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Direct to the source ...
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Sunday Jan 4, 2004
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Vintage photos page
in the Photo Gallery
Notable:
8/4/2002
Kennedy Center
Washington Post
Performance Review
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NICK
LA ROCCA STORY
(Email
& web address located at the bottom of this page.) |
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New
Orleans is a city where one of the highest concentrations of Sicilians
of all the United States, originating in majority from the provinces of
Palermo, Trapani and Agrigento has always lived there.
The
story and the news of this city is in fact studded with an infinite
number of Sicilian surnames, such as Miceli, Bondì, Montalbano, Lentini,
Barone, Cristina, Cacioppo, Tortorici, Russo, Maggiore, Giardina, Di
Maggio, Bonura, Cammarata, Cangemi, Provenzano, Costa, Pizzuto,
Pisciotta, Pecoraro, Matranga, Zito, Gennaro, Monteleone, Giammalva,
Liberto, Palmisano, Margiotta, Schirò, Guarino, Lo Jacono…. and
we could go on copying entirely all surnames contained in the phone
books of half Sicily.
The
explanation of this phenomenon can be found in reading a rare book,
“Voyage from Palermo to New Orleans”, a true and real diary written
in 1897 by Alfonso LoMonaco, a physician on board of the ship
“Montebello”, that around last century’s end was connecting
directly Palermo to New Orleans, assuring with regularity the
promiscuous transportation of passengers and goods, above all citrus
fruits, imitating the “Royal Mail Line” of brothers Giuseppe and
Pietro Torre, sons of the officer commanding the harbor of Palermo who,
having discovered that New Orleans was a very good port of entry for the
distribution of these goods in all the Mississippi Valley, had become
the main importers.
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 The
“Montebello” was a merchant steamship of remarkable dimensions for
that time (she measured 96 meters in length while the central part was
14 meters wide, and in her holds of stem and stern could receive more
than a thousand of emigrants, using a system of berths mountable
according to needs), in 25 days of sailing she carried the citrus fruits
and the Sicilians emigrants in New Orleans and there she loaded cotton
bundles for the return voyage to Sicily.
A
great quantity of this cotton arrived in Palermo was later transferred
by sea or by train to Genoa where a certain cloth was
woven……The
word “jeans" by which is called the characteristic cloth of
the American pants means “of “ Genoa (that is “Gena” or
“Zena” in Genoese dialect), changing the “G” in “J”, making
the metathesis “na” “an” and adding the “s” of the
possessive case, here it comes out the word “jeans”.
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 This
cloth, so called, was in a first place re-imported from Genoa to the
U.S.A., and then initiated and manufactured on a large scale by the
American textile industry.
From the illustration of the “Montebello”’s voyage, meticulously
described by LoMonaco, which took place between December 1895 and
January 1896 we learn that at that time the Italians migrated to New
Orleans were already about 12.000, nearly and exclusively Sicilians, and
that the largest groups were coming from Ustica, Termini Imerese, Cefalù,
Trabìa, Campofelice di Fitalia, Ventimiglia Sicula, Bivona, Agrigento,
Sciacca, Corleone, Contessa Entellina, Piana dei Greci, Monreale,
Trapani and Poggioreale.
They were mostly members of various clubs and benefit societies, such as
the clubs of Contessa Entellina, Piana dei Greci, Termini and Cefalù,
the Society “Cristoforo Colombo”, the Italian Federation “Giuseppe
Garibaldi”, “Francesco Crispi” and “Giovani Bersaglieri”, the
Italian Brotherhood of San Bartolomeo Apostolo, and the Benevolent
Society.
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 In
this bit of Sicily
transplanted
in Louisiana, in 1876 arrived Girolamo
LaRocca (born at Salaparuta on January 17, 1854) with his wife, Vittoria
DiNino, both migrated from Salaparuta (Trapani, Sicily), who established
in this building of 2022 Magazine Street, occupying the ground floor and
the first floor.
Here
Girolamo LaRocca, who had been at Salaparuta a shoemaker and cornet
player in the band of the small town, and having served in the Army as a
corporal-bugler for the Sharpshooters of General LaMarmora, opened at
the ground floor (where a laboratory for the repair of arm-chairs can be
seen) his shop of
shoemaker, while living with his family on the upper floor, reached
through a little door on the left.
In this house four children were born: Rosario, Nick (Dominic James)
Antonia and Maria.
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 This
picture of 1891 shows Girolamo with his children (from left: Antonia,
Nick (on his father’s knees), Maria (seated), and Rosario: Antonia was
playing the mandolin and the guitar, Maria the zither, Rosario the
violin and Pa Girolamo, besides the cornet, also the guitar.
