Ron Cameron, the peripatetic piano man who wrapped up his 70-year entertainment career by astonishing fans at a Santa Rosa lounge with the virtually infinite songbook in his memory, died Saturday at age 84.
Cameron, whose parents named him Myron Kammeyer when he was born in 1926 in Kansas, played favorites on weekends in the Equus restaurant bar at Fountaingrove Inn until advancing dementia forced his retirement in 2007.
"Playing the piano was where he was most lucid," said the lanky and gracious musician's daughter, Erica Kammeyer-Lau of Rohnert Park. "My Dad was really the consummate performer. Wherever he went, he wanted to make you feel comfortable."
One of Cameron's signature acts was to spot someone he knew and, even if he hadn't seen the person for years, break into his or her favorite song. The people who gathered around his piano seldom requested a tune he couldn't play by heart.
"I have a phonographic memory," Cameron told The Press Democrat in 2002. "I don't think there's a song I don't like to play. It's amazing. People will come up with songs they heard 20 years ago, and I'll remember hearing it somewhere. It's a challenge and that's what I like."
As recently as three years ago, Cameron played until closing time at Equus, then walked across Mendocino Avenue to his simple mobile home in the Journey's End park. At the time of his death, he was living on the Alzheimer's unit at Novato's Country Villa.
Born to two classically trained violinists, Cameron took to the piano before kindergarten. At 5, he played Beethoven's "Moonlight Sonata" while listening to it time after time.
From the time he hitchhiked from Kansas City to Denver at age 12, he was often on the move and usually was supporting himself at least in part with his music. Former PD music writer John Beck wrote of him in the 2002 profile: "A classic journeyman piano player, Cameron has entertained brawling post-war bars in St. Louis and Kansas City and high-rolling Laguna Beach bars for the likes of Bette Davis and Richard Latour. He has worked New York upstate and down, all across the Midwest and as the piano man in residence at the Aspen Hotel in Colorado."
Cameron and his former wife and vocal partner Barbara Kammeyer lived in Orange County through most of the 1950s, '60 and '70s. They and their two children lived near Disneyland, where Cameron had a great gig: he played old-time piano tunes at Main Street's Coca-Cola Refreshment Corner.
Recalled his brother and onetime stage partner, Richard Kammeyer of Greenbrae, "He was actually seated at the piano sometimes in those days, 90 hours a week, I kid you not." In addition to his Disneyland job, he performed at nightspots throughout the region.
"He played all the best places in Southern California -- the Laguna Beach Hotel, the Showboat in Newport Beach, on Balboa Island," Richard Kamme-yer said. "In fact, he owned the only hotel on Balboa Island at one time."
Daughter Kammeyer-Lau said it made for a special childhood to live near Disneyland with professional musicians as parents.
"Having your bedtime lullabies sung to you in harmony by your parents, does it get any better?" she said.
"As a baby I would just sit next to my Dad and watch him. I did that my whole life. I just watched his hands." The song her father would launch into whenever she walked into a room where he was playing: "Over the Rainbow."
For a time, Cameron, his wife and his brother performed together as The Velvet Touch. They played jazz and torch favorites, with Cameron on the piano, Barbara singing and Richard Kammeyer both singing and strumming the bass.
Cameron packed up his family in 1979 and moved to Washington's Olympic Peninsula. Partnering with his in-laws, he bought a restaurant in Sequim, the Lamplighter, and he and Barbara performed in the lounge.
The couple lived for a time in Oregon before settling in Sonoma County in 1987. Richard Kammeyer remembers that he, his brother and Barbara appeared together as The Velvet Touch at Railroad Square's La Rose Hotel in 1988.
Ron and Barbara divorced and he went solo, or performed with musicians and singers he met in Sonoma County. He was about 70 and he still loved to play -- and he needed the money -- when the Fountaingrove Inn hired him for the piano bar in the mid-1990s.
"I thought he was one of the most interesting guys I've met in my life," said Bill Carson, the inn's former general manager and now director of operations at the Windsor Golf Club. He said Cameron was never boastful about his storied career as a musician, and he was always the old-school gentleman.
"Everybody else would be in jeans and T-shirts and he'd still be in his tuxedo," Carson said.
When Cameron wasn't playing, there was a good chance he was tending to his stamp and coin collections.
The piano man told PD reporter Beck nearly nine years ago, "Ordinarily I wouldn't wish this life on anyone, but I'm the luckiest guy in the world."
In addition to his brother in Marin County and his daughter and former wife in Rohnert Park, Cameron is survived by son Chris Kammeyer of Half Moon Bay.
Funeral plans are pending.
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