Growing Up as an Untalented Musician in an Italian American Town

I wrote an article on E. Rossi & Company in Little Italy, NYC for the Red Hook Star Revue a while ago. Sometime later, I received an email from someone who’d read the article and felt strongly enough to write to me about it. That person, Janice Aubrey, told me that when her mother visited NYC, she used to go to E. Rossi & Company to buy music, religious statues, and other Italian specialty items to take back to Pennsylvania with her. Janice wrote that the article reminded her of her Italian upbringing. She added that she wanted to send me a book called Bands! which her brother, Joe (“Jody”) DeVivo, had written. Bands! centered around music in New Castle, the small town in Pennsylvania where her family was from. The book was never officially published for the mass market but was sold on Amazon for a while. She’d be thrilled for other people to read it, especially someone like me, who was interested in the history of Italian American music.

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I wrote back saying that I was moving and maybe now wasn’t the best time to send it. I looked up Janice’s name; I couldn’t find any information on her. Not on Facebook or anywhere else. To be honest, I was also a little concerned about giving my address to someone I didn’t know.
Janice replied saying that Jody had recently died; she was disappointed she could not share his book with me.

This hit me right in the heart; I immediately asked her to send the book.
When I received Bands! I was completely surprised. It was not at all conventional. It was broken up into small autobiographical stories about New Castle and the DeVivo family. The stories were hysterical. And the illustrations were wonderful.

Bands! is about a section of New Castle known as Mahoningtown. Mahoningtown consisted, at least at that time, of mostly southern Italian immigrants. And nearly everyone, or so it seemed to Jody, was a spectacular musician. Everyone, except for poor young Jody.
As I read the book, I realized that Janice was mentioned as well.
I wrote to her and asked, You’re a musician too?
She replied saying her career was winding down now, but she’d been a pianist and music director and conductor for over forty years. This was getting interesting. This story was too good to not explore further. We had to talk.
We then arranged to speak on the phone.
“You come from a musical family?”
“Yes, my father played the guitar and mandolin and sang; and he was the choir director at a large church in New Castle. My two older sisters had studied piano and many of my cousins and uncles were good musicians. Jody played the clarinet and sax; but not very well (as he admits in his book).
“Where did your father come from?”
“My father, Joseph DeVivo was born in Cese, Italy in 1903. Then he moved to the U.S. with his family in 1912.” In those times, like many other southern Italians, her grandfather had first traveled alone to New Castle to work on the railroads, leaving his family behind. But as soon as he made enough money, he sent for his wife and children to come join him.
“Was your mother a musician?”
“No, but my mother loved music. She loved to listen to the Italian music programs on the radio and would order the sheet music she heard on those shows from E. Rossi & Company. Then I could play the songs and help my father learn them. Janice paused. “My parents met when they both sang in the church choir as teenagers. My mother fell in love with the way Joe could entertain everybody with his music,” she added giggling. “It didn’t hurt that he was very handsome; he looked like Al Pacino.”
“You’re a good pianist, but you mentioned that you have strong sight-reading skills. How did you learn to sight-read?”
“I started to study the piano in the second grade. Since my older sisters had studied piano, we had stacks of music in the house. I sat for hours playing through the piles of sheet music. I didn’t realize that by doing this I was developing my sight-reading skills. It soon became evident that I could learn music more quickly than most. I also have to admit that I was also a little bit of a showoff. When I would sit at the piano to practice in the summer, I would purposely leave the door open so everyone in the neighborhood could hear me. I guess I was getting in touch with the fact that it feels good to be able to entertain an audience.”
“What happened when people discovered you were a good pianist who could read music so quickly?”
“I was asked to provide accompaniment for instrumental lessons in school and that continued all the way through high school — music competitions, choral concerts, etc. When I sat down to play a new piece of music, I could easily see the music in my head and anticipate the way it should sound. But it wasn’t only about playing notes. When I played, I tried to communicate what I thought the composer intended for the audience to hear. That instinct seemed to come naturally. I guess this is why some people ‘play instruments’ and others ‘make music.’”
“This is where your music career started?”

“I started to work with performers at a college in Youngstown and also with local theater groups. Then, one summer day I got a call from a girl I had worked with who was working for a brand-new summer stock company in Warren, Ohio. It was called the Kenley Players, a professional theater company that presented hit Broadway shows to ‘the hinterlands’ using New York singers and dancers with popular movie and TV celebrities in major roles. They needed a rehearsal pianist so I auditioned and that began what would become an almost 25-year association with the Kenley Players. The Kenley circuit grew in popularity and expanded to become a four-theater circuit: Warren, Dayton and Columbus, Ohio and Flint, MI, then later in Akron, OH.
“The people I worked with there would be very influential to my career and many remain friends to this day. I think my first show was ‘Bells Are Ringing.’ It was the early 60s; I was paid $100 a week, which was a lot of money for me. (Imagine — I was being paid to do something I loved and would gladly have done for FREE!) With Mr. Kenley’s support I eventually became an Assistant Musical Director (AMD) and then was asked to become one of his conductors. Being a woman conductor was something very new in those days.

