Pool Halls & Parlor Pianos
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Bob Milne could have been a professional pool player had he chosen to do so. He had a natural talent for the game, but decided early in his career that it was both "safer and easier to play the piano for a living than having to beat excellent pool players for cash."
Bob was actually a good pool player long before he began playing piano professionally. As he taught himself how to move his hands around on the keyboard, he realized that many of the basic principles of playing pool, such as the concept of creating minimum motion for better control of the balls, applied to the keyboard and piano performance as well.
Bob mentioned this fact during the Library of Congress interviews. Consequently he was asked by Dr. Jim Billington (Librarian of Congress) if he could make a video demonstrating some of these principles. The result was Pool Halls & Parlor Pianos.
In this video you will see Bob demonstrating minimum motion on a piano (he plays an entire tune without moving his hands), and the same principle as he runs the balls of the pool table with minimum motion of the cue ball. And more.
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Straight Pool Break Shot
The Time Al “Came to Play”
I was never a pool hustler, someone who suckers others into gambling on the game. However, I made a lot of money from macho types who simply wanted to beat me. I looked very young up to about age 35, and “full steam ahead” males hated the fact that a “kid” never had to make difficult shots while running the balls. Somehow, strangely, the cue ball seemed to roll to the precise place to make the next ball. These guys, arm wrestling types, weren’t impressed unless you sent the cue ball flying around the table with a mighty stroke and (hopefully?) it would end up in the right area. This led to some interesting encounters.
“Straight pool” is a game where you get one point for making a ball, any ball. There’s no difference between stripes, solids, or the eight ball itself, and it’s possible to run multiple racks by leaving the last ball next to the spot and racking the remaining 14 next to it. Then, when you pocket that last ball, the cue ball knocks the other balls apart and you keep on running.
Al had a serious ego problem. He used to drive thirty miles out from Detroit back in the 1970s, walk into the pool hall and tell Bill (the manager) to call me saying, “Tell him I’ve come to play…” Al considered himself to be an above average player, possibly even a master, but he wasn’t. While Al was driving home following these sessions, Bill and I were enjoying many steak dinners courtesy of Al. In fact, Al never, not once, came out ahead after a three or four hour session of playing pool. And he hated to lose, all of which brings me to this memorable incident.
I’d received the phone call so picked up my stick and left for town. I stopped, however, at a lunch joint, just to let him stew a while longer and keep waiting for me to walk in. I also knew that Al would be broadcasting to everyone present that this time he was going to “beat my ass,” as he was wont to bluster. I read the paper and munched a burger, knowing he was pumping up the crowd. Finally I arrived at the hall.
“Took your time getting here, eh?” he yelled as I entered the room. “What’s-a-matter? Scared?” I screwed my stick together as he strutted around the table informing the crowd as to what was about to happen.
Al lost the first game by a score of 100 - 30. I always made sure I won the first one because it’s a confidence booster. In the second game I let him make a few more balls so he wouldn’t quit on me, but he lost that one, too. He wasn’t pleased and issued a few choice phrases about me “finding a lucky shot” and such. (I decline to include his profane rants here.) After losing the third game as well, Al decided to up the rhetoric like this:
“Listen, you practice-room hero, all you want to do is play for peanuts!” (We weren’t playing for “peanuts.” It was more than that). “You’re not a REAL player! Let’s find out who the REAL player is here!” Al shouted out a large figure that he wanted to play for which was more than he’d lost already. I said “let’s go.”
At the beginning of the game I’d made a run of about 12 balls and played “safe,” intentionally leaving my opponent a difficult shot. He made a ball, however, and made a decent run of balls before playing a safety on me. I returned another safety at him and, amazingly, he made a good shot and started another run of balls. Now the score was 68 – 12, favor of Al, in a game to 100 balls. He then played me safe and started making speeches to the crowd about his superiority. But I made a ball.
Al was walking back and forth in front of the crowd, blowing loud about “taking down the cash” and more. He bloated of his “flawless stroke,” and having the “heart” to prevail when the chips are down. During this time I finished running that rack. The score was now 68 -24. As he racked the balls for my next break shot (customary in straight pool that the opponent racks for whoever’s running at the moment), Al twirled the rack in some fancy fashion while setting it down and continued blowing hard about his prowess. After I broke and ran that rack, the score was now 68 – 38. He again flippantly racked the balls, twirled the rack, and continued educating the audience on what it takes to be a great player. In the meantime I was running the next rack as well. Now it was 68 -52. As if nothing had happened, Al did it again: he racked the balls, twirled the rack, and continued his professorial lecture. But if he’d ever turned around he would have seen the score was becoming 68 – 66 as I continued running. And when he did turn around he saw, to his horror, that I’d run that rack as well, had a perfect break shot, and was waiting for him to rack the balls. Suddenly his braggadocio ceased. His complexion went pale, and his hands seemed to be shaking as he racked the balls. As he was racking I was already aiming the break ball into the corner pocket, and swinging the stick back and forth with the obvious intent of a powerful shot which would knock the entire rack apart. Al was quiet, but when he’d finished racking he looked straight at me and said, “You’re going to run out on me, aren’t you?” I replied, “That’s right, Al. I’m running out on you.”
