Tom Paproski really cranked out the records - likely because his gig as a lounge musician was somewhat lucrative. He got into the business of music a bit in this 1974 profile of various Calgary workers: [center][img width=293]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1767201816068x668323508912700400/richtext_content.jpeg[/img] [img width=277px]//7ca49eb9f67ba1319ef136f9d52cd8b8.cdn.bubble.io/f1767201824709x383057262082020300/richtext_content.jpeg[/img][/center] [h2]Cocktail pianist: 'A lot of nights, people just ignore you'[/h2] Tom Paproski of Calgary is a pianist on the Alberta cocktail bar circuit. A week here, a week there, earning about $400 weekly. At 34. he's been doing it about three years, after years as a commercial diver. "People come into a piano bar for three reasons. They're lonely. Or they're bored. Or they want to relax and hear some music. That last group is easy to play for. But there's not that many of them. Most everyone is in one of the other groups. It can be real hard to reach them. "After three numbers, I can tell what kind of night I'm going to have. A lot of nights, people just ignore you. Here you are, knocking yourself out, trying to please them, and they're not paying any attention. At first I couldn't understand it. I felt like saying, 'Hey, listen to me. I'm doing this for you.' But you get used to it pretty fast. Everybody's got their own problems. So I just play and clown around and hope maybe I'm making it easier for somebody. "Sometimes, it's just great. People crowd around with all kinds of requests. I'm joking and everyone's laughing and having a helluva time. And the manager's happy because everyone's buying more drinks. I can't forget that that's the real reason I'm there. So people will drink up. It's funny when I remember that for this I took 10 years of classical training. So that some manager will say to me at the end of the night that I did real good. What he means is that the bar did real good. Every now and then, just for the hell of it, I'll play something like a Chopin polonaise. Most people don't even notice it, but that's all right because it's for my own amusement. "I try to do something for the lonely and the bored. Say there's a couple of guys at a table and a couple of girls at another. They're shy about approaching each other. So I start kibitzing with one table and then the other and before you know it they're talking with each other. It's a good feeling. Once a guy I did that for offered me a deal on some snow tires. "You never know who's gonna turn up where you're playing. Maybe one day someone'll offer me a record contract. Or maybe I'll get a chance to play piano on a round-the-world cruise. That's one job I've always wanted. I once saw a movie when I was a kid about a pianist who had such a job. I think that's why I took up the piano. I'm not hopeful, however."
