Seasoned musician delights audiences at Fox Run

By Laura Hipshire
THE ERICKSON TRIBUNE

Not too long ago, Fred Busch (stage name: “Freddy”) and his wife, Fritzi, moved to Fox Run, in Novi, from Farmington Hills. Before he knew it, Busch was a very popular resident.

“I became famous in one week,” Busch laughs.

Busch, who has been playing piano since he was 14 years old, shares his talents with his neighbors at Fox Run three times a week.

No business like show business
Although Busch graduated from Wayne State University with a degree in business administration, music was his true passion. Two weeks after graduation he moved to New York to pursue a career in music.

Busch’s first professional job was playing piano at the famed Rainbow Grill, located on the 65th floor of the Rockefeller Center in New York City.

“I made $90 a week then,” Busch says. At the time, he usually performed in seven-week stretches playing mostly show tunes.

“I worked with the Emery Deutsch Band, a famous jazz band,” he says. “Ray Noble (a fellow musician) worked in the main dining room for awhile.”

“I played piano with a glass cage around me,” he says. “I played tunes from shows like Oklahoma, The King and I, and South Pacific.”

Following that gig, Busch landed a job at the Stork Club, also in New York City. It was there that he met celebrities such as Claudette Colbert, Katherine Hepburn, and Clark Gable.

“When stars came into town, the first thing they did was come to the Stork Club,” he recalls. “Everybody knew me.”

Busch usually played from 8 p.m. to 4 a.m., seven days a week.

Eventually, Busch returned to Michigan and performed stints such as a five-year run in a 25-piece band at WJR radio station in Detroit. “They had live music on the radio then,” he says.

Busch wows after-dinner crowd
Now retired from the business, Busch still hones his piano skills at Fox Run on a Kawai piano located in the community’s newest clubhouse, the Belmont.