The Neon Philharmonic and its hit single, “Morning Girl,” were nominated for two Grammys.  Another album was released on Warner Brothers, and then singer Don Gant and composer Saussy split to pursue other interests.  Gant went on to produce Jimmy Buffett’s inaugural hit “Come Monday,” while Tupper achieved renown as a painter, playwright, editor, and author of politically controversial books.

In spring of 1987, both Tupper and Don disappeared. In March, Don died of complications from a fishing accident suffered in Florida.  Only days later Tupper died as well, but his was a civil death: he went underground to avoid a brief imprisonment for filing a 1977 federal income tax return in a manner that offended the IRS. “The whole thing was so ridiculous,” he reflects today, “that I needed some downtime to gather my thoughts.”

Tupper remained an anonymous fugitive for ten years (he calls it “the Decade”), unable to enjoy the privileges of citizenship connected to his name.  He spent the Decade researching the origins of American constitutional government in libraries across the country.

In 1997 he was captured in Venice CA, the result of helping a fellow fugitive who managed to get caught and snitched.  “I wasn’t bitter,” Tupper said. “A Christian is honored by betrayal.  Anyway, I was ready to come home and claim my name and assets.”

While serving 14 months in a minimum security federal prison, Saussy organized his research data and wrote Rulers of Evil: Useful Knowledge About Governing Bodies, which was published by HarperCollins in 2001.  Rulers of Evil has generated a lively international discourse on the importance of deceit in governing populations.

Then came rock musicologist Andy Zax...

Andy Zax was preparing Brilliant Colors, a collector’s edition of Neon Philharmonic tracks for RhinoHandmade.  He found Tupper living in Santa Monica and initiated interviews for the project’s booklet.  During one of these interviews, Tupper played and sang for Zax a number of unpublished songs.  In the Brilliant Colors booklet Andy wrote “His new songs are phenomenal; maybe the world will get to hear them one of these days.”

Three years later, in Nashville, producer Warren Pash purchased a 45 rpm copy of “Morning Girl” in a Salvation Army store, and took it home, played it over and over, basking in the emotions it sparked.  Pash gazed at the writer’s credit, Tupper Saussy, and thought “What a name!”  

The name took substance a few weeks later when Pash, a Grammy-nominee himself and writer of the No. 1 Hall & Oates hit “Private Eyes,” was introduced to Tupper at the home of composer/producer Fred Mollin.  

“I felt an extraordinary urge to make the world aware of Tupper,” Pash said, “maybe produce a tribute album to him, featuring the hottest contemporary groups playing his Neon Philharmonic songs.  Those songs were so ahead of their time, they’ve influenced so many groups.”

Then Tupper threw a curve.  He introduced his unpublished songs to Pash and a small group of musicians, journalists, fans, and filmmakers via an impromptu after-dinner performance of The Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar.  

Warren Pash vividly remembers the evening.  “We were bowled over,” he says  “Every song sounded like a standard, a classic I’d known and loved all my life. Yet every one of them was brand new.  That night my mind switched from a tribute album to an album of Tupper playing his unknown stuff.  He sings them with incredible authority ~ I kept thinking Hoagy Carmichael, Cole Porter, Johnny Mercer.  And I never realized until that night what a great pianist he is!”

Tupper conceived of The Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar during 1977, as a kind of cabaret to be performed at Appletree, the dinner theatre he created in rural Tennessee.  He chose the title because it combined familiar and pleasing elements not normally associated with one another.  “Everybody likes chocolate, and orchids, and pianos, and bars,” Tupper says.  “Scrambling the concepts gives a nice new feeling.”

The songs would be strung together in a plot involving patrons of the bar, the pianist serving as a kind of chorus/narrator.  But before Tupper could complete COPB, he abandoned it in order to write The Miracle On Main Street, a treatise on the American monetary system, which led to a long courtroom war with the IRS.

During the Decade, Tupper often thought about the Chocolate Orchid as he actually performed in piano bars for gratuities that helped keep him from being utterly destitute.  “I had to be careful not to draw too much attention to myself,” he says.  “Singing songs nobody recognized kept me just where I needed to be: in the background. The songs had to sound like standards, or I’d not be considered professional.  Playing actual standards, I feared, would open me to requests and I wasn’t looking for customer interface.  Usually the people made so much noise talking to each other that I could work on new songs in public without anybody noticing.”

Tupper Saussy emerged from the Decade with his musical originality intact, and now with COPB he occupies the foreground.

The Chocolate Orchid is a cycle of songs creating the ideal piano bar ~ a place where the music and lyrics are so fascinating and hypnotic that conversation is unthinkable, a place where every song is brand new yet as familiar as a close friend.

And indeed, COPB creates just this effect in personal appearances.  Since its Nashville premiere in April 2006 to an audience ranging from rock avant-guarders and session musicians to bejeweled octogenarians, the Chocolate Orchid positively spellbinds.

Wall Street Journal writer Ken Wells declared “It’s Edith Piaf meets The Grateful Dead!”  And star of This Is Spinal Tap Harry Shearer told reporters “When Tupper starts singing, it’s pin-drop time.”

The Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar CD was recorded in three days in two Nashville studios, The House of David and Groundstar Universal.  

Producer Warren Pash says, “The engineers and I were all amazed at Tupper’s ability as a performer. Everything was recorded live in the studio, most songs  within a couple of takes.  What you hear was recorded in real time.  In a world of computerized sound-morphing, it was refreshing to have these pieces captured in the perfect spontaneity of a real live performance.  

“Tupper projects an intimacy, an elegant emotionalism, a sincerity, and a degree of sheer pianism that draws you into the performance rather than blows you away.”

The songs of Tupper Saussy are wise and loving, witty and optimistic.  One senses that music is the very substance of his being.  He doesn’t craft songs for a living; they spring from his life.  As he put it in “Songs Come True,”

There’s magic in the music as it intertwines with words, and colours range from passion red to lonely midnight blue.

If you’re lost in mixed emotions mind the words you sing, because songs come true, songs come true.*

For Tupper, The Chocolate Orchid Piano Bar is a priceless collection of songs that have come, and are still coming, true.

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*©2007 Treble Clef Music Publishers (BMI)

** © Sony/ATV Music Publishing (BMI)