Metcalf turned Crystal to gold in Aspen

Entertainer retiring after 51 years, during which he built a mini-empire for a song

By Joe Rassenfoss, Rocky Mountain News (Contact)

Published April 11, 2008 at 3 p.m.

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Photo by Aspen Times Weekly

Mead Metcalf, owner and founder of the Crystal Palace, bows his head to cheers on July 8, 2006. The evening celebrated the Palace's half-century, with two performances open only to previous employees and their families.

Photo by Crystal Palace

This ‘60s-era promotional shot features Metcalf at the wheel. Diane Kelley, far right, left the show and married. She returned for a reunion and now is married to Metcalf.

Photo by Crystal Palace

Cheap Drugs from winter 2006-07 fits a Crystal Palace statement on its Web site: “If it’s in the news it’s at the Crystal Palace.”

Photo by Crystal Palace

Enormous chandeliers in the dining room were among the ideas Metcalf took from St. Louis' Crystal Palace.

Mead Metcalf rolled into Aspen in 1957. Like a lot of prospectors in this boom-and-bust town, the 25-year- old faced obstacles in search of his fortune.

Aspen Mountain is a world-class ski resort now, with a gondola that races to the top in about 15 minutes; back then that trip took 45 minutes and three lift rides.

The city remained a long drive from Denver (the first bore of the Eisenhower Tunnel wouldn't open until 1973), few flights arrived at the airport, and many of the streets were still dirt.

No matter to Metcalf, who started with a toehold at the Hotel Jerome and by July had staked a claim near the corner of Hyman and Monarch streets. He's been there since, growing a mini-empire of real estate and antique cars, along with a collection of art, stained glass and chandeliers.

All of which sounds like your typical frontier success story, except that unlike the hard-rock miners before him, Metcalf didn't extract his multimillion-dollar fortune with a pickax - or a ski lift, for that matter.

No, all he needed was a piano and a song to build his Crystal Palace, where Broadway show tunes and later a satirical musical revue have played to a loyal audience for the past 51 years - until tonight, when the 76-year-old closes the doors for good after two sold-out shows.

Personal improvisation

"My parents were tone deaf. I don't know how I ever inherited all of that."

Mead Metcalf is trying to explain how the son of an electrical engineer, who never played music, came to play piano by ear as a child growing up in the St. Louis suburb of Webster Groves.

"I was able to play when I was 4. I played hymns from the church. I took classical lessons until I was a junior in high school, until I realized that I didn't have any friends playing classical music. So I dropped classical music and started playing jazz, and then everyone was my friend."

That shift started a pattern: If something wasn't working, or an opportunity presented itself, Metcalf adapted.

So it was no big deal when the glee club director at Dartmouth College went into the hospital days before a big tour of the northeast. Metcalf, the club president, already played all the piano accompaniments, so he led the tour.

When he entered the Army and was transferred in 1955 to Germany as a clerk/typist in an artillery battalion, it didn't take long to figure out a more interesting way to serve.

"I was asked to do a show for the special services gals in Frankfurt, so I put together one and I sang some numbers. (After that) they thought I needed to graduate up, so they transferred me down to Berchtesgaden, Germany, where I did shows for almost two years at the General Walker Hotel for enlisted men."

So much for clerk work.

"I started out (in the act) playing all the Broadway shows. At that time that was Oklahoma!, My Fair Lady, Carousel, Brigadoon, Finian's Rainbow, The Music Man . . . yeah, I sang "there's trouble in River City" and the chorus would sing 'trouble, trouble, trouble.' "

"I was offered a job as a civilian, when I was getting out of the Army, to continue to do shows, but I was in love with a gal from New Orleans and I came back."

Taking advantage

The romance didn't endure, but an infatuation with Aspen spawned by an earlier visit kept its hold.

"I came to Aspen and played piano at the Hotel Jerome and I skied every day," Metcalf said, recalling his first ski-bum days. "That summer I started the Crystal Palace around the first of July."

The opening signified another pattern for Metcalf: If an idea, name or song seemed like a good thing, Metcalf wasn't afraid to, well, steal it.

