Jimmy Mulidore’s THE VEGAS PLAYER: Celebrities Sex, Drugs, and Mafia dazzles with vivid musicianship, unforgettable star portraits, and a lively voice.
Equal-parts jazz memoir and backstage confessional, Jimmy Mulidore’s THE VEGAS PLAYER is a rollicking, fast-moving, thoroughly entertaining ride through old Las Vegas from the bandstand’s point of view. A steelworker’s son whose father bought him a tenor saxophone to keep him out of the mills, Mulidore writes with brash, self-mocking charm and an eye for telling detail.
His portraits of the era’s giants are the book’s great pleasure. Sinatra is a perfectionist whose band “never saw the charming Ol’ Blue Eyes” at rehearsal, only the “hung-over, mean, miserable” version. Elvis coaches the author’s flute solo in “An American Trilogy” with a bit of poetry: “Just lay back and blow.” His closing-night tribute, “he’s played it 144 times and never missed it once,” lands as a genuine payoff.
Music remains the emotional core. Meeting hero James Moody outside a Cleveland club, the teenage author thinks, “Here comes God,” and years later Moody “cried most of the time” while playing at a fellow musician’s funeral. These friendships give the memoir real heart and lasting emotional resonance. As Hilton bandleader, Mulidore insists on hiring without discrimination and “no cousins from Iowa based on nepotism,” a principled streak that deepens and humanizes his portrait.
Equally vivid are the near-misses. After a dressing-room encounter with Candy Barr, Mulidore admits, “If Mickey Cohen had gotten wind of this, I might not even be here today.” His mobbed-up cousin supplies dark comedy, since “life was never dull” when he visited. The Ann-Margret saga, tracked across several chapters, keeps tension and suspense steadily building, and Mulidore sums up his Hilton years with a boast: “Drugs, women, jazz? You name it, I had it.”
The book also documents a vanishing world. Casino security cameras mean the author “couldn’t even shut the lights all the way out,” while hotelier Henri Lewin is mourned as “the last of the characters.” Mulidore’s elegy for live house orchestras, pushed out as hotels abandoned house bands, is quietly moving and historically valuable. However, the closing chapters, including the Redford and Pesci vignettes, drift into loosely connected anecdotes with blurred timelines, and the pervasive profanity can be overwhelming. A firmer edit and trimmed repetition would sharpen the text’s momentum.
Overall, THE VEGAS PLAYER is an entertaining, generous-spirited portrait of a vanished Las Vegas that’s anchored by genuine musicianship, wit, and heart. Highly recommended for jazz fans, Rat Pack devotees, and anyone who loves a great storyteller.
Jimmy Mulidore’s THE VEGAS PLAYER: Celebrities Sex, Drugs, and Mafia dazzles with vivid musicianship, unforgettable star portraits, and a lively voice.
Source: IndieReader
