Photo by Frank McMains

September 2011. Piano Men: Three generations of O’Neills have helped thousands to be the life of the party.

The most memorable parties are the ones where everybody feels comfortable and loose. Someone sits at the baby grand piano in the corner and begins to play a well-known pop song. Then someone says, “It’s so-and-so’s birthday.” The pianist breaks into “Happy Birthday” and everyone sings along. Then someone says, “Do you know that Lady Gaga song?”

“If I play it, will you sing?”

“I’ll do my Christopher Walken imitation” is the correct response. A rousing rendition of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” follows and brings out the diva in even the shyest of us. When this happens, the party is on.

I love those kinds of parties.

I also love the scene in The Seven Year Itch where Tom Ewell woos Marilyn Monroe by playing Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2. If I could play Rachmaninoff’s Piano Concerto #2, I’d have the confidence to woo Marilyn Monroe too.

As Billy Joel wrote in his classic duet with Ray Charles, “All it takes is the power in my hands…this baby grand’s been good to me.”

And for sixty years, O’Neill’s Music has been good to Baton Rouge. Three generations of musicians, Jack, Sr., Jack Jr. and Raph O’Neill (pronounced Rafe) have provided acoustic pianos to thousands of piano students in southeastern Louisiana.

“My grandfather, Jack O’Neill, Sr., was a concert pianist,” said Raph, the third generation and general manager of the store. “That’s where the piano part comes from.”

Jack O’Neill Jr., now retired, gave up a promising career as a professional vocalist at Norman Vincent Peale’s church in New York City to join his father in a fledgling piano business in Louisiana. New York weather helped him make up his mind.

“One snowy morning, the weather was ten degrees. I stood on Staten Island while three full buses rolled by,” Jack said. “Finally, I got on a bus and took a standing room only ferry across the Hudson River and went on down to Madison Avenue and called my wife and said, ‘You know something? There’s no snow in Baton Rouge. It’s never ten degrees in Baton Rouge.’”

That was it. Instead of singing on the banks of the Hudson, Jack Jr. went to sell musical instruments along the Mississippi River.

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