Jazz Italian style

The
jam session at the Rochester International Jazz Festival was just heating up
one night last June when a man with a tenor saxophone stepped on stage to join
the Bob Sneider Trio on “Stella by Starlight.”

            I was skeptical. He looked more like
a businessman than a performer. But when he put the sax to his lips, he
proceeded to play a wonderful solo, venturing far from the melody with
inventive bursts of notes.

            I found out later that his name was
Bob Savoia, and he was no regular on the jazz
circuit. In fact, you can find him most days at Savoia’s
Pastries on Clifford Avenue. But the fact
that a baker could step up and drop a wild, tuneful solo got me thinking: What
is it about the connections between Italians and jazz in Rochester?

            Actually, the subject came up a
couple of years ago when I spoke to saxophonist Joe Lovano
before he played at the RIJF. He was recalling gigs he played in Rochester at the start
of his career in the early 1970s. “So many of the great players I had
heard about were from Upstate New York — legendary cats like Sal Nistico, VinnieRuggerio, Don Menza, Sam Noto — a lot of Italians, too,” Lovano
said.

            No one would dispute the African
American roots of jazz. And no one would argue with the fact that some great
black jazz players (Pee Wee Ellis and Roy McCurdy come immediately to mind)
have emerged from the area. But since at least as far back as
the 1950s, the Rochester
jazz scene has been dominated by Italians.

            Anyone who follows jazz today knows
the names: Mike Melito, Danny Vitale, Vince Ercolamento, Mark Manetta, etc.
But go back five decades and you’ll find more Italian names: Sal Sperazza, Russ Musseri, VinnieRandazzo, Benny Salzano, and many, many more.

            I know what you’re thinking. There’s
a large Italian population in Upstate New York, so the answer is simple:
Italians are here and some of them are passionate about jazz.

            “There just happened to be the right
number of people who found the flame and we found each other,” says pianist Gap
Mangione, who has been among the most active players
locally since the late 1950s.

            But the cultural exchange between
African Americans and Italians, going back over half a century, is still
fascinating. To find that flame, the circumstances had to be just right.

“At that time poor folks
lived in the same geographical areas,” says Lawrence Hargrave,
who hosted The Jazz Fest for 16 years
on WRUR. “There was a lot of cross-pollination.”

            It was just that sort of
cross-pollination that got Chris Melito interested in
jazz when he was growing up near the Public Market in the 1940s. When he went
to concerts, like the one featuring Duke Ellington’s Orchestra at the Sports
Arena at EdgertonPark, there was a
mixed audience. Jazz was one thing that brought blacks and whites together in Rochester.

            “We just listened,” Melito says. “There was no awareness. Back in those days
you didn’t think black and white in regard to music, just good and bad.”

            Melito,
who played trumpet in Rochester bands from
the 1940s through the 1990s, was first attracted to the music of bands he heard
on the radio: Ellington, Count Basie, Harry James….

            “I heard Roy Eldridge with Gene Krupa and he stoned me,” Melito
says. “His soul was in the music.”

            Like many others, he was in awe of
Coleman Hawkins’ saxophone solo on “Body and Soul.”

            “It’s one of the greatest jazz solos
of all time.”

            Once hooked, Melito
got a job at the Columbia Music Store on Clinton
Avenue just so he could listen to records.
There he fell for other greats like Art Tatum and Bobby Hackett, who eventually
became a close friend. Melito was very much aware of
jazz’s black roots. He realized, for instance, that Hackett emulated Louis
Armstrong.

            Later, when his trumpet chops
developed, Melito hung out at Squeezers on State Street, a bar owned
by pianist Joe Strazzeri. Many of the greats played
there, including Hawkins, Clifford Brown, and Teddy Wilson. And gigs were
typically followed by open jam sessions with white and black musicians. Melito remembers a particularly strong trombone player who
went by the name of Jamaica Jive.

            Melito got
to know some legends personally. One night in 1959, after a concert in Buffalo, he went with
a friend, Phil Santoro, to the Anchor Bar. Santoro had served in the army with
trombonist Tommy Turk, so, that night, Melito found
himself at a table with Hawkins, Lester Young, Flip Phillips, and Hank Jones.
“Those were my idols,” he says.

            Melito
joined the Rochester police force
in 1956 and became a detective in the early 1960s. And the job sometimes
brought him closer to his heroes. In July of 1974, Melito
got a phone call from Lou Ouzer, a Rochester photographer
known for his portraits of musicians. Stan Getz was in a bind. He was visiting
the Eastman School of Music for an Arrangers Holiday program. The problem: He
was due in Niagara Falls for a midnight show at the
Newport Jazz Festival and it was getting close to 11
p.m. Could Melito drive him?

            “Let’s just say we went a little
over the speed limit,” Melito says. “We made it.”

            The next time Getz was in town, he
greeted Melito like an old friend.

