From Where I Sit

Frank & Joe - On the Road

    Frank Vignola and Joe Ascione are finally coming to Rochester (again).

    A few years back, my friend Jason Crane called one night and asked if I wanted to go see Frank Vignola and Joe Ascione perform at a private gig for some radio programmers, DJs, and people (?) like that. Accustomed as he was, and is, to having me say "no, I can't go because. . .," we were both surprised when I said, "Yeah, I can do that, sounds cool."

    We went to one of the larger Rochester hotels where they were going to play in a medium sized conference room for about 50 - 60 people. They started playing and they just took over the room. They were exciting, mesmerizing, - just absolutely amazing. If I remember correctly, the room just stood as one and gave them a long and loud standing ovation at the finish of their set. I've been fortunate enough to see a great many musical legends perform in my live during my lifetime: Dizzy Gillespie, Woody Herman, Lionel Hampton, Count Basie, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Mel Torme, Ray Charles, Teddy Wilson, among others. No one I've ever seen captivated an audience more that Vignola and Ascione did that night. Obviously, I was very impressed.

    I went up and introduced myself to them as they were packing up their instruments. I raved about their performance, we talked a little about our shared Italian backgrounds, kids, and gnocchi. They were as genuine as their music; full of humor, energy, and joy.

    I immediately became a booster. At the time of this Rochester visit, Hyena Records had just released The Frank and Joe Show: 33 1/3. I started playing it on my show every chance I could get. My favorites were "Paper Moon," "Begin the Beguine," and "Tico, Tico." My sons loved the theme from the 1960s animated "Spiderman." The following year came The Frank and Joe Show: 66 2/3, and most recently, The Frank and Joe Show: Submarine Bus." This last effort is a bit of a departure from the energized ensemble jazz of 33 1/3 and 66 2/3. Submarine Bus is a funky and funny set of tunes that I fully intended to dislike because as I told Vignola, "I'm as square as a block of wood." I should have had more faith though, because Vignola and Ascione know how to rock, how to swing, how to groove, and now, how to sing. It's definitely different but it's definitely fun. It is, what apparently all of their music can't help but being, and that's vibrant.

    They're coming back to Rochester this coming Sunday, July 30th, at the Highland Park Bowl. It's an afternoon/evening of Italian music and food. The gates open at 3:00 pm and tickets can be purchased at Ticketmaster. There will be two other acts, a party band called Allegro and a young Italian crooner named Patrizio Buanne. There is more info at www.HighlandBowlsummer.com
I'll try to post more tomorrow but if you can make it, this is a show you won't want to miss. I can't speak from experience about the other two acts but The Frank and Joe Show is something to see!

January 2006: Top 15 "Baby Boomer" Songs

Originally published in the January 2006 issue of Fra Noi.

Last January, I wrote a column about the 25 greatest songs ever written by Italian American composers and lyricists. By my own admission, the songs were drawn primarily from the great American songbook of popular music standards. Even listing 25 songs, there were quite a number of great songs excluded due to space. More specifically, I left out many songs from the 1950s – 1970s that would be considered part of the pop rock genre, songs by singer/songwriters like Jim Croce and Bobby Darin (there actually was one Darin composition included last year but not enough to truly reflect his contributions as a songwriter). I promised that at a later date we’d tackle the songs from that pop/rock group and now’s the time.

Therefore, as we start another year, I thought it would be fun to list some wonderful songs that came from the Italian American songwriters who were writing for the Baby Boomer generation. While the United States government officially considers me part of this group (I was born in 1964 and the official U.S. statistics designate 1946-1964 as The Baby Boom) I was always drawn more to the music of my parent’s generation. Nevertheless, I have two brothers and one sister who are all Baby Boomers and I grew up listening to their music and therefore do share a fondness for certain artists of that generation.

Just as last year, the rules are short and simple. Last year’s list included standards or songs that should be considered standards. This year’s list will include songs from the early years of pop/rock and some songs that might not satisfy the highest artistic standards but qualify due to familiarity, popularity, or my personal enjoyment of the tune. The only other rule is that every song must have at least one Italian American listed as a contributor.

