He Plays the Songs That Make the Whole World Sing

As Barry Lamster plays Rodgers and Hart, ladies with Size 10 feet sift through the sale shoe rack behind him.

Other shoppers wave, wink, smile as they pass. Some greet him by name--”Hi, Barry!” Some stop and make requests. Could he play something from “Phantom”? “Blue Moon”? A little “New York, New York”?

How about “Rhapsody in Blue”? asks Kahl King, a retired engineer from Dayton, Ohio. He came with his wife, June, not to shop, but to listen. They spend each Christmas with their son in La Crescenta and always stop by. You won’t find a department-store virtuoso in Dayton.

Lamster can’t do “Rhapsody” but, he promises King, “I’ll learn it for you” by next Christmas.

For eight years, Lamster has been at the Baldwin grand at Nordstrom in the Glendale Galleria.

Some days, he won’t repeat a tune during a shift. “I’ve got about 600 songs in my head. I’ll learn a piece by the music and then memorize it.”

At 33, he is basically self-taught, never having had a lesson until he was 20. “At the age of 4, I was shown chords. I was no Mozart or anything like that,” but, like his mother, he loved piano.

As he explains, “Night and Day” is competing with a P.A. announcement, “Customer waiting . . . “

That’s OK. Nordstrom pianists are full-time store employees and, he reasons, “If the shoppers weren’t here, I wouldn’t be here.”

During a lunch break, he tucks his napkin over the wing collar of his tuxedo shirt and his Christmas bow tie and tells how he landed this gig.

In October, 1985, while shopping with a friend who was getting a makeup make over, he spotted the piano. “The lid was open. I sat down and started playing.”

After three numbers, two men approached. One said, “We’d like to talk to you. . . .”

Lamster thought he was being busted. But one of the men was the store manager, who offered him a job. Lamster accepted. Recently arrived from Chicago via Oregon, he’d been working as a security guard at a hospital.

Now, he had his first real job as a pianist. Soon, he was taking coffee breaks with a woman named Teresa from ladies’ shoes. Now married five years, they have a toddler daughter. His wife is now an assistant buyer at the Topanga Plaza store.

A little Scott Joplin, a dash of boogie woogie, a bit of Beethoven. “Lingerie? It’s upstairs. The bathroom’s behind me. . . .”

By store decree, the music is whistle-while-you-shop stuff. No rock, no rap.

Kay and Jim Vickrey of Glendale, 50 years wed, settle into chairs in the men’s shoe salon, holding hands. “We come a couple of times a week and sit here for a couple of hours,” Kay says. For her, Lamster plays “Hawaiian Wedding Song.”

The regulars bring flowers and cookies. Tip-taking is forbidden, though sometimes a bill is slipped into the piano.

At shift’s end, Lamster presses a button, explaining, “I’m going to put this on autopilot.” Muzak takes over until the evening pianist arrives.

Reno and Teens Dish

First, the in-classroom network Channel One polled 500 students nationally about violence and crime in teen-age America. It found:

* 70% fear being a victim of violence.

* 41% fear encountering violence in a school setting.

* 34% said they or a friend had been a victim of violence in the past two years. (In the West, 47%.)

* 60% have seen a student with a weapon; 49% have seen this at school.

Then, Channel One gathered 85 teens from 16 schools at its Hollywood studio for a 30-minute town meeting--via satellite--with U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno.

Reno fielded questions about legalization of drugs and gun control. She addressed concerns about retribution for reporting a crime and about getting help for drug-addicted parents.

Facing a potential TV audience of 8 million--including 38,000 students in 62 schools in Los Angeles County--Reno proved at times to be an adept side-stepper. Still, the students gave her a solid B.

“She was really straightforward . . . not like a politician trying to dance around the issues,” said Carlos Salinas, 17, of Laredo, Tex., who asked Reno what effect she expects the Brady Bill to have in stemming violence.

“A very important first step,” said Reno. Now, she added, it’s time to ban assault weapons and further regulate licensing: “Right now it’s easier to get a gun than it is to get a driver’s license.”

Salinas knows about violence. A former schoolmate, now on death row, was an accomplice in the ax and knife murders of three men in Laredo.

At Julie Anglin’s school in Grayson, Ky., classmate Scott Pennington allegedly shot and killed a teacher and a school custodian and held a class hostage. Anglin’s mother was teaching in the next classroom.

Anglin, 17, asked Reno, “Do you believe that some juvenile offenders should be considered for the death penalty?”

Yes, said Reno, “in certain situations” it is going to be justified.

Now that such violence has hit home, Anglin said later, she thinks juvenile murderers should be treated as adults. Hers is a small town--only 3,500--and, she said, “I don’t think we’ll ever really get over (the killings).” The suspect in the killing is awaiting trial as an adult.

Justin Sewell, 17, of L.A.’s Verbum Dei High School, expressed his anger about police harassment. He was not satisfied with Reno’s answer, which was a ringing endorsement of President Clinton’s plan to put 100,000 officers into community policing programs.

“It’s like she didn’t really want to answer the question,” he said.

Lindsay Thompson, 16, of St. Louis, asked, “Do you feel that legalization of marijuana is part of the solution” to combatting crime?

“I really don’t think so,” Reno said without hesitation.

“I really appreciate that she was blunt,” Lindsay said later. Does she agree with her on that? No.

The program is to be rebroadcast today on Channel One.

This weekly column chronicles the people and small moments that define life in Southern California. Reader suggestions are welcome.