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.
Fos has been still dazzling listeners at the wood-paneled Duchin Room in the Sun Valley Lodge for more than four decades. But he will tickle his last ivory there tonight when he plays his final concert there from 6 to 9 p.m.
“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 who has jammed with Fos at the Sun Valley Jazz and Music Festival. “He’s one of the nicest human beings I know—just a sweetheart.”
Joe Fos has seen 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’s seen the world’s rich and famous from his piano bench, including Dick Van Dyke, Carol Lawrence, Art Linkletter, Julie Andrews Bette Midler, Clint Eastwood--even tough guy 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, despite the fact that he couldn’t manage to top 5 feet.
But his mother made 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 music at Sun Valley Resort, which Holding had acquired a couple years earlier. Fos didn’t think much of Sun Valley’s winters but 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.
“Six months later, she got whacked,” Fos said, referring to Tonya Harding’s alleged attempt to take Kerrigan out of Olympic competition by whacking her on the knee.
It was during a Cinco de Mayo party at a California nightclub that the woman who would become Fos’ wife 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 keys, escaping into the room,” said Patricia Fos. “I felt I needed to give back for how happy he made me.”
For years Joe and Patricia Fos spent fall and spring on 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 he plays by ear. And with his gift for improvisation, he made up his own arrangements as he played, his fingers trickling over the piano keys like water cascading over a cliff.
Come winter and summer he has always been back in the Duchin Room, playing selections from “Mamma Mia” and “Phantom of the Opera,” as well as jazz and light classical arrangements, well past midnight.
“He still plays with all his heart,” said Patricia Fos, looking adoringly at her husband. “Even after all these years.”