I Can Hear The Music: The Life of Gene DiNovi

Chapter Nine

The biggest favour George Wallington did for me was to be otherwise engaged. This was at a moment in the autumn of 1945 when Joe Marsala's group needed a piano player for its gig at the Hickory House on 52nd Street. Chuck Wayne, who was playing in the Marsala band, said he'd round up a pianist. His first choice was George Wallington, a decision that made sense; George's talent was more developed than mine, and he had lots more experience. He'd also played in Marsala's band on an earlier gig at the Hickory House where Joe was practically an institution. But George was otherwise engaged, and I fell into the job as Chuck's number two pick.

    Joe Marsala was a sweet, warm man who played clarinet and some tenor saxophone. Musically, he came from dixieland; geographically, he came from Chicago. In the 1930s when Joe, Wingy Manone and a bunch of other Chicago musicians moved to New York for the work, they were so broke that they always ate at the automat. It was a chain of inexpensive restaurants where the customers picked up the food they wanted, then got in a line to pay the cashier before they sat down at the tables to eat. The Chicago guys, with little money, jammed most of the food into their mouths before they reached the cashier.

Joe's band was made up of Chuck, me, a very good young bass player from the Bronx I'd worked with before named Clyde Lombardi, Buddy Christian on drums, Joe on clarinet and his wife Adele Girard on harp. I'd never played with a harp before, but the instrumentation produced a sound that was smooth and tight at the same time. The beboppers among us-Chuck, Clyde and me-were given free reign. Joe was generous that way. He wasn't anything close to a bebopper himself, but he enjoyed working with young guys. He had even made an earlier record of Melancholy Baby with a hilariously mixed bag of musicians that included Dizzy. It was a very funny record in stylistic terms.

    I'm pretty sure Joe was historically the first bandleader to hire a black guy as a regular member of his group. Benny Goodman usually got the credit for hiring Teddy Wilson and Lionel Hampton in 1935. But Benny used both of them for the trio and the quartet which were part of the Goodman band's package. Neither Teddy nor Lionel was a member of the actual band. But a year later, when Joe hired Henry "Red" Allen, it was to play trumpet with Joe Buskin, Eddie Condon and the rest of the white guys in Joe's band. I think this made Joe an authentic pioneer, though you never heard him bragging about it or claiming any particular credit.

While I was with Joe, I appeared on my first real record. It was for a session the Marsala band did on the Musicraft label. We cut a couple of standards, East of the Sun and I Would Do Anything For You. But the highlight as far as I was concerned came when we played another tune we recorded, this on written by Chuck based on How High the Moon, which he called Slightly Dizzy. It was very boppish, needless to say, and I think I acquitted myself pretty well for a kid bebop player.

    Overall, the experience with Joe helped me as an all-round musician because we played many numbers from a different repertoire than I was used to and at slower tempos. My time in the band was important for that reason, but it was also memorable as the period in my life when I almost got fat. I've always been a slim guy-except for those months at the Hickory House in the mid-1940s. What happened there was that I'd have a big pasta dinner cooked by my mother at home in Brooklyn. Then I'd get to the job at the Hickory House where the specialty in cuisine was steaks. I sat at the piano all night smelling those delicious steaks. I practically drooled at the aroma, and I just couldn't resist temptation. At the end of the night, I'd order a steak medium rare. So for a couple of months I ate two big dinners per night. My weight went up to the highest it had ever been in my life or ever would be.