One thing that’s particularly amusing about this list is that when many of these songs first came out they were considered awful, noisy, rock and roll songs by the “older generation.” Today, many of those same people are listening to these songs every day on “music of your life’ and “legends” formats on the radio. Of course, no one knew in 1965 just how bad the music was going to get by 2005.

As we did last year, we’ll rank the songs but only as a convenient structure by which to revisit these classic tunes. The list, just like last year’s, is really just an opportunity to survey and highlight the many wonderful contributions that have been made to American music by talented Italian American songwriters.

No. 15 – “Working at the Car Wash Blues” 1974 (Jim Croce) This rollicking blue-collar blues is for every man or woman who’s ever felt under-utilized in their job. This song actually reached the Top 40 many months after Jim Croce died in a plane crash at the age of 30 in September of 1973. Croce wrote a handful of songs that could/should be considered in any “Best Of . . .” list for his generation of songwriters.

No. 14 – “Sherry” 1962 (Bob Gaudio) In the 1950s Frankie Castellucio was singing in a rock and roll group called The Varietones. By 1962 they added an organist named Bob Gaudio who was also experimenting with writing songs. One afternoon before band practice Gaudio wrote a tune which he tentatively called “Terry.” In this story, almost all the names change as Frankie Castellucio became Frankie Valli, The Varietones ended up as The Four Seasons, and “Terry” would be changed to “Sherry” and begin a string of hit songs for The Four Seasons and their in-house songwriting sensation, Bob Gaudio, which would last for years.

No. 13 – “Splish Splash” 1958 (Bobby Darin) This was Darin’s first hit that legend says was written in twenty minutes or so while he was waiting for his friend, DJ “Murray the K” to take a shower. It propelled the dynamic entertainer to stardom and was rediscovered by another generation in 1974 when it was re-introduced to the youth of America on “Happy Days,” Garry Marshall’s nostalgic TV hit about the kids at the malt shop during the halcyon days of the1950s.

No. 12 – “Runaround Sue” 1961 (Dion DiMucci) This is a song Dion says had its beginnings in the schoolyard. He’d jam with his friends, giving them different parts, and they’d improvise with the tune. When he eventually recorded it in 1961 he had already broken with The Belmonts and was backed on the song by The Del Satins. The song would reach Number One on the U.S. charts.

No. 11 – “Groovin’” 1967 (Eddie Brigati & Felix Cavaliere) The Young Rascals were one of the hottest groups of the mid-1960s with hits like “Good Lovin,” “How Can I Be Sure?,” and this tune, written in 1967 by the two lead vocals in the group, Brigati and Cavaliere. They were so busy with concerts and TV appearances that they rarely had any time off. This song put into words their dreams of a little time to just relax and enjoy the success they’d achieved.

No. 10 – “Bang, Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)” 1966 (Sonny Bono) Written for Cher and released on the album entitled “The Sonny Side of Cher,” this song was also recorded by not one, but two Sinatras. Nancy Sinatra recorded the tune the same year as Cher, 1966, and her dad later recorded it twice. Frank’s first rendition of the song was done in 1973 but never released. He then recorded it again in 1981 and used it as the title cut for his album of saloon songs, “She Shot Me Down.” It was Sinatra’s last great theme album.

No. 9 – “Bye Bye Baby” 1965 (Crewe/Gaudio) Another hit from the pen of Bob Gaudio, this one with an assist from Bob Crewe, the group’s manager. By this time the hits were coming fast and furious for The Four Seasons and Gaudio had a hand in writing many of them. When I was a kid, this was one of my favorites.

No. 8 – “Bad, Bad, Leroy Brown” 1973 (Jim Croce) The title character of the song was based on a guy Croce had met at Fort Dix who got fed up with the Army and went AWOL. Croce once said, “Just to listen to him talk and see how ‘bad’ he was, I knew someday I was gonna write a song about him.” The song which was released in April of 1973 reached Number One on the charts by July of that same year.  Sinatra recorded it in December of 1973 and included it on his 1974 album “Some Nice Things I’ve Missed.”

