I Can Hear The Music: The Life of Gene DiNovi

Chapter Twenty

Peggy's backup guys made a hip group, which wasn't entirely a good thing. Bill Pitman was on guitar, Bob Whitlock on bass, the great and versatile Larry Bunker on drums, and sometimes we were joined by Jack Costanza to supply extra excitement on bongo and conga drums. Whitlock was very taken with having been in Gerry Mulligan's famous piano-less quartet, and he wanted to do things with Peggy the way Mulligan would play them. Bob wanted to be way too hip for the room. That wasn't going to work for a singer like Peggy. Somebody had to say so and take charge as the leader. The "someone" was me, and while Whitlock grumbled a lot, I got the group rounded into good shape.

    On some gigs, the group included the Brazilian guitarist Laurindo Almeida. He had arrived in California in the late 1940s, worked with Stan Kenton's band for two or three years, then cut an album with Bud Shank on alto saxophone plus bass and drums. The album was a huge hit. All of a sudden, everybody wanted Laurindo because he made such beautiful music. Peggy was dying to get him in the group, and she got her wish. Laurindo played with us in place of Bill Pitman on a few particular dates, especially when we were booked into Ciro's in Hollywood.

    One other regular member of the band was Stella Castellucci who played an instrument I loved, the harp. She was Pete Candoli's idea. Pete blew trumpet for Peggy during an earlier period when I wasn't with the group, and he suggested Stella for the band. It turned out Peggy adored the harp's sound behind her. Stella was a nice woman and had a lot of musical talent, something she inherited from her father Louie who played bass trombone for the Los Angeles Philharmonic and the Hawaiian Symphony. Probably because he was a musician himself and knew how guys in bands might take advantage of beautiful young girls, Louie was very protective of Stella. He picked her up after recording sessions and generally hovered around her. That was all very fatherly of him, but Louie was still picking Stella up when she was in her thirties, which seemed overly protective on the dad's part.

    In different senses, both Castelluccis, Stella and Louis, are still in my life today. Louie is in a photograph on my office wall. It shows him wearing an apron after serving pasta to a group of musicians. Most of them, robust looking guys, are the Hawaiian Symphony's percussion section, but on the far right hand side of the photograph sits a slim, elegant man in a suit eating his spaghetti. The fastidious gent is none other than Igor Stravinsky. As for Stella, I still see her in person whenever I visit my daughter Denise at her home on Venice Boulevard in Los Angeles. Stella and her sister live in a house on Le Mesa Avenue half a block from Denise's place. Stella continues to take all the harp gigs that come her way.

Peggy's most glamourous engagement was always at Ciro's, the Los Angeles nightclub. The tables were jammed with the movie stars of the period. Looking around the room, it was like watching a movie on Turner Classic Movies today. Every face seemed familiar.

    One face, not belonging to an actor, that was especially of interest to me was Benny Carter's. Though at that time I had only recently been introduced to Benny, I had been intrigued by him since I was a ten-year-old kid. It happened that, back in the late 1930s, my family was invited to an Italian wedding in Brooklyn. I was drawn to the band that played for the wedding dinner and dance, and during a break, I overheard one musician, in a conversation with another musician, refer to Benny Carter as "the king." Wow, I thought, this guy Benny Carter must be amazing.

    A singer named Ruth Olay finally took me around to Benny's house introduced me to the great man many years later. Ruth was a very good jazz-influenced California vocalist who worked with many good bands including Benny's. My admiration for Benny had been building for years. He was a versatile musician, playing both alto saxophone and trumpet excellently, and he was also a first rate composer and arranger. In Los Angeles, he became one of the first black musicians to write and conduct in the Hollywood studios. Finally, thanks to Ruth Olay, I met Benny, found him to be a lovely man. From then on, this man whom I first heard of as the "king" turned into a valued mentor for much of my musical life.