In Alabama: Isn't It Romantic?

By Jane O'Reilly

Wearing gloves, Margaret Neas plays the piano in the lobby bar of the Hilton Hotel every night, Monday through Friday, from 6 to 10--longer if the crowd stays lively. To her regulars she is "a legend, the most respected woman in Birmingham."

The cordless microphone passing from hand to hand around the bar is a magic wand, transforming people into singing stars, romantic desperadoes, family. Betty holds the mike for Terry, who sings This Love of Mine. They gaze into each other's eyes. Tenderness seems to rise in a cloud from Margaret's keyboard. A wild, passionate embrace, something along the lines of the Tabu perfume ad, seems inevitable. "This is the only place you can come and make a fool of yourself in front of your friends," says Terry. "Of course, we've been married 31 years, and people who've been married that long don't have many friends."

"True, that's so true," murmurs Bob from the next bar stool. Chariots of Fire follows Stars Fell on Alabama. Bob tells a regional joke: "It is not true that possums are born dead by the side of the road." He insists that Terry fill out an application to the clan on a cocktail napkin. A Northern visitor is worried that he means the Klan. But no, this invitation is to join the Clan Maxwell Society. "We meet four times a year, wear kilts, promote Scottish culture." Another clan member, Kenn, a fourth-generation American with a Pavarotti girth and an approximate voice, whose favorite songs are Old Scot Mother and Tobermory Bay, opens tonight with the song no one else dares sing if he is present: New York, New York.

Maggie, whose theme song is Never on Sunday, is keeper of the mike, passing it around, encouraging the people sitting beyond the spotlight. "Sing! Sing! You can do it!" Maggie is a head bank teller and has a daughter entering medical school, but she still says, "If Margaret wasn't here, I'd never come in. If you are raised in the South, you don't walk into a bar alone--you just wouldn't be a lady in my mother's opinion." Margaret's bar is not a pickup place. It's more a sort of warm hearth. "I was drawn in here as a moth to a flame as soon as I heard Malaguena," says David, a hotel guest from Maryland. He sings Hava Nagila and applauds as Margaret moves into a Chopin polonaise.

Margaret Neas studied piano at the Peabody Conservatory of Music in Baltimore. She taught, played concerts and composed until an agent suggested supper clubs. "It's the most fun thing in the world," she says. "It's like a party every night." Her son Marc, in the room tonight, recalls, "Her agent said, 'You need a gimmick.' And she said, 'Well, I'll play in gloves.' I remember watching TV with her while she mended her gloves. Now she says it's hard to play without them."

Margaret hopes gloves are coming back into fashion. "I've about run out of my stockpile," she says. Now 64, a widow since 1978, Margaret always wears a long dress because "I just feel more elegant, to be blunt about it." She is horrified by the idea of a tip jar ("It would seem like soliciting") and is hurt only "if someone requests a classic, like a Rachmaninoff concerto, something that takes a lot of your soul and concentration, arid then talks throughout. That breaks my heart."

"She's got something on every one of us," says Maggie. "Well, they do confide in me," sighs Margaret. "I've always kind of gotten to know the customers, been attached to them. You become like family, become concerned." When a blond named Barbara stands by the piano to sing Guess Who I Saw Today, her escort, named Ben, says to the entire circle, "She was after me and after me, and we'd break up over it, and finally I thought, what the hell, and I said let's do it, let's get married. And she said no. That hurt." Funny, She's Funny That Way. Maybe it's the music. Maybe it's the drinks. Fly Me to the Moon. Maybe it's the South. As Maggie insists, "You don't find this kind of warmth anywhere else." Maybe the high level of sharing and feeling is because people in Birmingham haven't really yet figured out what to talk about since Coach Bear Bryant died last year. There Will Never Be Another You.

Tonight "Scoop" Hudgins comes in late--the legendary Scoop, the p.r. director for the college football Hall of Fame Bowl. "I tell people Coach Bryant and I were freshmen together at Vanderbilt, but it's not exactly true. It was his freshman year as coach, and my freshman year as student." Scoop offers to provide all possible information about football. Why else would someone travel to Birmingham? He has brought a Southeastern Conference football schedule for Margaret, who plays Humoresque as soon as he comes in.

In Birmingham the rule is: Be friendly, warm and helpful. When a Yankee visitor wonders what the local cornbread tastes like, several regulars offer to go home right that very minute and start baking some up for an early-morning delivery. The crowd has reached full pitch, chorusing stanzas celebrating happy American vistas--I'm Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover--and heartbreak--The Way We Were--and bittersweet hope. After all these years, I Could Have Danced All Night still prompts the certainty that Someday My Prince Will Come, perhaps no later than Tomorrow, and from then on it will be Always.

When Frenchmen are drinking they like to sing Chevaliers de la Table Ronde. Americans sing Five Foot Two, Eyes of Blue. The crowd shouts along, gathering strength for Dixie. "This is a fabulous group," says Melvar, a definite regular at 72. "We celebrate birthdays, weddings, funerals. In all these years we've only lost two men who could sing. Ralph's memorial service is tomorrow, and we're all going." "The party's over," sings Kenn. Margaret closes: "I'm so glad you all came.''

--By Jane O'Reilly