No. 7 – “Dream Lover” 1959 (Bobby Darin) Released in April of 1959 this was a more relaxed tune than those he’d previously written and recorded and it signaled his transition into a more mature repertoire. Later that same year he would release the “That’s All” album that included “Mack the Knife” and his career would, by design, take a turn away from the Rock and Roll genre.

No. 6 – “I Got You Babe” 1965 (Sonny Bono) Sonny Bono’s songwriting skills were rudimentary but he had a good ear for what was needed to make a hit popular song. Legend has it he wrote this one night on the back of a piece of cardboard and played it for Cher the next day. She was reluctant to record it until he changed the key to better fit her voice. The record company also showed little confidence in the record and included it as the B side to “It’s Gonna Rain,” another Bono composition. “I Got You Babe” went on to reach Number One on both the U.S. and U.K. charts and would become the duo’s theme song. “It’s Gonna Rain” is now long forgotten. For the younger crowd, they might better remember this song as the record playing on the radio alarm clock that woke up Bill Murray every morning in the 1993 movie “Groundhog Day.”

No 5 – “Things” 1962 (Bobby Darin) This song/record written by Darin was one of the first to show the singer/songwriter’s interest in Country music and his ability to write in that style. The tune became a Number One seller and was used as the title song for his next album, “Things and Other Things.” The song was recorded in 1963 on Reprise by Dean Martin and then done as a duet with Dino and Nancy Sinatra on Sinatra’s 1967 TV special “Movin’ With Nancy.”

No. 4 – “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You” 1967 (Bob Gaudio) In 1966 Frankie Valli wanted to establish a solo career without actually leaving The Four Seasons. He called upon Bob Gaudio to come up with yet another hit song. What Gaudio brought him was a one day effort that was “just too good to be true.” The song reached Number Seven on the charts for 1967. This song was also revived by a hit movie just ten years later when it figured prominently in the Vietnam Era epic “The Deer Hunter” which was released in 1977.

No. 3 – “The Beat Goes On” 1965 (Sonny Bono) This is my favorite Bono composition. The lyrics, sadly, are still relevant as in “men still keep on marching off to war.” The song was another huge hit for Sonny and Cher and the melody was used as the theme their 1970s variety show. On a more somber note, the inscription on Sonny Bono’s tombstone reads, “And the Beat Goes On.”

No. 2 – “Simple Song of Freedom” 1965 (Bobby Darin) I actually included this in last year’s list but it fits in much better with this group of songs. It was Darin’s finest folk song/protest song which is the type of music he had evolved to writing in 1969. While he was alive and performing he was actually criticized by critics because of his forays into so many different styles of music. Today, we’re better able to see that not only did Darin explore these different genres but he conquered each one and those accomplishments only add to his legend.

No. 1 – “I’ll Have To Say I Love You in a Song” 1973 (Jim Croce) Of all the fabulous songs written by Croce, this tender and honest love song may be the most beautiful. He wrote the song for his wife Ingrid following an argument about finances. She wrote that “he [Jim] hated confrontation [so] he went down to the kitchen table to brood.” The next morning he sang her his new song. The song, like “Car Wash Blues” also reached the charts in 1974, after Croce’s untimely death.

I’m sure there are many other songwriters of this genre and period that I could have included but these are the ones that I not only enjoy and remember best, but the ones who had the greatest impact on me. The four most important, for me, are obviously Gaudio, Bono, Darin, and Croce and all for different reasons.

Bob Gaudio’s main contribution was the creation of a “sound.” The Four Seasons sound was something unique and special to the time. It should be remembered that The Four Seasons and The Beach Boys were the two American groups that not only survived the British Invasion of groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones but actually thrived along with them. Gaudio’s role in the success of The Four Seasons was second to none.

Sonny Bono’s songs evoke the time period of the mid-1960s in a very palpable way. He was never much of a singer but his vocals fit naturally into the fabric of “I Got You Babe” and “The Beat Goes On.” He was the guy down the street who proved that just about anyone could write a hit song in the Sixties and he didn’t care if you knew that or felt that way. He took whatever abilities he had and made the most of them. Whenever I hear Sonny Bono sing I think of the power of the little guy who accomplishes great things primarily because he believes in himself.