            Melito
passed his love of jazz on to his sons. Two of them, Mike and Tom, are
professional drummers, while a third, also named Chris, plays classical and
jazz trumpet.

Many of the
local jazz musicians Melito remembers from the 1950s are listed
on Jazz in Rochester (www.attictoys.com/jazz/RocJaMu.html), an excellent
website created by jazz historian Noal Cohen.

            Cohen, the co-author of Rat Race Blues: The
Musical Life of GigiGryce,
grew up in Rochester and played
drums in the Chuck Mangione Quintet in 1960. He went
on to a career in the pharmaceutical industry, but since his retirement in the
mid-1990s he has put together the finest resource available on Rochester jazz history.

            Italians latched on to jazz almost
right from the start, Cohen says. He points to the Original Dixieland Jazz Band
of Nick LaRocca. Cornet player LaRocca’s
group was far from the first band to play jazz, but — no doubt because the
band members were white — they were the first to be given the opportunity to
record, in 1917. Another early Italian jazz artist was singer-trumpeter Louis
Prima, who rose to fame in the 1930s.

            Others hear a connection in the
music to this day. Lovano recorded an entire album, Viva Caruso, exploring the relationship
between Italian music and jazz. When I spoke to him before he played at the
RIJF, he talked about “the stuff that fueled jazz: the song forms, the rhythms
from the Mediterranean, North Africa, the Middle East, Sicily, Southern Italy,
French songs. They all migrated to this country. Of course, the blues and all
these other influences created what we have as jazz, but I went back and really
started hearing some things.”

            Hargrave
agrees that there may have been some linkage over the centuries.

            “There is a history in the Mediterranean of crossing
back and forth,” he says. “But most of the rhythms that have created the basis
for jazz and blues have come from further south and west.”

            Cohen recalls the tremendous respect
his Italian musician friends had for the black innovators in the music five
decades ago.

            “When I got into jazz in the early
1950s I was hooked by Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan,
and Chet Baker,” Cohen says. “I listened to those dudes before I listened to
Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. But the Mangiones
were pointing me toward the harder stuff. Chet Baker and Gerry Mulligan were so
yesterday by 1955 — I got rid of all my records. We aspired to be black
players; the black guys were our idols. It was the opposite of the racism of
the time.”

            When I mention this to Gap Mangione between his sets at the Lodge at Woodcliff, where
he plays each weekend, he laughs. But thinking back to his beginnings in jazz,
he admits there’s some truth to it.

            “Compared to what Miles [Davis] and
Clifford Brown were doing in the muscular style we were into, the other stuff
did pale,” said Mangione, who counts Oscar Peterson,
Horace Silver, Wynton Kelly, Red Garland, and other
blues-oriented players among his influences on the piano.

            For Mangione
it was the rhythm and blues he heard on the radio in the 1950s that led him
toward jazz. But there was also the proximity to black culture.

            The Mangiones
lived just off of St. Paul Street near the BauschStreetBridge. Their father
owned a grocery store near Clinton and Joseph.

            If Rochester had a
reputation for racial conflict, the Mangiones were
not part of it. They thought nothing about having their black friends come to
the house. Mangione also went with his friends to see
great black bands at the Catholic Youth Organization in the downtown building
that housed the Montage Grille until its recent closing. By the mid-1950s the Mangione brothers had seen a who’s-who
of jazz greats.

            “On Easter of 1956 my father took us
to Squeezers on State Street across from
Kodak to see Clifford Brown with Sonny Rollins and Max Roach,” Mangione says. “By then we’d seen all the major players
from Armstrong to Ellington and Basie. We saw
everyone but Charlie Parker. We went to see him too, but he was at the Times Square downtown and,
because we were under age, they wouldn’t let us in.”

            Their father was a key figure in
nurturing their interest; he made a point of walking up and introducing his
sons to jazz giants between sets. Eventually Dizzy Gillespie and other greats
visited the Mangione home for pasta dinners.

            When local spots like the Pythodd Lounge weren’t enough, Mangione
took the train to New York City. He spent one
memorable evening at the Café Bohemia where he saw the Miles Davis Band with
John Coltrane.

            There was so much jazz available in
Upstate New York back then, it could even be found in the most unlikely places.
Mangione once heard a rumor that something was brewing
at an establishment south of Geneva. He drove
down to find, in a house converted to a bar, the Cannonball Adderley
Band with Philly Joe Jones and the rest of Miles Davis’ band minus Miles. “I
made one phone call and we filled the place.”

            His heroes may have been black, but Mangione has never forgotten his Italian roots. On his 2004
recording Family Holidays, Mangione recalls his heritage, not only with pictures of
his family, but also with songs titled “Bellezza” and
(his rendition of) “Tarnentellas.” On Stolen Moments, his latest Big Band
album, one of the guest artists he performs with is his 1960s band mate Joe
Romano.

