Photo Credit: © Can Stock Photo Credit: Inc. / araraadt
Long past midnight at the ripe old age of 13 as I hid under the covers of my bed, I happened across a late-night AM jazz station. Through the little speaker of my Japanese import, I heard the sounds of a very young horn player named Chuck Mangione. His quartet was playing some of the most unique-sounding jazz I had ever heard (The Land of Make Believe, 1973), and I knew right then that my interest in playing drums had increased tenfold with the notion that I could one day make magical music like that.
The next morning, I did a little research. Mangione was not playing a trumpet, but a flugelhorn. It had a wider distance between the bends of the brass, and it provided a richer, deeper sound—very unique at the time. Since he was Italian like me, his talent was twice as attractive as I really sought out any musicians whom I felt I had something in common. “Was this really a direction a man could take with his life?” I pondered. “Could I make a living doing something so pleasurable?”
Musical Inspiration
That day I pedaled my bike to the local music store and bought Mangione’s album; I played it until it started to skip in places and needed cleaning from accumulated needle dust. Mom was impressed. It wasn’t the typical, blasting hard rock that most of my peers were addicted to at the time. It was handsome, refined, emotional, sensitive music, stuff I wanted to play one day.