"The Crystal Palace name came from a nightclub in St. Louis . . . I swiped the name. And they were going under by then, so they didn't squabble about it.

"And I took a lot of the stained glass ideas from them," said Metcalf, referring to the interior of today's Crystal Palace, awash in stained glass and enormous chandeliers, with balcony railings made from opulent brass bed frames.

The stained glass in the bar and dining room was salvaged from a variety of churches, including one window featuring the Bible ("Which is kind of interesting, to have a Holy Bible in a bar").

"I started singing Broadway songs the first summer. And Joanie Higbie came to work for me as a dishwasher. In those days, Joanie was paid $50 a week for washing dishes. And she would take off her dirty apron and come out and sing songs with me at the piano."

The impromptu duets from shows like Porgy and Bess resulted in a singing act and Metcalf's first marriage. But it also showed the young entrepreneur that his staff could do more than cook and clear tables. So he adapted again, training ski bums to sing as well as work the room, and the show graduated to bigger productions of Broadway music.

The material veered in a new direction during the '70s after Metcalf caught the satirical revue at the New York club, Upstairs at the Downstairs. "I used to go to all of their shows and then I would walk off with the record (they sold) and do the numbers at the Crystal Palace."

Show tunes were replaced by topical songs about the likes of Botox, airport security, Viagra, presidential foibles and, more recently, Sen. Larry Craig's airport bathroom escapades. Jimmy and Rosalyn Carter saw a show one night that included a song about their daughter Amy, in which she pleaded "Elect my daddy president, I don't want to go through puberty in Plains."

With the change to more topical material, though, Metcalf began to acknowledge the songwriter. "I stole, and when I met the composer, I paid them."

Then again, even that was something of a shotgun arrangement.

"Lesley Perrin came out here on a honeymoon and came for dinner; I had never met her," said Metcalf about the woman who wrote songs performed at Upstairs at the Downstairs.

"She called me over after the show and said, 'My name's Lesley Perrin and it might interest you to know I wrote those two songs in your show.' Well, I paid for everything after that, and we became really good friends and performed many songs of hers after that."

Building the empire

The Crystal Palace was a hit from the beginning; at its height in the late '60s and '70s, the dinner theater hosted two shows a night. That success encouraged Metcalf to make a real estate deal for the Palace's current home on the corner of Hyman and Monarch that, while not exactly the equivalent of buying Manhattan for beads, seems close.

"I bought this property for $28,000 in 1960 . . . it was a nothing building. We spent a lot of money renovating it (and adding a bar)," said Metcalf. In 1979 he bought the building and lot next door for $400,000 to house the smaller Grand Finale, where more music was staged.

The foresight to buy and the sweat equity to improve has paid off as Metcalf prepares to close June 1 on the building's sale for $13 million, a more-than handsome appreciation. That's a grand slam deal even in Aspen's overheated real estate market, where last year the average home sold for $5.9 million.

During a recent interview, Metcalf took a call from the towing company handling the removal of another portion of his empire: the 1931 Model A and 1914 Model T that graced the bar.

They were headed off to auction in Denver, along with two other vintage cars he owns: a 1908 Maxwell and 1924 Model T Coupe. The 1954 Porsche? He sold that a few weeks ago.

And don't forget the prescient real estate deal he made for his home, on the bluff overlooking the Pitkin County Airport. "I'm on 81/2 acres that I bought in 1963 for $15,000."

He's not ready to sell that house yet, even though he has a new home on a golf course in Crested Butte, which will become his primary residence. When you ask Metcalf why he's leaving for Crested Butte, the answer is more about what his new home doesn't have as opposed to what it does have.

"I like Crested Butte because there are no traffic lights and no parking meters, and what does that tell you about Aspen?"

The long view

After 51 years in business, the conversation naturally turns to subjects like endurance. Precise records don't exist, but estimates suggest the Crystal Palace has staged more than 10,000 shows.

The Palace's long run defies the winds of change that scour Aspen, which in recent years has seen the closing of landmarks such as La Cocina, Red Onion, Golden Horn, The Mother Lode and the Boomerang hotel, to name just a few. Despite that remarkable run, Metcalf's circumspect when asked if he considers his success more the result of business smarts or good fortune.

