Michael Slaughter was born in a small fishing village in central Indiana one sunny Saturday morning in the early 1940's. Considering the retarded state of medicine, the arts, the sciences, literature, music, politics, and haute cuisine in Indiana from that time to this, extant records indicate the birth and development of the little human being trainee were remarkably unremarkable.
   Young Master Slaughter began taking piano lessons on his seventh birthday, October 24, 1949, at the Arthur Jordan Conservatory of Music, Butler University. Seven years later, he landed his first paying gig at a roller rink with a mostly pubescent rock band.
   By age sixteen, he was performing Tom Lehrer's imaginative songs and attending to the records of assorted R&B artists at 110 decibels or so, distressing parents and neighbors alike. (Later in his adult life, he relates that he was thrilled to be coached by Tom Lehrer.)
   In high school, Mr. Slaughter's musical activities and—even more important—his refusal to join the Future Farmers of America aroused near universal enmity. In private, it is said he was roundly denounced as an anarchist and would-be subverter of pristine Hoosier Weltanschaaungen, although the specific verbiage employed has been lost to posterity.
   Sanguine and seemingly oblivious, Michael Slaughter continued his classical piano studies (with Jeanette Gardiner, Butler University)...and take private lessons in voice, Sousaphone (with Chester Littlejohn), string bass, guitar, organ (with Mallory Bransford, Butler University), and harmony and composition (Richard LaRue Metcalf).
   During his junior year, in collaboration with the high school music teacher, he composed an operetta. The work was eventually publicly performed by his peers, albeit with some reluctance on the part of the authorities, for this type of music in general was deemed dangerously avant garde for impressionable young Hoosier minds.
   Mr. Slaughter drifted into college at nearby DePauw University, Greencastle, Indiana, on an academic scholarship. There he endured three more years than had Margaret Mead, who having better sense, left after her first year..
   While at DePauw, Mr. Slaughter produced and directed the first production The Fantasticks anywhere in the Midwest. He was also an active actor, portraying “Riff” in West Side Story, “Jason” in Medea, and several smaller, less juicy, roles.
  During one the long summer breaks, he toiled as the musical director of the Old Brewery Theatre, Helena, Montana—very, very far indeed from Broadway. (The attraction may have been the name “Old Brewery,” with its promise of suds being hoisted in the orchestra pit.) There he worked with actor-singer Kenny Marsolais, later with ACT in San Francisco.
   After graduation from Universitatis Depauvensis in psychology, Slaughter went to work as rehearsal pianist for Starlight Musicals, an Equity summer stock company in Indianapolis. There he played for Vivian Blaine, Ann Blyth, Jack Kelly, Margaret Whiting, and Julie Wilson.
   Following was an acting stint at Avondale Playhouse, also Indianoplace, with Hans Conreid.
   Then, for lack of paying gigs, graduate school at Purdue University ensued. Slaughter pursued the study of the emerging field of psycholinguistics, hoping somehow perhaps to follow in the footsteps of his hero (Avram Noam Chomsky, an obscure MIT professor). Mr. Slaughter minored in experimental psychedelics.
   While at Purdue, he also held forth on the piano in local saloons, acted on Radio WBAA,  and perpetrated in the campus newspaper a weekly 900-word attempt at consciousness raising, revolution, or preferably, both.
   Then suddenly it was 1967. California and the Summer of Love called. He answered.
  Now, after more than three decades of playing the piano at assorted saloons and gin mills in the Bay Area, Mr. Slaughter has successfully managed to accumulate almost no reputation at all. In this regard, he is probably best known—or least unknown—for his work from 1974 to 1981 in San Francisco and New York with song stylist Wesl[i]a Whitfield (who herself is best known for her work with other people).
    Since coming to the Bay Area, Mr. Slaughter, upon occasion, has been bribed to leave the area, performing at some well-known places around the country, such as Michael's Pub, New York City; the Paradise Hotel, Las Vegas; and the venerable Harolds Club, Reno.
Around town, he has been a pianistic fixture at several once-popular establishments, spending at least year at each and nearly five years at one. Locals still recall Mr. Slaughter’s many years of work at the old Sea Witch, in Ghirardelli Square, at Barrett's Pub and Miss Geraldine's, both in the Financial District, and down the Peninsula, at The Baywinds, a 153-foot river steamer in Burlingame (more recently a Thai restaurant). Younger locals will recall his stint at the Maltese Grill and the Washington Square Bar & Grill (with the venerable Mickey McPhillips on bass).
   In addition to his solo and trio stints, Mr. Slaughter has also accompanied a number of West Coast vocalists, including the aforementioned Ms. Whitfield,  (Downtown) Julie Brown, Lou Gottlieb, Michelle Hendricks, Ralph Mathis, and Denise Perrier. He says in his career, he has accompanied several hundred individual vocalists—and survived every encounter.
   He has opened for Ramsay Lewis, the ever-popular Korla Pandit, and Mort Sahl. At one time or another, he has also appeared live on every TV station in the San Francisco Bay Area.
   In the last decade of the century, Mr. Slaughter has led HOLOGRAM, a group of musicians dedicated to small group jazz and the multiplicity of pecuniary benefits deriving therefrom. To the delight of a small, but decreasing group of toadies, hangers-on, and camp followers, HOLOGRAM has specialized in the compositions of Michael Slaughter.
   As an ostensible relief from the constant inflicting of his piano playing on the populace, Mr. Slaughter occasionally teaches adults with large disposable incomes how to fly small-but-expensive airplanes solely by reference to whatever instruments they manage to fit into the cockpit. (Put in pilot terms, he says he is an single-engine instrument instructor, commercial pilot, and advanced ground instructor.)
   His current steady gig is at the University Club, a rather snooty private establishment on Nob Hill, in San Francisco.
   Michael Slaughter lives on a hill in Pacifica, California, where for some years, he hosted a cooking show on the local cable channel. He was recently chosen head of the Pacifica Cultural Arts Commission. His only known hobby is collecting ancient Icelandic cookbooks.

Q: How did you get started in music?

A: For my seventh birthday, my parents asked me whether I would like piano lessons. Yes!

Q: Did you like to practice?

A: The very beginning, I don’t remember. My sister Pat recently said that she remembers that after school I was at the piano for long periods of time. I do recall that playing the piano soon became self-fulfilling.

Q: When did you discover you have perfect pitch?

A: When did you discover you have eyesight? I thought just about everybody had it. It was many years later that I figured out what the phenomenon was. I used to cheat on my lessons by either emulating the teacher or, if I thought she wasn’t paying attention, by making up something that was close to the printed page but probably easier to play. Overall, this pitch sense—on the piano, I should add: I'm not so good on other instruments—is part of who I am. I’m a little synaesthetic, too. I tend to see colors for sounds. In fact, when I was a senior at DePauw, as psychology major, I wanted to do a study on the relationship of key choices and the type of music intended. I my could literally see that, for example, nocturnes should not be in A major. Well, the psychology department wouldn’t touch it, because it had music in it, and the music department would touch it because it had psychology in it.

Updated Mar. 7, 2004  webmaster@vaivecchio.com