Norbert at the Organ

For those who sympathize with my frustration and fascination with the mysterious Joe Peppy the Singing Bartender, here's another piece of puzzling evidence gleaned from an old Miami newspaper: Norbert at the Organ.

Norbert. Norbert. At the organ.

Googling him, and his outfit The Russ Ramsey Trio brings up next to nothing. It never fails to astound me and frighten me how many of these intrepid pioneers of the Mad Men era of glory led such swingin' lives only to find it undocumented, unrecorded, unremembered, lost, as Roy Batty said, like tears in rain.

The only other scrap of evidence I could find that the Russ Ramsey Trio ever existed was a short squib in the Miami News, December 14, 1967. In Herb Kelly's entertainment column he makes a very slight, very passing, reference: "The Russ Ramsay [sic] Trio is drawing in dancers and listeners at the Happy Hour Tavern." No mention of Norbert. And that's all we know at press time.

We know a little more about the Happy Hour Tavern itself - it was operated by one Frank Whale, and was at 3680 Coral Way, where Miami becomes Coral Gables. A google search shows the address listed as being a Blockbuster Video and/or a Direct TV sales place, but a look at Google Maps shows the spot now inhabited by a Chase Bank. It would appear that the original structure is gone, as is the building that had been next door to it. (We can see the original Happy Hour Tavern building on an old postcard.)

All of this, however, gets us no closer to our goal: who the hell was Norbert, and where is he now?

The Biltmore Hotel

The Biltmore Hotel is a Jazz-age luxury hotel in Coral Gables, built in 1925 with a gala opening in January 1926. In its glory days, it hosted such luminaries as the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ginger Rogers, Judy Garland, Bing Crosby, and Al Capone (when he wasn't staying at the Don CeSar). President Franklin D. Roosevelt even had a temporary White House office set up there for his vacation trips. Johnny Weissmuller, the actor best known for portraying Edgar Rice Burroughs' Tarzan, gave swimming lessons to tourists in the hotel's jaw-droppingly huge swimming pool.

Unfortunately, during World War II, the War Department turned the hotel into the Army Air Forces Regional Hospital, and in so doing sealed most of the windows with concrete, and covered the lavish marble floors with crappy government-issue linoleum. After the war, the military kept its clammy grip on the place, and it remained a veteran's hospital until 1968. From there it languished as an abandoned building, but saw much use as a spooky shooting location for movies and television.

In 1987, the Biltmore was restored to its original splendor as a 5-star hotel, and remains so to the present day. But in the intervening years, numerous legends have accrued about the place being haunted. This is probably in part due to the creepy look the place took on during its stint as an abandoned hospital (much in the vein of the probably-not-really-all-that-haunted Waverly Hills in Louisville). It may also be that less-than-attentive wannabe-ghostbusters are confusing it with that other Biltmore Hotel in Providence, Rhode Island - the one that was designed by Satanist Johan Leisse Weisskopf and partially inspired Stephen King's Overlook Hotel in The Shining. And then there's the allegedly haunted Biltmore Estate in North Carolina. Be that as it may, there's a story now often told about a "Woman in White" ghost - supposedly of a woman who committed suicide jumping from a tower window - and the ghost of mobster Thomas "Fatty" Walsh, who was murdered on the hotel’s 13th floor in 1929.

Malarkey or not, the local "ghost tour" types are having a field day running with the legend, and to them and their legends I say, enjoy.