Tracking down musical gadabout Gladys Barth for an update on her Lakewood activities wasn't hard, even though, like the lamplighter of yore, she is one of an endangered species.

Gladys, you see, once upon a time played piano in a dime store.

If you were ever in downtown Cleveland back in the 1930s, you may recall seeing her at Kresge's, next door to the May Co. on Euclid.

That five-and-ten was the long, narrow one that ran from Euclid to Prospect. Just inside the door at the Prospect end, Gladys massaged the ivories eight hours a day, five days a week. She was known to her customers as "Queen of the Piano Bench."

"People still remember me from Kresge's," Gladys mused. "Some say that rather than eating during the lunch hour, they would listen to me.

"I'd play requests - hundreds of them - whatever the audience called out."

In those days, song-sheet sales were promoted in this manner by many large dime stores. At Gladys' popular music counter, the songs sold for 35 cents apiece. Customers lined up to buy them when nightly entertainment for many families meant gathering around the upright in the parlor after dinner for a songfest.

A surprising part of Gladys' daily assignment at Kresge's was that she never had a sheet of music on her piano. She played the songs entirely by ear and was never able to read notes.

"When a customer gave me a number to play, I would hand it right back to him because I never needed the music to demonstrate," she said.

Her unusual retentive powers are the same today when she plays for Lakewood's elderly at the city's two offices on aging and at the Southwesterly Apartments.

"She is a sweet, kind person, a wonderful talent, and a gift to all of us," said Mickey O'Brien, activities and program coordinator of the Department on Aging's Senior Center West.

Although now in her 70s, Gladys also continues to perform at nursing homes and at private parties, and she recently started an engagement at the Edgewater Veterans of Foreign Wars Post 387 on West 140th Street and Lorain Avenue.

Earlier piano-bar gigs, after her dime-store days, were at such suburban watering places as the Chuck Hole, Kilbane's, Silverthorne's, The Black Horse, Flamingo's, Dempsey's and, for many years, at The Patio Bar on Madison at Lakeland, where she had an enthusiastic following.

She has lived in Parma for more than 20 years now but estimated that she has played in Lakewood and Rocky River for a half century. Today she is frequently accompanied by two singers, Jeannine Blake and Bill Maloney.

Gladys was born on a Canadian farm near Toronto and came to Cleveland when she was 5. She never had a piano lesson per se, but a paperhanger for an East Side apartment building where she lived as a little girl showed her how to play chords with her left hand.

Then, when she was 8, she taught herself to pick out the melodies with her right hand after hearing them on the radio. The first song she learned was "The Stars and Stripes Forever."

Fifty-seven years ago, Gladys married William Barth, a steelworker who used to brag with the song title, "I Met a Million-Dollar Baby in the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store." He died last year after a long illness.

The couple had three sons and a daughter. Today, Gladys also has seven grandchildren and four greatgrandchildren.

Gladys admired Liberace's playing and has always tried to emulate the virtuoso's heavy-touch musical style. She has written two songs of her own - "Timothy" (for her first grandson) and "To Know You, Dear." Both are part of her repertoire and are often requested.

She plays songs new and old, but prefers the old. Among her oldie favorites are "It Had To Be You," "Night and Day," and "If You Were the Only Girl in the World and I Was the Only Boy."

"I will love music till the day I die," she said in a tone of finality. "It's my whole life. I don't ever want to retire."

This article by Dan Chabek appeared in the Lakewood Sun Post July 1, 1993. Reprinted with permission.

[Note: a feature article on Gladys Barth (Dime store pianist, Gladys Barth, still knows the hits) appeared in the Plain Dealer Sunday magazine August 24, 1984, page 15.]

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