ROD DIBBLE
The Original Alley Pianist
Pianist and singer Rod Dibble is, and will always be, The Alley's original pianist. Raised in Berkeley, Dibble started playing piano in 1938 when he was six years of age and performed at The Alley starting in 1960. For 50 years, Dibble performed nightly at the bar from 9 p.m. to 2 a.m. Knowing more than 4,000 songs by heart, he would accompany singers through key changes and rhythm variations based on the participating singer. When the microphone made its full circle around the piano and back to him, he would take his turn, singing anything from “Deep Purple” to “Blue Light Boogie” to “Hard Hearted Hannah” in his signature voice, which San Francisco Chronicle writer Peter Hartlaub described as a mix of "Louis Armstrong and Tom Waits on the raspy spectrum."
Over the decades, Rod Dibble helped thousands of people who didn’t even think they could carry a tune become joyful, full-voiced singers. To make new singers feel comfortable and valued, he would ring a small bell in honor of the “Alley virgin’s” first song, regardless of whether the singer performed it well. For returning singers, he would have his ears open for their progress, and ring a large cowbell when someone dispatched a “personal best.” He would move the key of a song up or down as someone’s voice improved with practice, helping them show off their new chops. Rod’s approval of your singing could send an Alley patron floating down Grand Avenue, feeling loved and accomplished.
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When asked if he would ever retire, Dibble said, "I'll never retire, I'll be very happy to die right behind this piano here." He didn’t quite get his wish--the floorboards of The Alley were too difficult for him to navigate nightly in his final months. But he continued to play and sing in his home as his health declined, accompanying his wife Linda and having friends over for singing salons.
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Rodney Dibble passed away December 18th, 2017. We will always remember Rod as the pianist who kept the spirit of The Alley going for 50+ years. Thank you, Rod, for encouraging thousands of people to sing, and making The Alley a place that changed lives.
JENNIFER DAVIS
Long-Time Bartender
​Jennifer Davis - Long-Time Alley Bartender
By Rachel Howard
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Patrons of Oakland’s Alley Piano Bar are mourning longtime server and bartender Jennifer “Jen” Davis, who was always quick to swing aside her long ponytail and listen to a friend’s troubles, or pop over to the piano to sing “I’m an Old Cowhand” in her husky, joy-filled voice. Jen died January 15, 2026, in San Francisco.As the Alley staff wrote on the bar’s Facebook page, “Jen was a familiar face to so many of us - warm, sharp, feisty, hilarious, and steady behind the bar. She helped make our nights feel like home, and she’ll be deeply missed.”Jen was born June 29, 1958 in the East Bay, one of four adopted children who grew up in San Jose, where her father worked for General Electric and her mother was a devoted homemaker.
The family often went on skiing adventures to the Sierra Nevada mountains, and Jen’s younger sister Lisa Zahn Davis remembers Jen as “quite the daredevil.” After the family moved to suburban Almaden, according to her sister, Jen would sneak out at night to a pasture where she would jump on horses bareback, riding them with a hackamore she’d fashioned from rope. With her waist-length brown hair and large, soulful eyes, Jen was “so beautiful, too doggone smart for her own good, and not afraid of anything,” her sister said.In 1972, Jen’s parents moved Jen and her two sisters to Tennessee, just outside of Nashville, where the girls had their own horses. Jen was physically graceful and blessed with a photographic memory; subjects like math and physics came easily to her. She craved adventure, and upon graduating high school, she moved to Memphis. But in 1981, the family came back to California, and Jen moved back to the Bay Area with them.
Eventually she settled just down the street from the Alley at 180 Grand Ave., where she lived for 25 years. Jackie Simpkins, the Alley’s owner, remembers first meeting her sometime in 1999 or 2000. “One night Jen came in and was writing a letter to a boyfriend, and she stayed and we talked for hours,” Jackie recalled. “She kept coming back. Finally she told me she needed a job, and I hired her as a server. She was a waitress for a long time before she became a bartender. She was so bubbly. She was very dependable. She was one of the best servers I ever had.”
In addition to pouring a great cocktail, Jen had a talent for connecting with just about everyone who walked in. As Jackie recalled, “Some of the customers told me she was basically their therapist.”Jen’s life to that point had been challenging, but her sister Lisa remembers that right around the time Jen started working for the Alley, she changed. “Suddenly she had so much empathy and compassion,” Lisa said. “She said a funny thing to me. She told me she had gotten a ‘drop-in soul’. She started studying on her own, theories about physics, and she would write incredible poems.”One of Jen’s fans was legendary Alley pianist Rod Dibble.
Before his death in 2017, Rod would regularly wave Jen over to the piano. Singing George and Ira Gershwin’s “They All Laughed,” Jen’s hearty alto would belt out “ha ha ha, who’s got the last laugh now?”, always to uproarious applause.
Jen was captured on film in a short documentary by Katherine Gorringe, “The Last Piano Bar,” in which Jen says: “Someday the end of the world will come, but if I’m in the Alley when that happens, things could be worse than that.”
Jen, you will always be with your piano bar family in the Alley, where your welcoming kindness will never be forgotten.