The Melitos and the Mangiones are not the
only local Italian families immersed in jazz. Over the last several decades
bassist Danny Vitale has played with Herbie Hancock,
Hank Jones, Kenny Burrell, JoePass, and many
others. His brother Richie plays trumpet and John
plays sax; both work with a variety of musicians in New York
City.

            “Music was in my family,” says
Vitale, 46. “My grandfather played mandolin and sang. That’s how he courted my
grandmother in Buffalo.”

            When it came to jazz, Vitale also
points to the cross-fertilization factor.

            “I grew up on Adams Street, next-door to
Roy McCurdy,” Vitale says. (McCurdy went on to play with Rollins, Adderley, and many others.) “I used to hear him practicing
drums all the time.”

            And McCurdy wasn’t the only source
of inspiration in the neighborhood.

            “There was a church on Jefferson
Avenue and Adams Street, a half block
away. Every Saturday morning I would walk down and listen to the gospel singers
practice,” Vitale says. “I’d stand outside and listen for about 20 minutes.
They had some really powerful voices. I must have been about 6 or 7.”

            The two key figures in his early
musical life were a black teacher, Alan Murphy, and an Italian teacher, VinnieRuggerio. A Rochester jazz legend, Ruggerio was second call to Philly Joe Jones in New York
City. He ended up on gigs with John Coltrane, Slide Hampton,
etc.

            “I never looked at it as a racial
thing. And the black musicians I’ve played with never did either,” Vitale says.
“The great saxophonist James Moody gave my brothers and me a three-hour lesson
for free when he was playing at the Montecello. I
learned a lot from him about progressions and notes you can play against
chords. At one point he turned to me and said, ‘And
just because you’re a bass player don’t think I’m not talking to you.'”

In his
landmark bookBlues People, LeRoi Jones (now known as AmiriBaraka) traces the emergence of blues and jazz from
their African roots through the hardships of slavery and discrimination in the
African American experience.

            Like myriad white jazz players over
the last century, Italian musicians in Upstate New York obviously did not share
that experience. They adopted jazz for a very different reason.

            “It was much more the music for the
music’s sake,” says Mangione.

            But, as jazz has branched out from
its origins as a musical form, and has been embraced by a wide variety of
players, some musicians have bemoaned the fact that the audience for jazz has
drifted away from the African-American community.

            “You ask a lot of black people today
who is John Coltrane or Charlie Parker; they don’t know,” says Vitale.

            “The truth is when you go to the
Rochester International Jazz Festival what you see is a predominantly white
audience,” says Hargrave.

            Whoever plays or listens to the
music, Hargrave believes that it is important for
jazz to remain a living, breathing art form — with some stipulations.

            “As
long as the tradition is carried on, I appreciate it,” Hargrave
says. “But we’ve had a history of black players not being able to find work, so
I believe in credit where credit is due. That’s one reason I like Tony Bennett,
another Italian. He gives credit to Ella [Fitzgerald] and Sarah [Vaughan].”

Bennett’s real
name was Anthony Dominick Benedetto. The son of a grocer,
he waited tables before his career took off.

            Which brings us
back to baker-saxophonist Bob Savoia at the RIJF jam
session.Savoia grew up on Rochester’s East Side and attended EastHigh School with Pee Wee
Ellis. As a teenager in the 1950s he played in a band with Gene Cornish, who
emerged from Rochester to become a
member of the Rascals.

            “Like most people, I started
listening to blues: Earl Bostic, Red Prysock, Louis Prima. Then I got
into jazz — Sonny Rollins, Sonny Stitt, Stan Getz,
Dexter Gordon, and, of course, Charlie Parker.”

            But once into his 20s, Savoia put down the sax and went to work at his father’s
bakery. It wasn’t until decades later, in the early 1990s, that he decided it
was time to start playing again.

            As a kid he had played by ear. This
time Savoia wanted to know the mechanics of the
music. After some theory classes at the EastmanSchool, he was ready
to begin playing around town.

            Over the last few years, Savoia had shared some gigs with the members of Bob Sneider’s trio, so he thought it might be fun to show up
with his sax at the jam session. Just before stepping on stage he was a bit
nervous because one of his heroes, saxophonist Eric Alexander, in town for the
festival, had just walked into the bar. Savoia was
especially pleased to get his blessing afterward.

            When I mentioned the Italian
connection, Savoia wasn’t surprised.

            “You know, I’ve thought about that
myself,” he said. “These Italians players’ roots are mostly from the South of
Italy, places like Sicily. There’s a
lot of music there. My family came from there and I was always drawn to music.”

            Savoia sees the ideal situation in the music as one
embracing both African Americans who have cultural roots in jazz and those,
Italian or otherwise, who came to it out of a love for the music.

            “On Joe Romano’s last night in town
he played at the ClarissaRoom and the crowd
was half white and half black. It was so cool; it was so hip; it was so nice.”

This article appears in Feb 9-15, 2005.