Bobby Darin was one of the monumental talents in the entertainment industry in the second half of the twentieth century. It’s only been in recent years that he finally seems to be getting the respect he deserves. His prolific songwriting output, as well the varied kinds of songs he wrote, make his compositions an important aspect of his enduring legacy.

The fact that Jim Croce wrote so many memorable songs in such a painfully short period of time is a testament to his special gifts as a songwriter. Sadly, it also begs the question of “What might have been” if only Croce had been given more time to create and contribute. In addition to the few songs mentioned above he also wrote, “Operator,” “Time in a Bottle,” and “Don’t Mess Around with Jim,” all classics of the early 1970s. It should be noted that Bob Gaudio, Bobby Darin, and Jim Croce are all members of The Songwriters Hall of Fame.”

I’ll continue to acknowledge the Italian American contributions to songwriting in the future. If you have suggestions of songs and songwriters you’d like to see mentioned, please write to me in care of the newspaper. I welcome your input.

Until next time, I wish you and yours a very happy and healthy new year ahead!

October 2005: Italian or American Singers?

Originally published in the December 2005 issue of Fra Noi

This past summer, Paul Basile OFL (Our Fearless Leader) and Editor of “Fra Noi” received a fax from Anthony C. in Crete, Illinois asking him to ask me if Frank Sinatra ever sang or recorded an Italian song. I was very happy to receive the inquiry when Paul passed it on to me because I thought it would make a perfect column for the pages of “Fra Noi.” The question of Sinatra’s lack of recorded Italian music is one that I have pondered for years and has made me more than a little interested in researching which Italian American singers embraced their cultural roots to record Italian music and which artists seemed to shy away from recording the traditional Italian favorites.

In the world of entertainment, Italian American singers have held an exalted position for nearly a century. The names of many of these singers are names we’ve known all our lives: Sinatra, Como, Connie Francis, Dean Martin. Still others are more obscure: Nick Lucas, David Allyn, and Frances Wayne. Nevertheless, all are, or were, Americans of Italian descent and the melodies and rhythms of hundreds of years of Italian musical history went into shaping their talents.

For the past six years, I’ve had the privilege and joy to spotlight the musical contributions of Italian American singers, musicians, and songwriters on a weekly radio program called The Sunday Music Festa. The show is broadcast in Rochester, New York on Jazz 90.1 FM and can be heard every Sunday from 12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time, live on the internet by going to Jazz90.1 and clicking onto the “Listen Live” link at the top of the page. When I proposed the show to the station’s manager back in 1999, I told him I wanted to host a show that would highlight the contributions of Italian Americans in the world of popular music and jazz. I actually said to him, “I’m not interested in playing Jerry Vale singing ‘Arriverderci Roma’ every week . . . not that there’s anything wrong with that.” Thus a rather unique, and what has happily proven to be a very popular, radio show was born.

As a fan of The Great American Songbook, which is the descriptive moniker given to the works of Porter, Mercer, Warren, Berlin, Kern, et al, I play a variety of great standards every week on the show by artists such as Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Bobby Darin, Julius La Rosa and many more. And while I don’t play nearly as many classic Italian songs on my show that doesn’t mean I don’t play any. We’ll often listen to Dino sing “Eh Marie” or Louie Prima belt out “Buona Sera” with Keely and Sam Butera. One of my favorites is Julius La Rosa’s rendition of “Just Say I Love Her” which has been recorded by numerous Italian singers. In fact, I’ve even played Jerry Vale’s “Arriverderci Roma” on occasion. Hosting a show like this has given me the opportunity to not only highlight the contributions of Italian American artists to America’s musical legacy but also identify the Italian American singers and musicians who used the experiences of their youth and heritage to put an American stamp on the tunes of sunny Italy.

There are four artists, in particular, who I refer to as “The Big Four” of Italian American singers. They are Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Dean Martin, and Tony Bennett. Whether you like them or not, no one can dispute the impact these four men have made on American music through the hundreds of millions of records they have sold.

