Thursday, December 21, 2023

Eddie Mack Live at the Open Face Sandwich CLub

Eddie Mack 
Live at the Open Face Sandwich Club
Penthouse magazine ad, July 1975
Leafing through the pages of old copies of Penthouse magazine, I run across all sorts of odd pop culture ephemera. This includes a full-page advertisement in the July, 1975 issue for a record album by Eddie Mack.
The Open Face Sandwich Club was a lounge in California, someplace, and it was popular with Hollywood actors and other celebrities. The name apparently had 'wink-wink' smutty connotations in the 1960s Mad Men / bar culture. 

Eddie Mack was a veteran lounge singer when, in 1965, a performance of his at the Club was recorded and pressed into vinyl. The LP apparently only was available with membership in the Club, as advertised in the 1975 Penthouse.
Biographical information about Eddie Mack (not to be confused with the blues singer of the same name) is scant.  A post at Reddit states:

Eddie grew up to be a talented pianist, singer, and actor. He was married and divorced six times. (The beauty perched on the piano [of the LP] was married to him for a brief period – Eddie was old-fashioned and didn't believe in "shacking up.") In 1969 he was on stage in Toronto as a member of the touring company of There's a Girl in My Soup (starring Don Ameche) when his throat started hemorrhaging during a song. He was rushed to the hospital and diagnosed with throat cancer. Greasepaint was in his blood, though, so even though he couldn't speak while recuperating from surgery and radiation, he got a job leading the orchestra on a cruise ship and communicated with the musicians via gestures and a Magic Slate. By KARA KOVALCHIK 10/10/2011

The full album is available at YouTube. It's not bad stuff, but I get the sense it's best listened to by travelling back in time to 1969, and sitting in some dimly-lit lounge, with a scotch on the rocks and early-stage lung cancer....................

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