Evelyn Butterhoff could play the ivory off the keys when she sat down at a piano.
Pianist Evelyn Butterhoff could play the ivory off the keys when she sat down at a piano.
In the obituary he wrote for Baltimore Brew, Rafael Alvarez included some of his own memories of Butterhoff’s performances at a neighborhood watering hole:
I was thrilled by her Keith Moon approach to the piano – she would whoop and holler and smack a hanging plant while playing.
But her talent “never translated into fame or fortune.”
“That girl … plays for a few lousy dollars,” lamented the pianist’s mother – Agnes Beck – not long before her own death in 1990.
Alvarez also wrote about the time Butterhoff asked to sit in with a band in celebration of her daughter’s 40th birthday. Her daughter told Alvarez:
“She sits down at this electric pi-annah and RIPPED it up! The band didn’t know she could play. Everybody’s screaming for more, and the regular keyboard player didn’t want to follow her.”
In the evenings, neighbors would shush their children while sitting on their porches to listen to her play, according to a reader’s comment on the obit.
This post was contributed by Kay Powell, retired from The Atlanta Journal-Constitution after 14 years as obituaries editor and recipient of the 2010 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society of Professional Obituary Writers.
