Songs are queued up on the karaoke machine for the gray-haired man in a blue double-breasted jacket, white shirt and bright yellow tie. He slips a nitroglycerin pill into his mouth. It's show time.

Dan Danforth (Michael E. Keating photo) | ZOOM |

        Dan Danforth, microphone in hand, pushes a button to make big band music pour from a speaker. Then his baritone voice takes everyone back to the 1940s:

        Can't get out of this mood,

        can't get over this feeling.

        Can't get out of this mood,

        last night your lips were too appealing.

        The entertainer serenades an audience of 12. He'd prefer a crowd of 50 or more, because that's when he really gets the bug. He figures it must be similar to what a minister feels when called to do the Lord's work.

        Mr. Danforth got the bug as a teen more than 60 years ago. It followed him first to Chicago, where he performed with opera companies and in supper clubs, then to New York, where he sang at the Metropolitan Opera and on Broadway. He was much younger then, with a robust voice that belted out arias from Rigoletto and La Traviata.

        Like a Verdi opera in which one lover dies in the other's arms, Dan Danforth's story turns on tragedy. But the curtain isn't closing. Not yet.

        He sings “classic big band” tunes at nursing homes, retirement villages, AARP functions and the like. This day he's at Senior Focus, which occupies a storefront at Eastgate Mall and is part of Clermont Senior Services.

        Ernie Groendyke is in the audience. The 69-year-old Amelia man lip-syncs the words to every tune Mr. Danforth sings, including Nice Work If You Can Get It. It Happened in Monterey. I've Got the World on a String. The Lady is a Tramp. “I love those songs,” Mr. Groendyke says after the performance. “I love 'em. I think he's fantastic. No joke, I honestly feel he's great.” He approaches Mr. Danforth, and tells him so.

        Mr. Danforth then carries two photo albums full of yellowed clippings and old pictures to a seating area in the mall's center court. Pained by the short walk, he pops another nitroglycerin pill.

        It has been 11 years since his quintuple heart bypass. “I never get angina when I sing,” he says. “Maybe once. Seldom.”

        He tells his audiences he is 80. He is actually 79. “If I say 80, (people say), "You don't look 80.' So I've been saying 80 for the last two years.”

        He smiles, and his eyes fairly twinkle.

        The first time he sang in front of a group was a dance at a Massachusetts agricultural school. Singing felt so good, he decided to return home to Chicago to study music.

        His plans were interrupted by World War II, and a stint in the Coast Guard. After his discharge he enrolled in the Chicago Conservatory of Music and married a young woman named Wilma Speidel.

        She would return from work each day, eat dinner with her husband, then kiss him goodbye. He worked nights at the Singer's Rendezvous, a supper club decorated with paintings of opera scenes. He did four shows a night, then strolled among the tables, singing arias for $5 tips. Mr. Danforth earned his music degree in 1952, then he and Wilma left for New York City. He successfully auditioned for a spot in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera. He earned $125 a week. Not bad money in the '50s, but not enough to start a family.

        So after a couple of years he moved on. He tried musical comedy, which paid $175 a week. He found work singing in the chorus of Broadway plays, including Song of Norway, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and Paint Your Wagon. He sang in clubs, churches and synagogues.

        In 1957 Wilma became pregnant with the first of their two children. By then, Mr. Danforth was selling insurance part time to supplement their income. Performing took a back seat. He became a successful salesman for a sugar company. Later he went into business for himself, as a food broker.

        Even though he was no longer onstage, “I kept the voice up,” Mr. Danforth says. On business trips, he sang to himself in the car.

        He retired in 1985, confident that he and Wilma could live out their days comfortably. They moved to Myrtle Beach.

        Wilma, whom he married June 21, 1946 was “a gorgeous girl. She was gorgeous up til she was 70,” he says. Then Alzheimer's disease began to take its toll.

        They moved to a retirement village in Waverly, Ohio, to be closer to their son in Cincinnati. The activities director heard that Mr. Danforth was a singer, and asked if he'd give the residents a show.

        Mr. Danforth hooked up with a jazz pianist. “And I started to feel this again. It was starting to churn up in me, this feeling.”

        It's the feeling a performer gets in front of an audience. He was getting the bug.

        His pianist friend thought Mr. Danforth would sound even better with an orchestra, so he provided him with some inexpensive karaoke equipment. Mr. Danforth started thinking about singing for money.

        He had a practical reason for it. He had no insurance to pay for Wilma's care. By 1997 she was in a nursing home, and their savings was dissolving.

        The rebirth of Mr. Danforth's professional singing career occurred three years ago, at a southern Ohio nursing home. It felt good to perform again. He sent out publicity materials, and booked more gigs.

        Wilma, meanwhile, continued in a downward spiral. Near the end of her life, she had a collapsed lung and failing kidneys. She couldn't talk or swallow. In April Mr. Danforth moved her into a Milford nursing home, to be closer to their son.

        “She looked at me sometimes, looked in my eyes as if to say, "Can't you do something for me?' ” Mr. Danforth says. “I'd go home and cry.”

        Wilma's death April 24 put an end to her suffering, but not to Mr. Danforth's financial plight. He had already filed for bankruptcy. “I went through $350,000 in 7 1/2 years,” he says.

        He lives in Owensville now, but performing — he does about 10 shows a month — takes him all over the Tristate. A friend lent him money to upgrade to a $700 karaoke machine. Mr. Danforth pays back $50 a month.

        He's looking at one of his photo albums.

        “Here's the pretty boy,” he says, pointing to a picture of himself from the '60s. His hair was wavy then, as now, but much darker.

        One clipping from Chicago notes that Mr. Danforth “gained a great following at the Singer's Rendezvous for his interpretations of operatic arias and hit tunes.”

        The following today was not so great. A small crowd. But maybe somebody heard him and will tell somebody else who will book him for a gig that will put $55 in his pocket. But that's not the only reason he does it. Is it?

        No.

        “I love to sing,” he says. “I still got the bug.”

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