Starting with Sinatra, he did record some Italian songs. However,in a recording career that lasted half a century and well over a thousand recordings, his output of Italian material is almost non-existent. The only recordings where you will find Sinatra singing in Italian go back to his Columbia Recordings of the 1940’s and early 1950’s. In November of 1945 Sinatra recorded “I Have But One Heart (O Marenariello).” The song was written by Marty Symes and Johnny Farrow and published by Barton Music, a company in which Sinatra had a financial interest. Although Sinatra’s recording of this song is now thought of as the most important, his rendition never reached the pop singles chart until September 20, 1947, approximately three weeks after the release of a recording of this same tune by a young singer named Vic Damone. Today, the song is probably most remembered as the song that the fictional Johnny Fontane sings at the wedding of  Connie Corleone in the 1971 film, “The Godfather.”

In September of 1949 Sinatra went into the studios to record the theme to an upcoming Ingrid Bergman film entitled “Stromboli.” The song was written by Irving Taylor and Ken Lane. While Ken Lane was a fine pianist, and would cross paths with Sinatra many times in the future when he became Dean Martin’s accompanist and Musical Director, he and Irving Taylor were not exactly two paisans from the neighborhood. Nevertheless, the recording “(On the Island of) Stromboli” was one of Sinatra’s more pleasing of his late Columbia period and one that got somewhat overlooked because of the controversy surrounding the movie “Stromboli.” It was on this film that Ingrid Bergman met Roberto Rossellini and left her husband to “live in sin” with the Italian film director. It caused quite a stir at the time and nearly destroyed Bergman’s career.

In October of 1950 Sinatra recorded the one and only song he would ever sing in Italian from beginning to end, the Italian classic “Torna a Surriento” or “Come Back to Sorrento.” It’s not his greatest effort as he sounds uncertain of his footing. It could be because Sinatra was such a stickler for enunciation. His enunciation when singing in Italian sounds overdone as though he’s uncomfortable singing in a language other than his own. Many of the singers like Perry Como and Julius La Rosa said they grew up speaking Italian of some sort, usually dialect, to their immigrant parents. The same was probably not true of Frank Sinatra. His father owned a saloon and his mother was a political ward healer so both his parents were quite familiar with English. Therefore it seems unlikely that he would’ve been required to speak Italian to his parents as so many second generation children were. This could explain his discomfort with singing in Italian and perhaps his ultimate reluctance to record Italian music. While Frank Sinatra was unquestionably one of the greatest interpreter’s of American song he did not excel in the same way with the music of his ancestral fathers and his lack of output in this area seems to confirm his acknowledgement of this fact.

The only one of The Big Four who recorded even less Italian music that Sinatra is Tony Bennett. As far as I know, Tony Bennett has only recorded one Italian song is his prolific recording career, the 1972 Big Band arrangement of the traditional “O Sole Mio.” It’s on an album entitled “The Best of Tony Bennett” which has yet to be released on CD. Nevertheless, Bennett sang the song as recently as this past July at a concert in Umbria, Italy.

One drawback to the many Italian recordings of the 1950’s and 1960’s is that singers often recorded the same tunes. Some of the most popular and repeatedly recorded titles include “Eh Marie,” “I Have But One Heart,” “O Sole Mio,” “Torna Surriento,” and “Mala Femmena.” In 1966 Perry Como and his arranger/conductor Nick Perito decided to actually travel to Italy to record an album of Italian music. In addition to a few of the traditional favorites, Como and Perito managed to spice up the project with less familiar choices such as “Anema e core,” “Un giorno dopo l’altro,” “E Lei,” and the “Love Theme from ‘La Strada’” with English lyrics by Don Raye. The result was an album of exquisite taste and beauty, precisely what you’d expect from the man that America implored every week for over twenty years to “sing to me, Mr. C., sing to me.” With the exception of some of the Italian American novelty songs like “Chi Baba Chi Baba (My Bambino Go to Sleep),” the album selections on “Perry Como in Italy” made up the bulk of Como’s Italian discography. Of course, many Italian Americans are very possessive of the Latin hymn “Ave Maria” which was a staple of Como’s annual Christmas shows so if you want to give Perry credit for that, go right ahead.

