I Can Hear The Music: The Life of Gene DiNovi

Chapter Five

By the time I was thirteen, music and the piano were close to the only things I thought about.

    At school one day, at Our Lady of Guadalupe, I persuaded the kid who sat behind me in class to play on his ruler as if the ruler was a bass, while I played on my desk top as if it was a piano keyboard. The teacher walked over, Sister Philothia, and asked me what I thought I was doing on the desk when I was supposed to be studying.

    "I'm playing Tea for Two in A-flat," I said.

    Sister Philothia phoned my mother to come to the school. When my mother heard what I'd been up to-playing Tea for Two on a desk!-she shrugged. She had already grown used to her wayward son who thought only of music.

Thirteen was the age when I picked out my first tune on a real piano, not on a desk top. It happened one day when Joe Gaudioso was over at our house for a celebration of some kind. He played a catchy tune called Yes, My Darling Daughter. 

    I'd already heard the song on the radio because it had been a hit in 1940 for Dinah Shore. She was just starting her career, and she'd won a spot as a regular on Eddie Cantor's weekly radio show. Everybody listened to Cantor's show. He was a guy who sang in a full-blast Al Jolson style, and he knew how to handle a comedy line. Eddie happened to have a pretty sharp ear for songs, and when he heard a particular Ukrainian folk song, he bought the rights to it and hired a guy named Jack Lawrence to write English lyrics for the tune. Cantor's motivation in all of this was that he saw the song as perfect for Dinah Shore. That was how Dinah came to record Yes, My Darling Daughter ("Mother, may I go out dancing?/Yes, my darling daughter/Mother, may I try romancing?/Yes, my darling daughter"). The record sold a half million copies, and Joe Gaudioso was one guy who chose the song as something to play for his own audiences.

    When Joe did it at the party in our house, I listened very carefully, and I watched like a hawk to see where his hands were on the keyboard. Finally the party ended, and I got my chance at the piano. I sat down and didn't get up until I could play the tune through perfectly. It was the first song I picked out on my own, Yes My Darling Daughter in G minor.

    Years later, I worked with Dinah Shore, most memorably for me on a tour to Russia in 1967. I told her Yes, My Darling Daughter was a first of a special kind for me. I told her the whole story, and she thought it was pretty cute. We performed it on the Russian tour where the local musicians always pointed out that the song wasn't Russian. It was-horrors!-Ukrainian.

Another tune from the same period that stuck in my head was called Oh! Red. I learned it in a round about way, which is how a jazz musician picks up a lot of songs. In 1940, my sister Marianne got married to Louie Coppola, and as a wedding present, somebody gave them a handsome little brown and white victrola. "Victrola" was the fancy name for a record player in those days. With the brown and white victrola, the shop threw in a 78 rpm record for free.

    The record, on the Decca label, was by Count Basie with his famous rhythm section, Basie on piano, Freddie Green on guitar, Walter Page on bass and Jo Jones on drums. On one side was a tune called Fare Thee Well, Honey, Fare Thee Well, and on the other was the number that blew me away, Oh! Red.

    The tune was just a sixteen-bar pattern, close to the simplicity of the blues. What I loved was the cohesion of the rhythm section, the way the four players jelled. Almost all other rhythm sections back then sounded coarse to me. They thumped along. Just thump, thump, thump. But Basie and his rhythm section had length, and I loved their sound. I couldn't get enough of Oh! Red. I went over to my newly married sister's apartment, and listened to the record on her victrola until I had the whole thing stamped on my brain. It was actually a fairly obscure tune. Basie never recorded it again. I'm not sure that he or anybody else even played it at concerts or dances. It was a one-off number, but it was terrific.