and down to Baltimore.

He played for politicians: Mayor Goode, Mayor Street, Mayor
Rendell, Gov. Rendell, Baroness Thatcher, Vice President Gore,
and President Clinton on a rainy night at the Locust Club, where
the legendarily charismatic president, eyeing my father’s Selmer
Mark VI tenor saxophone from across the room (the president
knew his saxophones), walked over, waited until the song was
finished, extended his hand and said, in the manner of all the most
gifted clerics and politicians, “Nice to see you again, Kenny.”
At his peak, my father was playing about 120 dates a year. This
lasted from the mid-’70s to the late ’90s.

When casino gaming was legalized in Atlantic City, musicians
thought they’d have it good forever. And my dad certainly did
for a while. He undercarded for Frank Sinatra and Paul Anka at
high-roller affairs; he once played Jackie Mason’s sham wedding at
the Sands. It was all during the time when Steve Wynn and Donald
Trump built shiny monuments to late-’80s excess that no one
could’ve imagined sitting empty and corroded and emblematic of
the most forlorn resort town three decades hence.

But this was never my father’s world, not really. No doubt he had
a bandleader’s high-wattage smile and employed it readily, almost
indiscriminately, in a way that made it more an accessory than the
manifestation of an emotion. And, yes, he did drive a Mercedes,
and, maybe, while pulling it into a gig at, say, The Ritz-Carlton, he
might pull up next to the valet station and insouciantly toss the
keys to the valet as if to communicate that this world of opulent
luxury was commonplace.

But this was not the true Ken Silver. It wasn’t an act, because an
act implies something underhanded or deceitful, which wouldn’t
See Band, Page 20
Ken Silver and President Clinton
Courtesy of Ken Silver
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