Rod Dibble — pianist at Oakland’s Alley bar lifted patrons’ spirits
Rod Dibble, the hands at the keys of one of the last piano bars in Oakland, has died, ending a half-century run at the Alley, a dimly lit dive on Grand Avenue.
“I’ll never retire,” Dibble told The Chronicle’s Peter Hartlaub in a 2011 interview. “I’ll be very happy to die right behind this piano here.” He was good for his word right up until he fell and broke his hip two years ago. After that he could no longer maneuver his way through the bar and behind the piano.
He made a determined comeback this year, and the regulars rejoiced, packing the bar. For two hours, he played and everybody sang along to the favorites like “The Oakland Song.” But he knocked off earlier than usual and was never able to return.
Dibble died Monday of heart failure in his sleep at his Berkeley home at 85. His death was announced on the Alley’s Facebook page.
“He kept The Alley, as well as the Great American Songbook, alive by playing nightafter-night, song-aftersong, with singer-aftersinger for the better part of 50 plus years,” read the post by Bryan Seet, one of two pianists who have taken over Dibble’s workload, along with a guitarist. “He kept The Alley going and virtually unchanged throughout the decades keeping its unique character and grit intact.”
Dibble was a protector of that character and proud that he did not stoop to trendy requests. He refused, for instance, to play Billy Joel’s “Piano Man” or anything else by Joel or anyone else who would be associated with modern rock. Or much of anything recorded after the 1930s.
“I always lay out the ground rules: If you want to play in my backyard, you sing my songs,” Dibble told Hartlaub during a break between “Fly Me to the Moon” and the 1936 jazz standard “Caravan.” “As the years go by, the younger crowd doesn’t know the older tunes. But they come in and they listen and they learn them. Cole Porter and Gershwin and Hoagy Carmichael ...”
The Alley is a small joint with red lighting just bright enough to make out the names on all the business cards tacked to the walls. Hartlaub counted 12 seats at the U-shaped piano bar, and Dibble told him he first took his seat there in 1960.
He accepted requests and knew more than 4,000 songs, singing along in a rasp of a voice. When one of the regulars would nail the lead vocal, he rang a cowbell in appreciation.
Rodney Merritt Dibble was born and raised in Berkeley and learned to play piano when he was 6, in 1938.
“My uncle was in vaudeville,” he said. “My mother toured with them and taught me all these great old tunes. She’d sing around the house, and then I’d pick them out on the piano.”
A father of two and grandfather of four, Dibble lived in downtown Berkeley, just six blocks from where he grew up, with his fifth wife, Linda McCormick.
For decades he worked Tuesdays through Saturdays, 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. But after heart surgery, he cut back to weekends a few years ago. His hobby was walking, up to 10 miles a day. His hobby was not the Internet or social media.
“I don’t even know how to use a cell phone,” he told Hartlaub, laughing. “I wouldn’t know how to turn on a computer. I’m a dinosaur and proud of it.”
He learned at least one new song every week, and after working at the Alley for 50 years, he told Hartlaub he could see himself playing for another 20 years, “at least.”
“He was sort of the last of his kind. Every week he would come up with an old song that I had never heard before, and I know a lot of songs,” said Paul Rose of San Francisco, who went twice a week for 35 years, even when it meant crossing the bay to sing “If I Only Had a Brain,” from “The Wizard of Oz.” “Over the years, we really got to know each other very well.”
When Dibble realized he would never make it back to the Alley, he brought the Alley to him. Six months ago, a dozen of the regulars were invited to Dibble’s home for one last party. He knew everybody’s song, and when he sat at his piano and started tinkling out the introduction, he expected the singer to pick up on cue. If he or she didn’t, he’d point to that person and command “sing.”
This went on for four hours until he got too tired to play. That was it for Dibble at the piano bar, but not for Dibble at the piano. Every morning he would sit down and play while Linda would sing, right up until a week before his death.
Survivors include his wife, Linda McCormick, of Berkeley; and son, Andrew Dibble, and daughter, Molly Dibble, both of Bonney Lake, Wash. A memorial at the Alley is pending.