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AUDAX A new memoir, Face the Music, summarizes the life of Peter Duchin. by Jamie maCguire
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PETER DUCHIN FACES THE MUSIC
IN HIS ENGAGING new memoir, Face the Music (written with Virginia Beard), society bandleader and man-about-town Peter Duchin reflects on family, illness, and a bygone era of glamour. An internationally famous bandleader, Peter Duchin’s six decades of performing have taken him to the most exclusive dance floors and concert halls in the world. He has played for presidents, kings, and queens, as well as for Civil Rights and cultural organizations. But in 2013, Duchin suffered a stroke that left him with limited use of his left hand, severely impacting his career. Days of recuperating from his stroke—and later from a critical case of COVID-19—inspired Duchin to reconsider his complicated past. His father, the legendary bandleader Eddy Duchin, a headliner at the fabled Central Park Casino where Mayor Jimmy Walker and other Roaring Twenties swells partied nightly, died when Peter was 12; his mother, Marjorie (called “Bubbles” by her Farmington schoolmates) Oelrichs Duchin, died when Peter was just six days old. In the succeeding decades, after being raised by Averell and Marie Harriman, Duchin would
Duchin lived with Marie and Averell Harriman until he was nine years old, while his father was on the road with the Eddy Duchin Band, and then in the Navy. This photo shows Marie, Duchin, and his father during a visit from his father in the Harrimans’ garden. Opposite page: A portrait of Peter Duchin from the summer of 2018; the cover of Face the Music.
From above: Peter Duchin on The Ed Sullivan Show after winning an Army talent contest when he was a 22-year-old private; Peter Duchin. Opposite page, from left: Sally Johnson’s coming-out dance at her parents’ home on Lookout Mountain, Tennessee, was the first of the many terrific parties that earned Duchin the nickname of “The Debs’ Delight”; in 1996, Duchin was honored as a “Living Landmark” by the New York Landmarks Conservancy, and has played at the Conservancy’s events ever since.
follow his father as a bandleader, becoming the epitome of mid20th Century glamour. But it was only half a century later, in the aftermath of his illnesses, that he began to see his mother and father not just as the parents he never had, but as the people he never got to know. More than a memoir, Face the Music offers a window into the era of debutantes and white-tie balls, when such events made national headlines. Duchin explores what “glamour” and “Society” once meant, and what they mean now. With sincerity and humor, Face the Music offers a moving portrait of an extraordinary life, its disruptions, and revitalization.
For many years Peter and I served on the board of the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, where he was companionable, constructive, deeply knowledgeable and committed to chamber and serious music generally. His many years as head of the New York State Council on the Arts also speak to his record of selfless service to the causes he believes in.
Befitting such a gregarious personality, Peter Duchin’s music has always been ebullient and, in recent decades, ever more jazzy, making his the most danceable of bands. And indeed, the entire world has danced with Peter. In his previous memoir, Ghost of a Chance, he recounts playing for a ball in Venice until the sun rose over the Rialto as well as playing to an audience of just two—an elderly couple in wheelchairs on their 70th anniversary in an otherwise empty theatre in Chicago. An especially touching anecdote in that book is his being persuaded by Shipwreck Kelly to play the piano after dinner at John Hay Whitney’s Saratoga house (like the one on Long Island, also called Greentree) while his fellow houseguest Fred Astaire danced. After a while, tears were streaming down Jock Whitney’s cheeks, and the help was peeking around corners from the pantry into the drawing room to get a glimpse of the show.
Peter has known tout le monde, which his new book effortlessly demonstrates with references to and stories about friends like Gianni Agnelli, Peter Beard, Tallulah Bankhead, Count Basie, Pat Buckley, Truman Capote, Nat King Cole, Grace Kelly, Duke Ellington, Audrey Hepburn, Serge Obolensky, Jackie Onassis and Bobby Short, among many others. When he started to perform publicly at the age of 24, he had about 200 songs “in his hands.” Today the number is over 5,000.
Despite his modesty, a hallmark shining through this book is Peter’s courage. He was in the hospital for two months after his stroke in 2013. He was intubated and on a respirator for 47 days after being stricken with COVID-19 in 2020. His loving wife Virginia, family and friends get full credit for his recovery, but Peter’s own determination and sheer will power are an unmentioned yet major factor in his miraculous return to health.
These same qualities inform his insistence on confronting, and candidly considering, the early loss of both his parents and other sorrows of life’s journey. And yet, at the end of the day what emerges most clearly is Peter Duchin’s invincible joie de vivre. As his close friend Philip Howard writes about Face the Music, “Inspiring and beautifully written…a journey through the highs and lows of a brilliant career…what a life!”
Welcome back, old friend, and Ad multos annos. ◆
