The Good Life (13 page)

I taught Jack about drawing and painting, and he taught me about poetry, but not from a book. Jack had the mind and soul of a poet, and I was very much inspired by his point of view. Before the war he used to talk about the three bridges that connected Astoria to the rest of the world. The Queensboro Bridge went straight into midtown Manhattan. We played hooky (same as I did with my friend Rudy DeHarak), and we’d catch all the big band shows—Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, and Frank Sinatra—and the comics, like Bob Hope and Red Skelton. The Triborough Bridge took us uptown to Harlem and the world of jazz: the Apollo Theater and the Savoy, Count Basie and Billie Holiday, soul food and church choirs. Then there was the Hell Gate Bridge, the bridge that really set us dreaming. We saw these long freight trains coming in from all over the country, one boxcar after another. We’d try to count them, but we’d always lose track. Jack and I would imagine where they’d come from, where they were going. Some nights wed go watch the barges and ships in the
river, and it was the same kind of feeling. Those trains and boats really fed our wanderlust and made us dream about all the wonderful places we hoped our music would take us.

During our wanderings around town, Jack introduced me to Abby Mann, an aspiring screenwriter and director who was struggling just like the rest of us. At the time Jack and Abby were throwing ideas together for a musical comedy, and the three of us met on Central Park South. We’d been hanging around for a while, looking at the grand apartments lining the street, and I remember that we said to each other how glorious it would be to live in one of those fancy places along the park. I can’t help feeling it was some kind of omen or something, because that’s exactly where I live today. Abby and I have been friends ever since. His writing career was a big success, and he eventually went on to win an Oscar for his screenplay of
Judgment at Nuremberg
.

I introduced Jack to Freddy Katz, and from that point on the three of us were together almost constantly. Jack and Freddy became a great writing team. Jack wrote the words, Freddy wrote the music, and then the three of us went around town to different record companies to “demonstrate” the finished compositions by performing them live. Today musicians use what they call demo tapes that are mailed out to record companies or music publishers in hopes of selling their work. In those days we sold our work live. One day we decided to try our luck at the Paramount Theater. Frankie Laine was on the bill with Stan Kenton and his Orchestra, and June Christy was his vocalist. We got backstage and demonstrated the song for them. They all liked it, and Frankie Laine said to me, “Why are you demonstrating songs? You should be the one making records and singing here on this stage!” I was floored.

Freddy was working primarily as a pianist and accompanist for different singers then, but the bandleader Skitch Henderson
knew what a great cellist he was and hired him to play in the orchestra at the Capitol Theater. He played for the entire show, including for the headliner, Lena Home. One of Lena’s arrangers, Phil Moore, had written a very fancy orchestration of “Frankie and Johnnie” for her, with a really difficult cello part, and Freddy carried it off with characteristic aplomb. After the run was over, they had a big cast party, and Freddy got a chance to impress everybody with his piano playing. Lena liked it so much that a few weeks later he got a call from her manager offering him the job as her accompanist. Needless to say he took it.

Freddy also played piano for a while for the up-and-coming Vic Damone. Vic was being managed by a man named Ray Muscarella. He ran a few businesses in Brooklyn, his family owned a winery down in Little Italy, he managed prizefighters, and he dabbled in show business. In those days, there wasn’t a business or industry that wasn’t connected one way or another with the underworld and nightclubs were run by unsavory characters. It was understood by everyone in the business that if you wanted to play the big clubs, if you really wanted to make it, sooner or later you’d run into one of these guys. There was nothing you could do to avoid it. The underworld also ran the jukebox operations across the country, and it’s no secret that they built Las Vegas.

Freddy was always talking me up to Ray, so sometime around late 1948 he agreed to give me an audition. We got together in the basement of Freddy’s house, and he played the piano and I sang. Ray Muscarella loved it.

So Ray became my manager. When Jack Wilson found out, he pulled me aside. “You realize, don’t you,” he said, “what we’re talking about here?” He wanted to make sure I knew what I was getting into. But I felt that I couldn’t pass up the chance to get the good gigs I was sure Ray could get me.

Jack was completely opposed to my getting involved with Ray. He said, “You’re making the wrong move.” I told him that I’d been scuffling long enough, living on ten cents a day all these years, and I just couldn’t turn down any kind of help. Ray was going to give me financial backing, and I was sure he was gonna make something happen. But Jack was adamant. He felt so strongly about it that he really let me have it: he took his best shot and slapped me hard right in the face. I knew he had my best interest at heart, though, and we worked things out between us. When I started touring, Jack even became my road manager for a while.

With Ray as my manager, I felt for the first time that somebody professional really believed in me, somebody who could actually do something for me. He started in right away by getting me a good gig at the Shangri-La in Astoria, where I had sat in with Tyree Glenn. That first night I was wearing a new suit and the club hung out an enormous picture of me. I was so excited about my first real publicity shot that I not only saved the picture, I made a special frame for it.

Ray was convinced I could make it, but he thought I needed some polishing first, and I agreed. He hired coaches and arrangers for me, starting with a guy named Nat Debin. Nat was a nice guy, but he wasn’t the right teacher for me. His teaching technique was just too stiff I’ve learned that just as important as practicing the proper technique is knowing how to relax. You can’t be concerned about technique every minute or you’ll never get the emotion across. The trick, really, is to learn all the rules and then throw it all away and be yourself.