“By this time, I had married and moved to Youngstown, Ohio and was raising a family. I was then hired to be Music Director at the Youngstown Playhouse where they mounted two major musicals during a season. I also was hired by a local Jewish Temple to play for their annual Broadway musical. It was there where I was Assistant Music Director to the music director, Shy Lockson. Shy owned his own tailor shop, but he had toured with his own dance band in the 1940s and was active in the local musician’s union. When he learned how much the Youngstown Playhouse was paying me, he sat me down and taught me how I needed to ask for more money. This was an especially important lesson for me since I was never particularly good at asking for the money I deserved. Music was always too much fun!”
“Does a good pianist or sight-reader necessarily make a good conductor?”
“They’re related and those skills do help but being a conductor involves far more. You need to be able to communicate to the musicians using your hands, arms, and body. There are plenty of conductors who can beat time and hold things together; but others, like a Leonard Bernstein, can inspire their players to play their best by using their entire body and personal energy. A good conductor looks out from the podium at the sea of musician’s faces and determines how to cue them to play in a way that will help them create the most beautiful sound at just the right time. The conductor tries to do this by making the musician feel safe, so that they can play their absolute best. And this all happens in real-time.”
“You also toured Europe?”

“I began touring in Europe in 1997 after I had visited my husband David Shoup in Zurich. He was working for a production company based in Berlin and at that time was playing guitar for an ‘Evita’ tour. I knew the Musical Director of ‘Evita’ from the Kenley Players and he asked me to join this tour as his Assistant Music Director. The German producers liked my work and when ‘Evita’” was about to close, they asked me if I would like to go on a year-and-a-half tour of ‘West Side Story’ which would begin rehearsals in one week. This then was the start of another over 20-year association with this German-based company.
“When I joined ‘West Side Story’ I was hired to assist another conductor I’d met at the Kenley Players. The tour traveled to many cities in Germany, Switzerland, France, Austria, and Italy. Many of those cities I would re-visit in the coming years and they began to feel like home. The whole company, band included, travelled by bus. After ‘West Side Story’ closed, the producer mounted a production of ‘Grease, das Musical’ which became extremely popular and was his biggest money maker. At some point, the ‘Grease’ conductor was fired, and I was asked to become the conductor. The producer particularly liked the way I could work with the singers to offer them vocal help — teaching them to relax their throats or show them how to reach notes they thought they could not; helping them to give their best musical performance. I was a vocal coach of sorts.”
“Did you ever work in New York City?”
“I didn’t have too many connections in New York City, but I conducted lots of tours that emanated from NYC and then headed out across the country. I was what many call a ‘Road Rat.’ While I was living in Cleveland where I’d been Music Director for a small opera company, I was invited to conduct one of the earlier National Tours of ‘Annie.’ After that tour, my husband and I moved to New York. More tours followed including more productions of ’West Side Story.’ The most recent professional job I did was at Westchester Broadway Theater. It was ‘An American in Paris.’ The conductor was a good friend and he asked if I would play the keyboard. Little did I realize when it closed in November of 2018 that this would be my last foray into musical theater. Enter Covid 19.”
After my conversation with Janice, I brought my wife, Arielle and my ten-year-old son, Travis to Brooklyn Heights to meet her and David. After a long lunch, we went to their house to continue our conversation. I was a little worried that Travis would be bored. But Janice seemed to know just what to do. She invited Travis to sit down at the piano in her living room. And miraculously, he started to play. And his playing sounded good. It wasn’t the usual clunking of keys that kids do. He played actual melodies and chords that he invented, and the sounds were pleasing.

“I’m surprised,” I said. “I didn’t think he would take to the piano. He takes guitar lessons, but he kind of drags himself through them.”
“Something told me that he might like to sit down and play,” said Janice. “If you’d like, I can hear that he’s musical and I’d be happy to give him lessons.”
And I thought to myself, and this all happened from a writing piece in the Red Hook Star Revue. Not only is our continued story yet to be written, but Joe (Jody) DeVivo’s story now has a new life.

For copies of Bands! Or for more information, please write to Mike Fiorito at www.FallingFromTrees.info