Gene Di Novi played piano for the greats of the 20th Century: Lena Horne, Peggy Lee, Benny Goodman, Artie Shaw, Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker.
This is his biography spoken to the fine writer Jack Batten.
"I played piano with Bird and Diz...
Everybody in the family thought my mother might not survive my birth. They didn't think I'd survive either.
My mother had already given birth to five kids. The last of the five, Anthony, was born in 1918, and in the years after his birth, my mother suffered from internal problems that needed all kinds of surgery. In the following years, it wasn't considered safe for her to think about having any more children. But, to everybody's surprise, almost a decade after Anthony was born, with my mother getting close to forty, she became pregnant with me. In late May of 1928, when she went into Brooklyn Hospital, there was a lot of question whether she and I would live through the trauma of her giving birth yet again.
The situation got worse when my mother's doctor didn't show up at the hospital. This was the doctor who had been looking after her during the pregnancy and was supposed to see her through the possibly dangerous birth. But at the crucial time, the guy wasn't anywhere to be seen in the hospital.
Another doctor stepped in and took charge. His name was Eugene Anderson, and he must have been a topnotch medical person, close to a miracle worker, because with him overseeing the birth, I entered the world on May 26, a healthy baby. My mother may have been exhausted from the ordeal, but her health held up too. She remained in such good shape that she lived to the age of ninety-one.
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My father wanted to name his newly born son Rudolf after the famous Hollywood movie star, born in Italy, Rudolf Valentino. Valentino died in 1926, just thirty-one years old, but he was still worshipped by movie fans, especially if they were Italian-American. My father thought Rudolph was the ideal name for me. It was my mother who nixed that choice. She had a better idea. She named me after the man who had probably saved her life and mine.
That's how I became Eugene. Eugene Salvatore Patrick DiNovi in full.
My father, Antonio, was born in 1884 in the small Italian town of Campagna. The town was set among the mountains in the province of Campania in Southern Italy, not all that far from Naples. My father was orphaned at an early age, and when he turned fourteen, his Italian relatives thought he'd have better chances at a good life if he went to the United States. He sailed by himself from Naples on board a small ship called The Patria, which was built by the Germans and owned by the French. Like millions of other newcomers to the U. S. before and after him, my father landed at Ellis Island in New York Harbour. He settled first in College Point on Long Island where he lived with some cousins. He went to school long enough to get a little American education, but when he was still quite young, he started to work at the American Can Company. The same employer kept my father on its payroll for the rest of his life.
My mother likewise came from a Neapolitan background. Her family's native area was the town of Avellino, which was also in the Campania region, but by the time my mother arrived in the world, her parents had already crossed the Atlantic. My mother was born in 1891 on President Street in Brooklyn. Her parents named her Philomina. Naturally people called her Philly until the day she died.
