Dave Bergman

1930 - 2022

Dave Bergman of Fairfax was a troubadour for all seasons, a musical virtuoso and cool jazz aficionado schooled as a hep cat on the Los Angeles club circuit in the era of Chet Baker, Stan Getz and Gerry Mulligan. Bergman, who dazzled audiences on the trumpet, violin, bass, piano, vibes and drums, could sing in just about every key. The 91-year-old Bergman died June 5 at home and will be honored at a celebration of life at 1 p.m. Aug. 7 at 19 Broadway in Fairfax, where he performed in his last gig on his 89th birthday. Bergman's serenades and instrumental melodies resonated in clubs across the West for decades during a storied life that included four marriages, stints as an explosives expert, firefighter, Ross Valley toy store owner and burglary alarm dispatcher. But his heart was anchored in music as he performed in ensembles from Mexico to Montana, Los Angeles and Las Vegas to Reno and the Bay Area. Bergman could play more than a dozen instruments and had a collection of about 70, although "his main instrument was his voice," noted his wife for the past decade, Joan Kloehn of Fairfax. "He could really sing." Bob Duncan of Fairfax, a noted music critic and author, watched in fascination as Bergman performed for weekend dinner crowds at Fairfax's Sorella Caffe with vocalist and pianist Wendy Fitz a couple years ago. Duncan described Bergman's voice as booming "like the bastard spawn of Satchmo and Robert Goulet." Duncan's "Center of the Universe," an episodic blog of small-town life in Fairfax, portrays Bergman as an old-school hipster in the cool jazz tradition he honed for years as a club musician in Los Angeles. Duncan, noting Bergman's mastery of the pocket trumpet, called him "the last brass gunslinger" of 1950s West Coast jazz, a musician whose intonations were "staccato kind of blue-ish telegrams that abruptly squirt across keys, sets of be-bop lava from the LA cool." Bergman, then 85, sat in with Fitz at her Sorella shows and the two provided harmonic melodies so sweet they "could melt the mozzarella right off your chicken parmigiana," Duncan said. Fitz described Bergman as a consummate performer able to wow a crowd with his vocal and instrumental talents, as well as his show biz shtick. "He mesmerized the room effortlessly," Fitz said. "He'd sing right to the audience, walking right up to the tables and flirting with the lovelies," pointing, waving, grinning, winking and gazing intently. He could do anything he focused his attention on, she added, recalling the time a bassist in another band was unavailable for a show. Bergman was asked to sit in, taught himself how to play bass in an hour or so, stepped on stage and played it flawlessly. Bergman led or performed in a variety of bands over the years, including The Dave Bergman Trio, the Dave Bergman Quartet, and Dori and Dave, with the late Dori Green of Fairfax. He performed in Garry Graham's Good Time Band at 19 Broadway on Sundays for 35 years. Graham called Bergman a showman with a vaudeville flair, sometimes cracking jokes on stage and changing lyrics of popular tunes to reflect the times and region, as well as the venue. Bergman's signature version of "The Lady is a Tramp" was an exuberant rendition in which "tramp" became "champ" and rollicked with Marin County references. Bergman's performances "would bring the house down," Graham said. "I mean every time he would get a standing ovation." Graham nicknamed Bergman "The Alligator" because of his hard working, tenacious nature, a never-say-die ability to "survive anything" amid life's hard knocks. Bergman endured more than a few. He was born in Indianapolis, the son of a carnival barker who moved the young family to California, then vanished with a new girlfriend. Bergman was 5, and his mother, Mary, put him, his brother and sister in an orphanage for a time before remarrying and taking the children to Pine Grove in Amador County. While there, Mary nurtured his interest in music, and he took piano lessons from Dave Brubeck's mother, Bessie. Mary was killed at 62 in a 1971 collision caused by a drunk driver. Bergman studied music at College of the Pacific in Stockton, where he played classical violin and spent time in an opera chorus. He served in the Army during the Korean War and worked at various jobs, becoming an explosives expert for a mining company and an ordnance specialist at the Naval Weapons Station in Concord. He worked as a club musician in Southern California in the 1950s before joining vocalist Pat Paris in a popular lounge combo that appeared in Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Reno and elsewhere. The two were married for a time, and in 1961 had a daughter, Mary Kay. She became an accomplished voice-over actress in Hollywood, earned an Oscar nomination, and had hundreds of commercial, film, video and cartoon credits, including "Snow White," "The Simpsons" and "South Park". Mary Kay died in 1999 at 38. Bergman moved to Marin more than 40 years ago and owned the old Toy Circus emporium in San Anselmo before the business was destroyed by floods during the Great Storm of 1982. With Hildred Hughes, who operated the Yarn Nook next door on San Anselmo Avenue, he developed an interest in knitting, becoming so good that the two sold sweaters they created to I. Magnin's in San Francisco. Later, he worked for years on the graveyard shift at American Sentry Alarm Co. in San Rafael, a job that allowed him to perform at night gigs before heading to work as a dispatcher. Vocalist Connie Ducey of San Anselmo, who gave Bergman a place to stay after his apartment above 19 Broadway was destroyed by fire in 2009, called him a "great jazz singer, creative in the way he approached his craft and so much fun to sing with." "He was really a talented guy in so many ways," noted his wife, Joan. "He was kind and considerate and caring.