entertain myself. In a short while, I was playing the guitar with a buddy named Joe. We’d get together with some cousins and play and sing any song that we could get our hands on. I have a cousin named Ellen who did a lot of typing for me at that time, and she would type out The Beatles songs with the chords above the words so I could play the songs.
When my mother and father saw that I was really interested, they set me up with lessons at a music store ten blocks from home. That made things easy on my parents. I’d just take the guitar, throw it over my shoulder, and walk to the lesson! The place was called Liberty Music Center, I guess because it was on Liberty Street. A guy named Tony owned it. He was a fantastic piano player. I started taking lessons from a great guitar player named Charlie, who happened to be going to my high school. He was a senior and I was a sophomore. So it was convenient when I had a question about a lesson during the week, I could just ask him in school. I started with a couple of beginner’s books, but they quickly got boring.
Realizing my potential, Charlie got me a Berkeley College of Music book on guitar. This school publishes some of the best music instruction books available. Charlie was very good with what they call “chord melody.” I’d like to explain what this is. When you play chord melody on a guitar, you play a chord with a melody line happening on the fifth or sixth string so that you get the sound of the background chord and the melody at the same time. It’s a tricky thing to learn at first because your left hand is all over the guitar neck, but it is a nice sound when you play it the right way.
At this time, there was a guy named Mike who took drum lessons at Liberty Music Center who was trying to put a band together. Charlie told him about me and set me up for an audition. Mike’s family owned a small hometown pub called The Hilltop Inn in a town called Crosswicks, about ten miles from where I live. I was sixteen at the time, and for the audition, I had to get a ride from my parents. They dropped me off one Sunday, and I sat in with Mike and a couple of other guys. All went well as far as I could tell.
Unbeknownst to me, Mike wasn’t happy with my guitar playing, but Charlie told him to be patient because I had a lot of potential. We became a band called “White Satin Limited,” taking our name from a liquor bottle in Mike’s family bar. We also had a sax and trumpet player. The sax player was my cousin, Skip, and the trumpet player was a local Crosswicks guy named Oren, whose sister I wound up dating.
We played private parties and weddings for a few years. Then I had to go into the Navy. I was about to be drafted, so I opted to join the Navy Reserves. By the way, Mike and I became very good friends and still are. We were each other’s best man. The band broke up not long after I left, and the guys went their own ways.
CHAPTER 3
In the Navy
So into the Navy I go, to Rhoda, Spain, for two years of active duty. I took my guitar along with me, and here was where I ran into a guy named Ron from Pittsburg. He found out that I could sing, and we became good friends. We were like another Simon & Garfunkel. Ron didn’t know much about music at the time, but he could write songs and had a great voice. He could harmonize like I never heard anyone do it before.
I said, “Man, this guy’s got talent.”
He’d have these songs going in his head and just kept coming up with one after another. He wrote a song about a chief that was in charge of our shop at the time (who, by the way, nobody much liked) that I later recorded in a studio. I’d sit behind him with a guitar and figure out how to play all his songs. We played for different people at times and at a place called the Coffee Club on the base where we were stationed. No money, but we were popular. Everywhere we went, people wanted us to sing. Our fame was only limited to the Navy, but we did have a lot of fun! Ron still resides in the Pittsburg area today with his wife and family. We have remained friends for a long time.
After I was discharged from the Navy, my life settled down to a nine-to-five job, which was quite a nice job at the time, working for RCA in Princeton, New Jersey. I constantly pursued the music business, talking to anyone I could, and trying to sing anywhere I could, including sitting in with bands and clubs. I searched and searched for agents and promoters. I didn’t have much luck. I also found out that the agents of the day were not anything like the agents of yesteryear. Nobody would back me or promote me. It was like beating my head against the wall. Eventually I got married as everyone does, but I still kept up with the music business. I was married for about nineteen years and wound up with two wonderful sons, Ryan and David, whom I will mention again later in this book.
CHAPTER 4
Stella
Once music is in your blood, it’s like an addiction that is almost like sex. While I was married, I found out about a local guy who I thought maybe could help me. He supposedly had some interesting connections. He was big in the garbage industry, and he also owned a club and restaurant not far from where I lived. I went to see him one night, and he introduced me to a guy named Charlie, who at that time was managing Rich Little and Joey Heatherton. This was exciting! He asked me to sit in with the band that was playing. The band was horrible, and the lead singer needed some voice lessons. Charlie liked what he heard and told me to get something together, but I never did get a band together because I just couldn’t find the right people and talent.
Shortly after, I auditioned for an oldies group. At that time, they were well-known around town. They liked me but lost my phone number, and by the time I saw them again, they had found someone else to be the lead singer. While I was there for the audition, I ran into a guy named Mike who was studying voice with a woman named Stella. I started asking him about her and what exactly she taught. He said just technique. I asked him to help me get in touch with her. He said he would give her my phone number.
Stella was a gorgeous redhead fifteen years my senior, a real glamour girl. I was stunned the first time I saw her. Anyways, we connected, and I started to take voice lessons. Stella told me that she taught what they called the bel canto method. Bel canto means “beautiful singing.” It’s a classical Italian style, and it happened to be the same method that Frank Sinatra studied.
She taught me how to breathe, build up my diaphragm, sing so my voice would carry, and enunciate so that every word was heard correctly. The breathing part was interesting, and she gave me very exercises to build up my diaphragm. Once you strengthen your diaphragm, you can hold notes forever, especially if you can learn to breathe while you are holding a note. (Frank Sinatra learned that from a trombone player named Tommy Dorsey.) The vocal exercises were working. Stella explained to me that we should sing on the hum, which means when we sing, our face should vibrate when we hum.
The first part of the vocal exercises she taught me were “Mee, me, ma, mo, moo.” When you first start doing this exercise, you feel weird singing this, but I learned that she knew what she was talking about. If she had told me to stand on my head and sing, I would have done it. When I first started with her, she told me about the qualities that I had, but she had to make me aware of what I had, and she did. One other thing that I learned from was that when you sing, it’s like acting out a story. You need to emphasize certain phrases like you are telling a great story. This will put feeling into the song and portray the story better to your audience.
Stella had studied opera at Curtis College in Philadelphia years ago. One time, she was singing at the War Memorial building in Trenton, New Jersey, and a guy named Ed Sullivan was in the audience. When she got done singing, he went backstage and asked her to be on his show. For those of you who may not remember who Ed Sullivan was, he had a hugely popular variety show that ran on CBS
