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1 When I Was a Little Boy All my life I’ve always wanted to be somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific. —Jane Wagner he date written on the back of one of our family’s most cherished Tphotographs indicates that it was taken in mid-October 1966. Those were the days when Captain Kangaroo and Mister Green Jeans were sending me off to the first grade every day, Batman (on the new color TV) had replaced black-and-white Superman as my new caped hero (“Quick, Robin—hand me the shark-repellent Bat-spray!”), and Meet the Beatles was no. 1 on the Pizzarelli family hi-fi. The photo itself, an interiorCOPYRIGHTED scene of people seated MATERIAL together at a dinner table, brought back fond (and fuzzy . I wasn’t yet seven years old) memo- ries of our weekly family gatherings at the home of my uncle Pete and aunt Honey in Clifton, New Jersey. What I clearly recall about those Sundays is the roar of everybody trying to talk at the same time, kids running around in all directions, and gallons of red sauce simmering in immense vats on the stove. And as much as we all loved to be with one another, it was Aunt Honey’s 1 c01.indd 1 9/20/2012 8:36:35 PM 2 WORLD ON A STRING cooking that brought in the sellout crowds. As true masters do, she played to her strengths, which in her case happened to be homemade pasta, veal and chicken cutlets, and eggplant parmigiana—with and without meat—served in and around an endless vat of tomato sauce. That was the menu every Sunday—profound in its simplicity. We joke now that Uncle Pete and Aunt Honey’s dining room must have been constructed by the same people who made Sansabelt trousers, given how the modest square footage of the dining room appeared to expand to accommodate the number and girth of the family members and their guests in attendance. Twelve or fifteen (or sometimes more) of us could gather at the table without anyone feeling crowded—at least until certain members of the family (no names, please) went for their third helpings of ziti and veal parm. At some point in the proceedings my father and his uncle Bobby (Uncle Pete’s younger brother) would grab my attention—or just grab me—lead us to a relatively quiet area of the house, and hand me a Paramount tenor banjo. That summer I had begun taking lessons with Uncle Bobby in a tiny downstairs cubicle at Victor’s House of Music in Ridgewood, New Jersey, about ten minutes from our home in Saddle River, and he always wanted to break away from the group to play a few songs with me whenever the families got together. The quiet banjo sessions with Uncle Bobby and my dad struck a stark contrast with the rollicking family sing-alongs that always followed Aunt Honey’s incredible meals. Two things about Uncle Pete, Uncle Bobby, and those incredibly happy Sundays remain clear in my memory after all these years—the brothers’ lightning-fast hands and their ear-to-ear smiles of joy while they were strumming. The setlist was made up of everybody’s all-time banjo hits: “Bye, Bye Blues,” “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby,” “Bye Bye Blackbird,” and “Alabamy Bound.” Now that I think about it—it must have been more than a little out of the ordinary for a six-and-a-half-year-old to be picking up on the obscure musical references (“Well, I’m Alabamy bound”) in Bugs Bunny cartoons. And I was even able to play the basic chords to the song on the banjo! My dad—who has the same name as I do, although everyone called him Bucky, short for “Buckskin,” a nickname bestowed by his c01.indd 2 9/20/2012 8:36:35 PM WHEN I WAs A LITTLE BOY 3 onetime Texas cowhand father who eventually settled on the plains of Paterson—would often sit in with his uncles, usually playing Uncle Pete’s guitar. I recall sitting at their feet, staring at their hands, and thinking, How do they do it? How do they even know what strings to play? The force of the music coming from the three instruments (all unplugged!) literally shook the lamps in the living room, as well as the pots and pans that hung in the kitchen. The sound of the banjos and the guitar during those sing-alongs was as glorious as anything I’d ever heard. It also marked one of the first (of many) moments when I said to myself, This is what I want to do—all the time. Pete and Bobby Domenick were my dad’s mother’s brothers and were the men who taught my father how to play the banjo and guitar. Bobby (born in 1915) lived his life as a professional