"Somewhere in between; I wouldn't say it was genius, by any means. I liked the idea of living in Aspen. That was the idea when I came here . . . At one point I was thinking of going to Sun Valley, Idaho. But this was the place to open it."

He's more passionate when asked what he'll miss most.

"My fellow performers," he said without hesitating. "I don't want to cast them out on the market. I'm not sure what they're all gonna do."

They'll miss him, too: Some 300 former employees came back for the 50th reunion. And no deal's in place, but some cast members are searching for a performance space in Glenwood Springs. Metcalf likes their chances, mainly because he thinks the Crystal Palace isn't tapped out yet.

"I think if I stayed with it, it would last another 10 years, until I die. I mean, I think it's an ongoing business that would stay going . . . even if I wasn't here. But it seemed to me to be a time when I should sell it, take the money and go somewhere."

The final song

Metcalf acknowledges he doesn't have the same sustained passion. "My energy goes down during the show, but when it comes time to do the encores, the energy comes back."

Ah yes, the encores, which have featured a crowd favorite since 1963. That's when Metcalf has faithfully, if not always cheerfully, played The Peanut Butter Affair, the most enduring theft of his career.

"I stole that from (the New York club) Upstairs at the Downstairs. It was written by Clark Gesner, who wrote the musical Charlie Brown. I stole it, and about 10 years later I started sending him checks, just to be nice."

But the song's popularity has endured long past 10 years, well past Gesner's 2002 death and often past Metcalf's patience. "People would scream 'Sing Peanut Butter on the Chin' and I would say some foul word."

And then he would play it again.

Staffers once tried to figure out how many times he'd performed the song and landed around 8,000 times. The tune's success owes much to Metcalf's droll delivery and some to its message about how people are willing to blindly follow the leader, even if it means putting a dab of peanut butter on their chin.

It seems an apt theme song for the Crystal Palace, which has never been about fitting in, but Metcalf's face clouds over when asked if he thinks that's the case. "I'm not sure it ever had a message."

One thing is certain: things have gotten more emotional.

"We have all become more nostalgic," said Nina Gabianelli, the Palace's general manager for the past five years and Metcalf's personal assistant. "We're all trying to stay positive, as opposed to thinking about what we are losing."

Metcalf sees a difference, too.

"I can't believe the compliments I've had. Someone comes up to me, and this is every night, and says, 'I haven't been here for five years, I haven't been here for 10 years, the last time I was here was 18 years ago, but I really loved the show.' People are coming back because they hear I'm leaving.

"Some people, they've got tears in their eyes, they say, 'I can't believe you're leaving.' Well, I'm not supposed to cry, I'm supposed to be funny."

"I have seen him get emotional, absolutely," Gabianelli said. "There's no way he can't be emotional: This has been his life."

So surely, he's asked, there will be a tear or two after the last show?

"No, no, no, no."

Indeed, Metcalf, ever the performer, has more pressing things on his mind.

"The thing that's going to worry me most about closing night is former performers interfering with every number. The thing with these old friends is that they come in and get a little looped and they start singing along. So out of one ear I'm listening to them and out of another I'm trying to remember where I am."

Of course, Metcalf should have no trouble remembering that: He's been there since 1957.

rassenfossj@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-954-5410

Loyal workers

Mead Metcalf has been there since Day 1 in July 1957, but the Crystal Palace has several employees among its 35 who can claim a long tenure:

* Chet Tomaszczyk: bartender since 1979 (29 years)

* David Dyer: pianist (28 years)

* Gary Daniel: server/ performer (26 years)

* Kathy Pelowski: server/performer (25 years)

* Meredith Daniel: server/performer (23 years)

Long-player

The best estimate suggests Mead Metcalf has performed The Peanut Butter Affair at least 8,000 times. Some more Peanut numbers:

* 581 words in its lyrics

* 4.6 million words sung by Metcalf, assuming 8,000 performances

* 5 minutes: roughly the song's length when performed live

* 40,000 minutes (nearly 28 days): Total time spent singing the song, assuming 8,000 performances

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