There was no sign of despair from him. Instead he just crashed down in a chair and watched while I ran out the last 34 balls to win the game, over two more racks. The total run was 88 balls, over six racks. His next words were,
“Will you take a check?”
“Sure, Al, I’ll take a check.”
After writing it out for a substantial amount, Al arose. We could all see the rage in his eyes now as the reality set in. Then he let out a roar, picked up the end of the pool table and just dropped it back onto the floor. Then he turned and left the pool hall a defeated man.
But that wasn’t all.
The next week I received a notice from the bank that his check had bounced. Since it had his phone number on it I called him. “It’s good now. Deposit it again.” This happened three more times, but the check kept bouncing. Finally I put it in an envelope and sent it back to him along with a note that said, “Al, apparently you need this worse than I do.” Then I didn’t hear anything from him again. But there’s more.
About three years later I was playing piano for a corporate event in a Detroit suburb. About halfway through the night, an arm came over my shoulder and shoved something into my shirt pocket. And I heard a familiar voice say, “Don’t turn around and don’t say a word.” I knew what it was. Al had shoved a pile of money into my pocket and kept to his word. I had no idea what he was doing at an event like this, but assumed he’d come up in life somehow. And I was right.
Today, 50 years after this event, Al is the vice president of a huge and wildly successful company which makes pool equipment. And I’ve heard he still plays. And I’ve heard he still talks. And I (obviously) never forgot our times together. Yes, they were special. And my old friend Bill remembers this story from the past as well. Thanks for reading.
Bob's pool history: photos and memorabilia from Bob's pool playing days.
In 1972 Willie Mosconi, the 15-time world champion, was putting on an exhibition in Bob's hometown of Rochester, Michigan. Bob was asked to play against him. The owner of the pool hall whispered into Bob's ear just before they started,
"Let Willie win."
In the game, straight pool to 150 balls, Willie won with a score of 150 - 128.
Not a bad score for a young Bob, 32 years old at the time.
Willie spent some time with Bob following the game, telling him he (Bob) was a "good player" and giving him the (pictured) button. He also told Bob something that transferred over to the piano keyboard:
"When you think you're hitting the balls soft, remember that you can hit them twice as soft."
Bob applies that principle to playing softly on the piano.
Irving Crane: 7 times world champion
Irving Crane was Bob's inspiration and teacher
The first time I saw Irving Crane play I wondered, "why does a grown man play a game that's so easy?"
As you may know, pool is one of the most fiendishly difficult games on the face of the earth. It's just that he made it look so easy.
Years later I would use this concept with playing a piano, thinking...
"The world champion would make this piano playing look so easy you'd think anyone could do it."
I removed all excess movement from my hands, arms and body to achieve that goal, and by doing so it "became easy."
Grady Mathews was the one-pocket pool champion of the world many times. (One-pocket is the "chess game of pool. Highly complicated). He stayed at Bob's house whenever in Michigan.
On two different occasions Grady put on exhibitions in our area. Bob beat him both times. They remained friends.
Picture above: Grady came to one of Bob's concerts in Maine.
Picture on right: Grady watches in horror as Bob runs out on him at the University of Michigan pool hall exhibition.
Bob plays Efren Reyes, "The Magician," in 2017
Efren Reyes is considered the greatest pool player player of all time.
In 2017, while attending a pool tournament on the east coast, Bob saw Efren practicing before the tournament began. Bob politely asked if he'd like to play a game. Efren, who has won countless challenge games sometimes in excess of $200G, looked at Bob with an astonished look on his face and said, in his heavy Philippine accent,
"You want to play with ME???
Bob answered that he was an amateur (compared to this guy) and simply would like to play the greatest player who had ever lived. Efren agreed.
When Bob got home his friends all asked him how it went. He answered,
"I let him win."
(Bwa-haaa!)
Bob "grew up" (pool-wise) in a pool hall very similar to this in his home town of Rochester, Michigan. It was here that he learned that if you're going to succeed you're on your own. No one's going to do it for you.
This is another principle he applied to playing the piano: either success or failure depends on you and you only. If you get "distracted" and miss the shot, you lose. It is up to you not to get distracted, plus all the other excuses people use every day.
To be a winner, you have to be equal to everything that will come at you.
Bob Epiphany & Quote
In the late 1960s I was playing pool all day and piano all night. I made more money playing pool. But then came a time when I had to decide whether to go into pool or piano for a profession.
I practiced pool all day and every day back then. I practiced what I saw the great players do until I could do the same thing. I could make the 90° cut shot every time.
But the answer came to me one night when playing piano in the Rathskeller. I had just finished playing something which, to me, was quite easy, but the crowd was standing on their feet applauding. They loved me.
It was then when I realized that when I made a great shot to win the pool game, nobody applauded. I'd look into their faces to see that they all hated me.
That was the crossroads that sent me on what turned out to be an incredible career that took me and Linda across the country, North America, and the world for sixty years. For that I am eternally grateful.
