Years before he found fame as red-headed prankster Ralph Malph on the ’70s sitcom “Happy Days,” Donny Most was a red-headed 14-year-old kid spending his summer as part of a youth vaudeville troupe that performed in New York’s Catskill Mountains.
“Music was my first love,” says Most, 71, who now lives in Longmont. “I grew up in Brooklyn, and when I was 13, I would take the subway into Manhattan every Saturday to go to a school that was run by an old vaudeville performer named Charlie Lowe. Charlie would handpick students every summer to be part of a nightclub revue, so I spent the summer I was 14 singing in a nightclub revue up in the Catskills.”
That experience solidified an appreciation for the Great American Songbook that began when Most first watched “The Jolson Story” (a biopic of singer Al Jolson) at age 9. Though Anson Williams’ Potsie Weber did most of the singing when Richie Cunningham’s band rocked Arnold’s Drive-In on Happy Days, Most has returned to his first love in recent years, teaming with big bands to perform standards like “Luck Be a Lady” and “Mack the Knife” in venues in California, Florida, New York and his new home state of Colorado.
“I did a bunch of musical theater over the years, and sometimes I’d get occasions to sing on telethons and charity events,” Most said. “But it wasn’t until about 10 years ago when it hit me, because I was still listening to jazz standards and the legendary artists who performed them. I said, ‘If I’m ever going to do it, I’d better start,’ because I wasn’t 20 anymore. So I put together a show the way I always wanted to do, working with a musical director I knew from the East Coast. We tried it out at a jazz club in L.A., and it went great.”…