Duke Tumatoe is Not a Real Doctor

Casinos thrive on illusion -- some more than others. But a good bar band is an authentic thing.

I’ve been to Las Vegas a few times, and enjoyed it each time. My favorite thing is the artifice -- the fake gondolier taking you down a fake canal to the fake St. Mark’s Square in the Venetian. Or the fake steam (dry ice) coming from the fake street grates in the fake Greenwich Village in the New York, New York resort/casino. You get a slice of pizza, chuckle and say, “How about that!”

I’m not much of a gambler, as I just can’t get past the fact that every game is designed to take your money away. But when in Vegas I play blackjack; if you play “basic strategy”, hitting, splitting, and doubling down when you’re supposed to, it has the least bad odds of any game -- a house "edge" of about 0.5%. You can usually sit at the table for a good long time before those relentless statistics catch up to you. And if you’re sitting with friends, laughing and having fun, it’s money well spent.

I’ve read a couple of blackjack books, and you can actually turn the odds in blackjack slightly in your favor through card counting. It doesn’t require prodigious memory (like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man), just concentration, but that makes it like a second job. No thanks.

The first time I saw Dr. Duke Tumatoe’s band was about 20 years ago, when they played at Biddy Mulligan’s in Rogers Park, just a block south of the Evanston/Chicago border. (It’s been shuttered for at least 10 years now, sadly.) My old roommate Mike was a big fan of live music, and they’d played his college town (Dayton) regularly, so he knew what fun they were. Off we went.

They were a very good bar band -- lots of upbeat songs and audience participation, and decent musicianship, as far as I could tell. Duke himself was an old man, bald, with a pot belly and a bushy white beard. He looked like Santa Claus, if Santa played a mean electric guitar, sang old and new rockin’ blues songs, and was a dirty old man. (The album he released in 2001 was titled "It's Christmas (Let's Have Sex)", which I don't think Bing Crosby ever recorded.)

The highlight of the show was when Duke switched over to his wireless electric guitar and strolled through the audience during one song. He then strolled right out the front door and into the middle of Sheridan Road, where he stood and whaled away for a minute or two, with cars passing by on either side, and everyone inside pressed against the windows watching and cheering. Crazy!

We did Thanksgiving in Michigan again this year, and had our usual wonderful time. There's a casino/resort 20 minutes away in Manistee (the Little River Casino), which I'd never cared to visit before. But I found out beforehand that the band playing at the bar that weekend was -- you guessed it -- Dr. Duke Tumatoe and his Power Trio. So we all went on Friday night, leaving the kids behind with Grandma.

When we got there we had a half-hour before the show started, so we split up to explore and gamble a little, according to our own preferences. I went looking for the blackjack tables, naturally. They were surprisingly crowded, and I didn't see any table I felt like joining alone, so I just watched.

The rules of casino advertising dictate that everyone is young, thin, beautiful, happy, and having a ball. I'm not a snob, but my observation of the Little River Casino: eh, not so much. A more typical customer is older, plain, heavy-set, and morose, smoking and joylessly pumping coins into a slot machine. (OK, maybe I am a snob.)

Duke's show started at 9pm, and was as fun as I expected. The solid blues songs, the comedy, the audience call-and-response -- it got more crowded as the night went on, as he seemed to pull people in from the casino floor. Duke himself didn't look any older, which is one virtue, I suppose, of looking like Santa Claus when you're in your forties. By his second set he had a fair number of people on the dance floor, off and on. (At one point, though, the lone dancer was a scraggly biker dude flapping wildly by himself in the middle of the dance floor, a cigarette in one hand and a beer bottle in the other. Go figure.)

We chatted a little with the keyboard player between sets. The band is based out of Indianapolis and plays over 200 gigs a year, almost all driving distance. They tour from Wednesday through Sunday, spend a couple of days at home, and then head back out -- almost all year round. It's a living, I suppose, and they seem to have fun doing it. They'll actually be back in Chicago on December 26th, playing at Kingston Mines in Lincoln Park.

So go see Duke Tumatoe and Co. if you get the chance, if live music's your thing -- I don't think you'll be disappointed. And remember to always split your aces and eights, and double down on 11, unless the dealer's showing an ace.

Pat