Ray got me a spot on the
Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts
program, which was in the tradition of the famous radio program,
Major Bowes Original Amateur Hour
and its TV successor,
the
Ted Mack Amateur Hour
, Godfrey was a giant on radio and early television, the Jack Paar of his day. The Godfrey show differed from the Bowes and Mack shows in that the focus wasn’t on pure amateurs but on “rising” young talents who hadn’t made it yet, I appeared on the show with another unknown singer by the name of Rosemary Clooney. Freddy Katz wrote out a special arrangement for me, and it went over well, but I lost to Rosie, who by that time was already touring with Tony Pastor and his Orchestra. It’s funny: I remember she sang a song called “Golden Earrings,” but I can’t recall what number I performed.

Rosie has always been good, a natural singer, and she was the first big star to do a whole album with Duke Ellington. We worked together a lot over the next few years. She jokes that I more than got even with her for beating me on that show: for most of the last decade we’ve been competing in the same category at the Grammy® Awards, and she likes to kid about losing to me every year. She says, “Maybe I’m in the wrong category I should be in the category for women over sixty who were born in the Ohio Valley.” Around the time of the 1998 Grammy Awards, Rosie was very sick. She ran a temperature of 107 degrees, and the doctors didn’t think she was going to make it. She later told me that when she was unconscious she had fever dreams, and in one dream she was surrounded by fifteen Tony Bennetts, all walking up to her and handing her the Grammy! What a great person she is, my buddy, I’ll always love her.

I appeared on the Arthur Godfrey show right around the time Pearl Bailey came to Greenwich Village to check out the Village Inn. The club owner would let me come down, hang out, and perform whenever they had an open spot. I was sitting at the bar one night and I overheard him say to the bartender
that he was planning to turn the club into a more legitimate showroom and that he was trying to persuade the legendary performer Pearl Bailey to headline the room. After the show, the club owner came up to me and, much to my astonishment, said, “Miss Bailey agreed to play the room on the condition that you, ‘that Joe Bari guy,’ stay on the bill.” I couldn’t believe it! “Can you beat that?” he said. “If you don’t stay, she ain’t gonna play the room. And I was gonna tell ya’ to take a hike.”

That was, as they say, my first big break. It was also the beginning of a long and wonderful friendship between Pearl and myself, a relationship that grew even closer when she married my dear friend, the wonderful drummer Louis Bellson, in 1952. Pearl wanted me to know just how much hard work lay ahead of me. She said to me, “I can start you out, kid, but it’s going to take you ten years to learn how to walk on the stage.” It was great advice, but she probably underestimated how long it actually takes to get everything right. I think all performers starting out today should be given the same advice, so that a little bit of success early on doesn’t go to their heads and screw up their future careers.

I learned a lot from Pearl, especially how not to take any nonsense from anybody. There was a girl in the chorus line at the Village Inn who was very jealous of Pearl’s success and had it in for her. One night when Pearl was dancing, this girl got behind her and started mimicking her dancing, trying to make a fool of her. So Pearl, without missing a beat, just turned around and knocked her out! Then she turned to the audience and said, “That’s the end of the show, folks. I can’t top that!” Classic Pearl Bailey.

She always took great care of me and had me work with her whenever she could. She once hosted her own TV special for PBS and brought in Sarah Vaughan and myself as her guests. She had a fifteen-week series on ABC and she invited
me to come on. It was really special, since Louis Bellson was playing and conducting the orchestra; it was so comfortable I felt like I was hanging out with friends and jamming. Pearl was a great lady who treated me very kindly. She gave me a copy of her autobiography that was inscribed: “To my son Antonio—Mama Pearl.” What an honor.

In the spring of 1949, Ray arranged for my first record date for a small label called Leslie Records, owned by Sy Leslie. Their claim to fame was that they had made a couple of successful records featuring famous baseball players.

I was thrilled to find out that George Simon would be producing my recording session. George, the head writer for
Metronome
, the greatest music magazine of all time, was already a legend in the business. He always knew who the best bands and singers were. It was thrilling to be in a full-fledged recording studio for the first time, and I was grateful for the opportunity to work with George. He knew more about music and had a bigger record collection than anybody I ever met. Spending an evening with him at his place in the West Fifties was like taking a course in the history of jazz.

The recording from this session was a two-sided 78 RPM disc, as all records were then. One side was an original composition by George, an Italian-style novelty called “Vieni Qui.” The other side was the Gershwin standard “Fascinating Rhythm.” I’m proud that I sang a Gershwin song at the very start of my recording career—for me, that really was beginning at the top! We did it at the New York Decca studios on Fifty-seventh Street, the same historic place where Bing Crosby, Louis Armstrong, Woody Herman, Count Basie, and so many others made so many classic recordings.

There was a vocal group backing me up who had recently worked with Bing Crosby on his recording of “Jamboree-Jones,” a Johnny Mercer song. The group had earlier been
known as the Skyriders but had, by this time, changed their name to the Tattlers.

“Vieni Qui” and “Fascinating Rhythm” by “Joe Bari” went absolutely nowhere, but it was still a kick for me to have a record of my own. My friend John Cholakis had a cousin who owned a bar called the Rainbow Bar and Grill out in Far Rockaway. As soon as we got a copy of the disc, John and I hopped on the Long Island Railroad and went straight to the bar and put the record on the jukebox. That was a thrill too. It’s been almost fifty years since I made that record and I can’t say I remember what it sounds like. The one copy I had literally crumbled in my hands in the 1960s.