musician, switching from banjo to guitar and spending the better part of two decades on the road with several big bands—including those of Bob Chester (where Sinatra sang before he signed with Tommy Dorsey), Buddy Rogers My uncle Bobby (front with banjo) and Uncle Pete (second row) taught me how to play banjo and guitar, just as they taught my father before me. c01.indd 3 9/20/2012 8:36:35 PM 4 WORLD ON A STRING (Mary Pickford’s husband), and Clyde McCoy, whose relatives liked to drop the gloves with the Hatfields. Bobby also spent time with pianist and bandleader Raymond Scott, whose music was arranged and adapted by the incredible Carl Stalling for use in hundreds of Warner Brothers cartoons. Few people remem- ber these bands of the thirties and forties, but they were all fairly popu- lar name bands in their day. Throughout those years, Bobby would return home from his tours “looking like a million bucks,” according to Bucky, always dressed in a spiffy suit and two-toned shoes, driving a new Buick, and sporting a glamorous actress or singer on his arm. He’d also bring home “a suitcase full of stories” and a slew of cutting-edge chords and harmonics he’d learned from other musicians, which he couldn’t wait to share with his brother Peter and my father. When Bobby came off the road permanently, he was able to sup- port himself and Aunt Anita with steady studio work in the fifties and sixties (which included sessions with Louis Armstrong), as well as in duo acts with one of “the Joes”—either the blind accordion player, pianist, organist, songwriter (“Nowhere,” “Have Another One, Not Me,” “Meet Me at No Special Place”), and underappreciated vocalist Joe Mooney, or the jazz violinist and All-World practical joker Joe Venuti. Because Mooney was blind, and his small groups did not use sheet music, he’d call out the licks and the chords to his sidemen—or just allow them to feel where things were going. Bucky was steeped in this tradition—he first recorded with Mooney in 1951—and always emphasized to my brother Martin and me the importance of listening closely to hear the changes. As for Joe Venuti—more on him later. His recordings with Eddie Lang are the gold standard among records made by early guitarists. Bobby never missed an opportunity to credit Uncle Pete’s support of the family back home for making his own professional career possible. Having remained at home to work in the silk mills of Passaic, New Jersey, Peter (b. 1908) came to be my dad’s primary teacher and men- tor throughout the thirties and forties. Many years later I would learn of Uncle Pete’s impeccable reputation among professional musicians, even though his full-time job limited him to weekend club dates and c01.indd 4 9/20/2012 8:36:35 PM WHEN I WAS A LITTLE BOY 5 weddings. He won particularly favorable recognition from none other than my dad’s good pal and our frequent houseguest, electric guitar pioneer Les Paul, who lived nearby in Mahwah, New Jersey, in those days. Somehow Uncle Bobby and Uncle Pete found themselves hired as the opening act for Les at an outdoor gig in northern New Jersey— outside a firehouse—and their playing that day threatened to over- shadow the headliner. But Les encouraged the brothers and wanted to hear more, the result being Banjorama, a record on Mercury released in the late fifties featuring my father, pianist Dick Hyman (credited as “The Renowned Ricardo”), Uncle Bobby, and Uncle Pete, led by guitar/banjo ace Carmen Mastren (original price: $2.98). Sporting one of the coolest LP album covers out there, it’s worth the ten dollars you’ll pay for it on eBay, a bargain for the album art alone. Fun fact: Mastren spent some time in the 1930s working for an R. Crumb Hero of Jazz, Joe “Wingy” Mannone, the one-armed trumpet player, bandleader—and author (Trumpet on the Wing). From the Banjorama sessions came the story Les would often tell about Uncle Pete, who, while a music veteran, had not spent a lot of time in recording studios. Mortified at hitting an off-note close to the conclusion of one of the Banjorama cuts, Peter became upset and began apologizing personally and profusely to everyone in the studio, which meant the spectators, the maintenance staff, and sixty-seven banjo players—only a slight exaggeration. He probably would have begun a second complete lap around the apology circuit had Les not explained to him that he’d fix things—they’d simply splice from an earlier cut or have Peter redo a few seconds of his part.