Las Vegas Icon Cook E. Jarr Moves on to That Great Lounge in the Sky

Posted on: January 15, 2025, 12:00h. 

Last updated on: January 15, 2025, 02:20h.

Before he died Tuesday from complications of pneumonia at age 83, beloved Las Vegas cult icon Cook E. Jarr single-handedly kept the spirit of lounge music alive on the Strip for 30 years.

Cook E. Jarr performs at the Piano Bar at Harrah’s in 2014. (Image: Scott Roeben/Vital Vegas)

Jarr, sporting a Mr. T necklace menagerie and a Ramones coif way too black for his face, would croon Top-40 ballads like Joe Cocker’s “You Are So Beautiful,” then swerve into Ton Loc’s “Funky Cold Medina,” applying a unique spin that included inserting a “woof, woof!” sound effect for comedic effect.

In between songs, Jarr dispersed pasta recipes and sports-betting advice.

Cook E. Jarr & the Krums in the salad days. (Image: discogs.com)

Jarr was nicknamed the Jarr by his adoring fan base — which included comedians George Carlin and Dennis Miller, who caught him while performing in town — because they were in on the joke.

They were the audience in the “Saturday Night Live” studio laughing as Bill Murray crooned made-up words to the “Star Wars” theme, not the audience Murray was pretending to sing to at the Powder Room of the Meatloaf Mountain Ski Lodge.

Baking His Act

Jarr was born Anthony Pettine in South Philadelphia and spent the summers of his youth in the resorts of Wildwood, NJ. That’s where he first caught lounge singer Tony Carr, whose name he appropriated after combining it with Philadelphia Phillies second-baseman Cookie Rojas.

The idea to follow in Carr’s footsteps didn’t occur to Pettine until catching the Beatles on “The Ed Sullivan Show.” He recalled his reaction to Mike Weatherford in his 2001 book “Cult Vegas:” “What the fuck is this? They’re singing old Chuck Berry songs and I’m working?”

The self-released first single from Cook E. Jarr, “Please Be My Baby,” was purchased mostly by his co-workers at the Boeing factory where he helped build helicopters for Vietnam. Encouraged by the reception, Jarr took a leave of absence in 1967 and returned to Wildwood, this time with his own stage act.

This self-released Cook E. Jarr CD, called “Almost Grown,” features covers of KC and the Sunshine Band’s “That’s the Way (I Like It),” Tony Bennet’s “I Left My Heart in San Franscisco” and “Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual.” It’s currently going for $57 on eBay. (Image: eBay)

A talent agent caught the act — which included Jarr stuffing a champagne bottle down his pants to visually enhance Tom Jones’ “It’s Not Unusual” — and offered the band a better gig. They would perform in nearby Atlantic City for $1,000 per week. This led to Jarr’s only record deal. (“Pledging My Love” by Cook E. Jarr & The Krums, was released on RCA in 1969.)

Jarr and his nine-piece band graduated to Las Vegas in 1970, filling in several times a year for the Checkmates, the Top-40 house band at Nero’s Nook at Caesars Palace. (Nero’s later became Cleopatra’s Barge and reopened last month as Caspian’s Cocktails and Caviar.)

Jarr didn’t officially relocate until June 2, 1982. That’s when the owners of Atlantic City’s Brighton Hotel purchased the Las Vegas Sands and sent Jarr there for a two-week stint that lasted three decades.

Jarr played the lounges of a whopping 19 casinos during that time — including the MGM Grand, Bally’s, Tropicana and Silver Slipper — but most people caught his act at Harrah’s, either outside in its Carnaval Court or sharing the Piano Bar with Pete “Big Elvis” Vallee. By then, he had ditched his band and was performing to the accompaniment of prerecorded instrumental tapes.

Jarr took his final bow at Napoleon’s at Paris Las Vegas just before the pandemic shutdown.

“Losing him seems like the final nail in the coffin of classic Las Vegas,” Weatherford posted on Facebook Wednesday morning. “I just assumed that, like Keith Richards, he would always be around.”