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- Was owner of Joann's Piano Bar in Chicago
When Louie Jacobone met Joann Greakas, he promised to put her name in lights. For the next 30 years, black-and-white "Joann" signs radiated from their piano bar. While Ms. Greakas mixed drinks, Jacobone played piano as customers crooned "My Kind of Town," "Yankee Doodle Dandy" and hundreds of other tunes. Ms. Greakas welcomed all inside Joann's, but when necessary she showed unruly customers the door. "She could be a lady, but, boy, she could cuss too," Jacobone said.
Ms. Greakas, 71, died of a brain tumor Tuesday, July 24, in Alden Lakeland Rehabilitation and Health Care Center. Born in Pennsylvania, Ms. Greakas was a child when she came to Chicago with her parents and sister. Her parents died soon after, and she was raised by an aunt. She was 16 when she joined a traveling carnival, working carnival games in the Midwest and South. By age 18 she was back in Chicago selling cigarettes at the Edgewater Beach Hotel and working as a waitress at various restaurants, including the George Diamond Steakhouse. She was working at the Little Corporal when she met Jacobone around 1965. He became her life partner. They set up their first singalong piano bar with their signature speakeasy decor at State and Erie Streets during the blizzard of 1967. A decade later they sold the place but took the Tiffany lamps, antique pictures and beaded curtains to their second location, at Superior and Wells Streets. Her days began at 3 p.m. and ended many hours later, when the bar closed at 2 a.m., later on weekends. "Joann did the business end; Louie was the entertainer," said her cousin Pat Polerecky. "She was the perfect host: tough, amiable and cordial." They moved Joann's for the final time in 1989 to Chicago Avenue and Clark Street, closing in the mid-1990s with Jacobone singing "The Party's Over." "She was a lot of fun," Jacobone said. Her favorite song, he said, was "You Made Me Love You." Other survivors include a sister, Dolores Ulleberg, and five cousins. Services have been held.
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Abt 1930 - 2001 (71 years)