THERE are certain people for whom a party doesn’t rate if the Peter Duchin Orchestra isn’t playing. Over the years Mr. Duchin, as both pianist and bandleader, has provided the musical entertainment at an estimated 6,000 celebrations. The list itself could function as a potted history of late-era American society, as it includes everything from Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball in 1966 to a joint bar and bat mitzvah reception for Ivan Boesky’s children on the Queen Elizabeth 2 to the wedding of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Maria Shriver.
Mr. Duchin is often called a society bandleader, a term that refers to his clientele but also signifies a musical approach that incorporates big bands, swing and Broadway songs (and nowadays, old-fashioned rock ’n’ roll). He was considered a throwback even when he first began playing professionally in the 1960s. There have been peaks and valleys since. “In the late ’70s through the ’80s, when everybody was into show tunes, was probably when I was best known,” he said. By and large he has been plying an increasingly endangered trade.
To wit, although his band played the inaugural balls and White House dinners of every president from John F. Kennedy through Bill Clinton, he didn’t perform for George W. Bush and hasn’t been asked by President Obama. “I just see fewer parties where people want a traditional dance band,” he said over lunch at the Century Association, his Midtown club.
“I’ve come to feel that part of my job is to keep alive the American songbook,” he continued, speaking of the jazz and musical-theater standards that were the dominant pop form for nearly half a century, and naming Cole Porter, the Gershwins, Richard Rodgers and Harold Arlen. The other essential part of his job, of course, is filling dance floors, and this is high season for the events for which he’s most in demand. “Everyone remembers the parties where they danced all night,” Mr. Duchin said. “I want to be exciting enough to get them to do that, but not intrusive.”
The singer and pianist Michael Feinstein, a friend who has put in his share of nights playing parties, said, “The music Peter plays is music to entertain and make people feel wonderful at parties and events that would — and will — suffer tremendously without it.”
Mr. Duchin cut his engagement schedule by half when he turned 70 two years ago, so that he now plays around 60 gigs a year, but he’s still a visible presence on the fall and holiday benefit circuits. Last month he played the Living Landmarks fund-raiser for the New York Landmarks Conservancy and the Charity Ball for debutantes at the Union League Club in Philadelphia. This month he is booked at the Blue and Gray Colonels Ball in Montgomery, Ala., in addition to the Metropolitan Opera’s annual New Year’s Eve gala.
Mr. Duchin is such a fixture in these circles there’s an understanding that in any given ballroom he belongs more to the elite than do most guests, or even hosts. At this year’s Landmarks Conservancy event, which was honoring Robert Morgenthau and Tommy Tune among others, Mr. Duchin pointed out that not only was his band providing the music for the 13th time, but that he had also been selected as a “living landmark” back in 1996.
“It means you’re so old a pigeon can land on you,” he said while seated at the piano during cocktail hour. He was chatting while he and his band played “The Wanderer,” the Dion staple, between conversations with Gay Talese and Mary McFadden, though he might as well have been in his own living room. Mr. Duchin is that rare party entertainer so at home at a deluxe gala that he holds forth with guests while performing.
He had just spent 20 minutes rehearsing a number with Liz Smith, the gossip columnist and the event’s honorary chairwoman. She was singing “It’s High Time” from the musical “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.” Later, at the bar, Mr. Duchin was asked what he made of Ms. Smith’s singing voice.
“Liz is a writer,” he said.
Mr. Duchin’s father, Eddy Duchin, was also a bandleader and was famous for a string of Top 10 records in the 1930s. His mother, Marjorie Oelrichs Duchin, was described by newspapers at the time of her marriage as a “New York and Newport socialite,” though by marrying Eddy Duchin, a Jew and an entertainer, she was forced to relinquish her spot in the Social Register. When she died a few days after giving birth to Peter, his father was apparently so pained, and certain that his frail newborn son was also dying, that he decided to go on an extensive tour with his orchestra. Peter ended up being raised amid extraordinary wealth and privilege by his godparents, W. Averell and Marie Harriman. Mr. Harriman, in addition to having served on President Harry S. Truman’s cabinet, and governor of New York, was also one of the richest men in the country.
Mr. Duchin likes to chalk up his success to a combination of birthright and social profile, invoking not only his background but also that he bolstered his fame by playing small roles, mostly as bandleaders, in a number of movies (including “Six Degrees of Separation” and ”Working Girl”) and writing mystery novels with a ghostwriter. His second wife, from whom he recently separated, was the actress Brooke Hayward.
“He’s capitalized on the social thing, but he goes a lot further than social — I would certainly hope so,” the actress and singer Elaine Stritch said recently during a rehearsal break at the Café Carlyle. “That crowd knows he speaks their language better than they do, and he’ll play against it too, which is fun.”
There are genuine chops beneath the charmed and charming persona, Mr. Feinstein said. He called Mr. Duchin “an immensely talented musician, as evidenced by the records he made for Decca in the ’60s,” which even included songs Mr. Duchin had written himself. “His piano dexterity is mighty.”
Mark Adamo, the opera composer and a friend of Mr. Duchin, said: “He not only grew up with this music, he may well be in some of those lyrics. Porter’s lyrics were never better than when he was talking about the international glamour set. He could have been inspired by something that happened when he was in Eddy Duchin’s living room.”
Mr. Duchin laments about how much the landscape has changed since his heyday, in part because he’s lonely. “When I came along, there were a dozen clubs in town to play, places like El Morocco and the Maisonette in the St. Regis, where people would go to dance,” Mr. Duchin said. “There were others doing what I did, musicians with full bands who played for dances, but they were all at least 20 years older”: Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Meyer Davis; another was Lester Lanin, though he didn’t write music or play an instrument himself. The few he calls peers today — Bob Hardwick and Mike Carney — aren’t nearly as well known.
Mr. Duchin is thick-chested and ruddy-faced, with a mane of sandy hair just on the long side of businesslike. Though his uniform most nights is a tuxedo — he keeps 15 of them in working order — one evening near the end of the summer found him in a fishing jacket and Belgian casuals as he prepared to play a town concert in Port Jefferson, N.Y. Behind the stage he addressed the members of his band, a core group of seven younger musicians. Each of them knows about 3,000 songs.
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