STORY AND PHOTOS BY KAREN BOSSICK

“Fourteen fingers.”

That’s been Joe Fos’ nickname ever since Robert Goulet quipped that Fos must have 14 fingers because he played so nimbly.

The pianist, who dazzled listeners for three decades at the wood-paneled Duchin Room in the Sun Valley Lodge, has tickled his last ivories.

Joe and Patricia Fos’s song was “I Have Dreamed” from “The King and I.”

Fos passed away on July 24, after being admitted to the hospital with low blood oxygen. He rallied for a few days but couldn’t sustain his recovery, according to his widow Patricia Fos. He had battled cancer a few years earlier but continued to play his long list of show tunes for Sun Valley guests through December 2022.

Fos was a mainstay for many years at what was then called the Sun Valley Swing ‘n’ Dixie Jazz Jamboree, drawing the loudest applause during Pianorama for his intricate arrangements of such crowd pleasers as “The Theme from Doctor Zhivago.”

“I’m just afraid to touch the piano after he’s touched it,” said Boise State University Vocal Jazz Director Jim Jirak.

“How he can play the piano so well and remain so humble is truly amazing,” said Bob Draga, clarinet player with Nashville’s Titan Hot Seven. “He’s one of the nicest human beings I know—just a sweetheart.”

He saw the world from Aruba to the Great Wall of China, thanks to a recurrent gig on Crystal Cruise Lines during Sun Valley’s slack seasons. And he saw the world’s rich and famous from his piano bench. Among them, Dick Van Dyke, Carol Lawrence, Art Linkletter, Julie Andrews Bette Midler, Clint Eastwood and Charles Bronson.

It wasn’t a world he envisioned as a youngster growing up in San Diego. All he cared about then was following in the footsteps of basketball great Wilt Chamberlain or baseball slugger Mickey Mantle.

Either might have been a tough act to follow, considering he couldn’t top 5 feet.

His mother cut into his basketball dribbling by making him practice the piano. And, though he did so grudgingly, it came easy for him. So easy that when football team members persuaded him to audition for a contest at Hotel del Coronado, the 14-year-old easily bested 150 other competitors.

His reward? An opportunity to play on Liberace’s TV show.

“I didn’t know who he was—I was a kid wanting to play baseball. But he came out in a fur coat—there was a candelabra on the piano--and he did a duet with me,” recalled Fos. “He was showy, impressive. He embellished everything with his hands way up in the air.”

Fos made his concert debut with the San Diego Symphony at 17 and won a scholarship to the Julliard School of Music in New York after studying music at San Diego State College.

After a painful gig with a Las Vegas act that got cancelled when the band leader got into a fight, he settled into playing luxurious hotels like the King James in Beverly Hills.

He was entertainment director at the Westgate Hotel in San Diego in 1979 when Owner Earl Holding fingered him to headline the music at Sun Valley Resort, which Holding had acquired two years earlier.

Fos didn’t think much of Sun Valley’s winters at first, but he eventually learned to ski well enough to handle Seattle Ridge, one of the easier portions of Bald Mountain. And he fell in love with Sun Valley’s summers.

He became a fixture playing for Sun Valley’s outdoor ice shows. And he was a frequent guest soloist with the Sun Valley Summer Symphony in its early days. He dressed up as a cow for the symphony’s “Carnival of Animals” benefit and Captain Hook for a “Salute to Hollywood” benefit-- losing his hook, of course, when it came time to play the piano.

Fos says he has seen it all in his years of entertaining.

He was playing on his “Sundown” TV show in San Diego when Russ Tamblyn jumped up on the piano and started dancing a number from the just-released “West Side Story.”

In Sun Valley, he performed in the televised “Disney’s Fantasy on Ice” where a touch of magic made Olympic Gold Medalist Nancy Kerrigan appear to skate across the top of his concert grand.

It was during a Cinco de Mayo party at a California nightclub that Patricia saw him. Smitten by the way he played, she followed her heart to Sun Valley, marrying him 11 months later.

“I could feel his love coming out through the piano, escaping into the room,” she said. “I felt compelled to give that love back for how happy he made me.”

Every fall and spring the couple headed for Crystal Cruises where Joe performed on a 6-foot grand acrylic piano that the ship’s 1,200 passengers could see through. There was no need to pack any sheet music since Fos played by ear. And with his gift for improvisation, he made up his own arrangements for songs like “Mamma Mia” and “Phantom of the Opera” as he played, his fingers trickling over the piano keys like water cascading over a cliff.

In later years, Fos accompanied his wife to The Community Library in Ketchum where he spent evening hours on a PC googling items of interest on the internet. But he never lost his love for playing the piano.

“He still plays with all his heart,” said Patricia after he ran his fingers over the piano keys on one of those occasions. “Even after all these years.”