Of The Big Four, Dean Martin, born Dino Crocetti, recorded far more Italian songs than his three prodigious counterparts. In fact, early in his career, long before “Everybody Loves Somebody,” Dean Martin bounded onto nightclub stages every night to the strains of “Eh Marie.” In his first few years of recording Martin made two separate versions of the song. The first version was cut in 1947 for a small label called Apollo Records. The arrangement is less sophisticated and Dean seems more casual than usual and jokes around quite a bit on the recording. The second version was recorded for Capital in 1952 with a much more professional arrangement and in the second chorus of the song, instead of comedy, Dean provides what could be described as a more American swing treatment to the song.

Dean recorded many Italian songs particularly in the first half of his recording career – the second half would be filled largely with Country & Western music which Dean loved and excelled in interpreting. In addition to the classic Italian favorites like “Santa Lucia,” “Come Back to Sorrento,” and “Non Dimenticar,” Dean was a master at the American Italian novelty songs like “Mambo Italiano,” “On An Evening in Roma,” and one of his biggest hits of all time, the Academy Award nominated “That’s Amore” written by Jack Brooks and Harry Warren (aka Salvatore Guaragna). While Dean’s pronunciation of Italian was anything but textbook authentic, his idiomatic and dialect filled interpretations were always infused with the relaxed sense of fun that was the synonymous with the name Dean Martin.

The great jazz guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli once told me that the best Italian pronunciation he ever heard from an Italian American singer came from Julius La Rosa. The singer once told me that while he grew up speaking a Sicilian dialect, he later went back and took classes to learn the textbook Italian. La Rosa became a nationwide sensation in the early 1950’s with his appearances on “Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts” and a hit recording of “Eh Cumpari.” His fame grew when Godfrey fired him on the air in October of 1953 and although his vocal talents also grew; his star power never equaled his under-appreciated abilities as an interpreter of American song. Thankfully, there is a fair amount of Julius La Rosa music now available on CD. Do yourself a favor and discover, or re-discover, one of the best singers Italian America has ever produced.

There are a great many more Italian American singers who regularly included Italian songs in their repertoire as well as recording them: Vic Damone, Jerry Vale, Don Cornell, and Al Martino all spring to mind. And echoing Dean Martin’s talent with the Italian novelty number was Lou Monte. This Calabrese crooner’s songs were so funny that it’s difficult to decide whether to consider him a vocalist or a comedian. The truth is that while many of his biggest records were comedy numbers like “Pepino the Italian Mouse,” he was, in fact, a very able musician with a beautiful voice as showcased on a number like “Roman Guitar.”

Traditionally, there have been less Italian American female vocalists than male vocalists but there have been some and many of them very talented such as Jill Corey, Toni Arden, Frances Wayne, and Marlene Ver Planck. The popular vocalist of the 1950’s, Joni James (born Joan Babbo) recorded an entire Italian album of songs that is available on CD. However, when it comes to the female vocalists, no one recorded more Italian classics that Concetta Franconegro better known as Connie Francis. Francis recorded nearly a half-dozen albums of Italian songs and she ranks as one of the most successful recording artists in the history of music. It should not be difficult to find many of her Italian recordings on CD, especially her popular rendition of the sentimental Italian favorite, “Mama.”

Italian Americans have a great deal to be proud of when it comes to the subject of popular singers. Whether they sang the songs of their ancestors or not, it seems obvious that some passion for vocalizing was passed on to these sons and daughters of Italy. Whether you’re a fan of The Great American Songbook or The Great Italian Songbook, there’s a whole lot of recorded music out there to listen to and enjoy. In fact, even for a collector like myself there’s always something new. “The Solid Swing of Al Donahue and his Orchestra” is a brand new CD available through Collector’s Choice Music. Included on the CD are four vocals by Phil Brito, an early Italian American crooner who had an influence on singers such as Dean Martin.

Whatever your tastes go out and enjoy the songs of Italy and America sung by our Italian American paesani and as my mother always says, “canta, canta!”