A performer arrives at a desert estate and engages with a playful moment involving his retrievers. He moved from Los Angeles to Palm Springs in the late 1990s and describes staying because the area was too beautiful to leave. He had already become a top showman with major chart success and a long run at a Los Angeles venue. Rather than slowing down, he launched a Las Vegas residency in 2005 and later released a platinum album focused on 1950s songs, followed by additional successful releases. His influence reaches other artists, and he is also recognized for writing commercial jingles. Colleagues describe his dedication to performance as a vocation.
"Manilow and his husband and longtime manager, Garry Kief, moved to this sprawling desert estate from Los Angeles in the late 1990s. "We kept coming out, and it's so beautiful that eventually we said, 'Screw it - let's just stay,'" he says. By then, Manilow had long since established himself as one of music's premier showmen, with a Grammy Award, 11 Top 10 hits and a storied 15-night run at L.A.'s Greek Theatre under his belt."
"So you might've taken Palm Springs as a sign that he was ready to slow down. Instead, he launched a residency at the Las Vegas Hilton in 2005 that eventually surpassed the length of Elvis Presley's show there; in 2006, he released "The Greatest Songs of the Fifties," which went platinum and spawned a series of successful follow-up albums."
"Last month, Sabrina Carpenter interpolated a bit of Manilow's iconic "Copacabana (At the Copa)" into her headlining set at Coachella just days before he was honored by the American Advertising Federation for his work writing commercial jingles. The range of those achievements said something about his blend of music-nerd craft and pop-star razzle-dazzle."
""Barry loves music as much as anyone I've ever known," says Bette Midler, who hired Manilow as her pianist for the name-making gig she played at New York's Continental Baths in the early 1970s. Performing, Midler adds, "isn't a job with him - it's a vocation, a calling.""
Read at Los Angeles Times
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