Piano Man Of Vero Beach

Versatile is the word to describe Paul Tardif, who, in 2006, made his home in Vero Beach with his wife Milli so they could be close to their son, urologist Christopher Tardif, daughter-in-law Amy and three grandchildren.  

Paul was born in Buffalo, N.Y., where he lived until he graduated high school. “My father was a church organist and owned a hardware store,” he recalls. “He had a dance band in the 1930s when he played trumpet and sang. He kept a big sheet-music library at the house and, at night, he would sometimes get a book out and I would play the piano and he would play the trumpet. That’s how I learned most of the old standard tunes. A lot of the musicians I would later work with would say, ‘How the heck do you know these tunes?’ and I would tell them.”
 

Read the entire article in the December 2013 issue