maraschino cherry to eat. Very subtle!

If it was your anniversary, we’d serenade with the Flintstones‘ version of “Happy Anniversary.” If someone was visiting L.A., we’d sing the same melody but change the words to “Welcome to Los Angeles.” Getting married? “Going to the chapel, and we‘re going to get married” was standard, only we’d end with the truly heartfelt flourish “. . . and we‘ll never be horny anymore!”

Ronnie B., a tall, handsome country singer of a waiter, trained me when I graduated from busboy to waiter. One night, in front of a group of tourists from Sweden, he was teaching me how to open a bottle of wine. I watched in horror as half the bottle of Burgundy came out with the cork. The wine landed on the freshly pressed white jacket of the tour guide. A lot of things were shouted in Swedish, but the guide managed to make it clear that he wanted his jacket cleaned by the end of dinner. Not an easy task for 10 o’clock on a Saturday night! Ronnie B. knew exactly what to do: He leapt onto the table, belted out a country song, and ripped his own shirt open at just the right moment. The entire room was spellbound. Somehow, a little red-wine stain didn‘t matter any longer. Go try that at Spago!

After hours, when the customers left and we had cleaned up the place, a group of us musicians were always tired but too wired to go home. Many card games and jam sessions lasted well into the night at the G.A. We also had our late-night haunts in Santa Monica. The long-gone Broken Drum, where we’d sit around the piano bar and continue singing. Harvelle‘s for pool and drinks. Toward the end of my tenure at the G.A., we hit the now-defunct At My Place, where at 4 in the morning I had my first chance to hear an 18-year-old hostess from the G.A. named Vonda Shepard play the piano and sing without the noise of the restaurant. She knocked my socks off.

It was humbling to sing at the G.A. No microphones, no electric guitars. Everything was acoustic. You had to be a crowd stopper to be heard over the din. Most of the time, the customers listened and sang along -- that’s what they came for, to be entertained. Occasionally you‘d be in the middle of something quiet and low-key, like the Police’s “Every Breath You Take,” and some really sensitive music-loving customer would be waving his coffee cup wildly and shouting out, “Refill!”

After crawling into bed at 4 or 5 in the morning, I‘d wake up early and spend my days writing and illustrating children’s books, in hopes of a career change. It‘s not that I didn’t like being a singing waiter; it‘s just that, well, I was “older than jazz.” When I sold my first few books, I left the restaurant. I still came back for dinner, though -- it was a hard place to leave. A group of us still stay in touch. We tell war stories, over and over and over again . . . (Just ask my poor wife!) It seems fitting that the last Great American Food and Beverage location is now a pet store in Santa Monica on Wilshire Boulevard. I drive by slowly sometimes, and I can still see the people waiting out in the parking lot for a table. I can even hear the music: “Welcome to Los Angeles, Welcome to Los Angeles, Welcome to Los Angeles, Wellllllllcome to Los Angeles!”