The great Della Reese joined the angels last week and took with her a piece of the soul of the best of Las Vegas. She was 86.
If the masses remember Reese these days, it’s likely because of her role as the wise Tess in the religious television drama series, “Touched by an Angel,” which began in 1994 and ran for nearly a decade. The Detroit-born Reese, who grew up singing in church choirs, had a busy acting career, and eventually became an ordained minister. You might call playing an angel on Earth type casting.
But for lovers of nightclub classics, soulful ballads and gospel-inspired blues, Reese was a supernatural power source. She could deliver a heartache or heartbreak set after set and leave her audience wanting more. Other entertainers hit higher notes and climbed to greater heights of fame, but in her prime, few matched her jazzy energy. (Listen to the “Della by Starlight” album, and you’ll be hooked.)
For a generation of Las Vegas visitors, Reese was something special. She played with great energy at the Flamingo’s Driftwood Lounge in the 1960s. By the end of the decade, she’d broken ground as the first African American to star in her own TV talk show.
Although it wasn’t much noted in her obituaries, Reese was among hundreds of incredible entertainers who graced Las Vegas stages for more than a generation and are now all but forgotten on the Strip.
Stars come and go and musical tastes change, but for decades the backdrop for the greatest entertainment in the country has remained the same. It’s long past time the lives and stories of the great Las Vegas singers, comics, dancers and musicians were commemorated and celebrated in grand style. Not with a single tribute show, but with a museum devoted to their artistry and impact on Las Vegas and the world.
Done right, it wouldn’t be a musty hall, but a dynamic showroom with adjacent lounges and entertainment, live and recorded, going late into the night. There would be tales of the great headliners and stories of the civil rights ground-breakers such as Della Reese and Sammy Davis Jr.
With the right curation, it would be like Las Vegas itself, endlessly entertaining. Some visitors would come to hang out, others to dance and role play, and many just to reminisce about the Las Vegas they loved best. Imagine interactive lounges and themed exhibits sponsored by different casinos, and you’re beginning to get what I have in mind.
Someone who grabs the theme and runs with it will have no trouble finding an army of knowledgeable guides to the place in the form of a generation of public relations people and senior circuit lounge entertainers who lived through their great years working day and night in Las Vegas.
Doesn’t sound cheap, does it? It shouldn’t be.
Las Vegas real estate comes at a premium, but perhaps a generous casino corporation will step up and either donate the land in trust or underwrite the entire project. Or maybe someone will suggest that room tax funds be used. They seem to be a popular revenue source these days.
I’d start by asking MGM Resorts International to embrace the idea.
With its help, the site of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival shooting tragedy could one day be transformed into something that not only honors the fallen and the wounded, but celebrates the Strip’s true reason for being. Thousands of concertgoers who represented a new generation of Las Vegas visitor gathered on that Oct. 1 night to relax and enjoy themselves. At that appropriate time, their spirit should be celebrated.
Think an entertainment museum won’t work?
My only response is, at substantial expense Las Vegas set aside a curated place downtown to chronicle its hoodlum roots and American organized crime. The Mob Museum is very popular. And the mob’s violence and conniving are downright dull compared to the Strip’s endless parade of showstoppers.
This is the perfect time to plan a marquee tribute to the entertainers who really put us on the map.
John L. Smith is a longtime Las Vegas journalist and author. Contact him at jlnevadasmith@gmail.com. On Twitter: @jlnevadasmith.