Notwithstanding Pa LaRocca strongly impeded for all life the passion of
the son Nick for the cornet and music, since he wanted that, as a
grown-up, he could become a physician: so Nick was forced to study first
at the St. Alphonsa’s Parochial School and, later, for three years at
the Junior High School of New Orleans.
Here,
as in his hometown in Sicily, Girolamo LaRocca, besides his main
activity of cobbler, had the one of musician: not only for pleasure, but
also to supplement the family budget, always heeled by his young son
Nick who, against the fatherly exhortations to ignore music and to
study, stayed hours and hours listening to him enchanted, particularly
on Sunday morning, when the Italians of New Orleans who, in Italy, had
been Sharpshooters loved to get together under the Spanish Fort, to make
music.
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At
the age of 15 and a half, after his father’s death (October 1904) Nick
could carry out his passion for the cornet and for music in general: his
first work was electrician for the French Opera House, which gave him a
contact with the music world and the money to buy a new cornet replacing
those systematically destroyed by his father.
Nick loved a lot the parade band music, such as the one by John Philip
Sousa, that he daily heard from a gramophone, repeated with the cornet by
ear.
His
first compositions, in fact, the ones that he played after transcribing
them on the stave, to the cashier of this theatre (right in front of his
native house), later transferred in a furniture shop.
In
1905 Nick LaRocca continued to play with various groups and orchestras; he
formed his first orchestra in 1908 having already the clarinetist Larry
Shields, future member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band; they were
playing for a few dollars, also for a few drinks (even if LaRocca was
teetotal)
Nick worked during the day as a shop-keeper, but was also a very
able carpenter, plumber and electrician. At that time he met trombonist
Eddie Edwards, other future member of the Original Dixieland Jazz Band,
whom he met at vaudeville shows, later playing with him in the Braun’s
Military Band. From
1914 Nick and Eddie played with one of the formations of the famous
Reliance Band of Jack “Papa” Laine, a drummer, whose Anglo-Saxon name
concealed the Sicilian native George Vitale (see picture below).
 Laine
was the most popular white musician in New Orleans and with his son Alfred
led personally or administered as an impresario various formations of the
“Reliance” for which he got the performances of nearly all best white
musician of the city.
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One
of this formations (the picture was taken in 1906) shows, seated, Manuel
Belasco and Giuseppe Alessandra (born in Palermo, in 1860) and, standing,
Dave Perkins, Vincent Barocco, Sidney Moore, Pete Pellegrini, Freddie
Neuroth and the leader George Vitale alias Jack “Papa” Laine.
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Between
the end of the 18th century and the beginning of 1900 the music
produced by numerous band ensembles accompanied all moments of some importance
of the city life of New Orleans, even
if the bands formed by coloured musicians were the most numerous (because
more numerous were the coloured people compared to our emigrants), there is no
doubt that their own band tradition, very alive still today in all the South of
Italy, was making easier to our musicians the entrance in the band, rather than
to coloured people.
In December 1915 when Nick was playing with one of the bands of Papa Laine at
the corner between Canal Street and Royal Street in order to publicize a boxing
match between Eddie Coulon and Pete Herman, Harry H. James, owner of a night
club in Chicago, heard Nick playing and, soon after the match was over, went to
Haymarket Café, where LaRocca was playing with the band of drummer Johnny
Stein.
James remained impressed by this music, without a name, but different from the
ragtime heard all day in town, so in the month of
February of the year after he wired from Chicago proposing an engagement
at his Booster’s Club managed by him inside Morrison Hotel.
LaRocca and Stein reorganized the band and went to the North; but soon as they
arrived in the “Windy City”, James had soon to provide the purchase of some
second-hand coats for the numbed musicians proceeding from the warm south.
In this first meeting with the bitter winter in Chicago they found out also that
Booster’s Club had just been closed by the police; Harry James immediately
arranged for the group, then called “John Stein’s Dixie Band”, including, besides
LaRocca and Stein, Alcide Nunez (clarinet), Eddie Edwards (trombone) and
Henry Ragas (piano), a musical audition at the Schiller’s Café in South Side,
the black ghetto of Chicago, bringing a contract for three months at 25 dollars
per week, for each person, a starvation pay, for which the not cunning band did
not
explain how.
Since the enormous success immediately received did not bring to a minimum rise
of pay , LaRocca convinced first of all his companions (except the drummer
Johnny Stein soon replaced by Tony Sbarbaro, a Sicilian native called from New
Orleans), later a judge for the purpose of annulling the contract; so the band,
having assumed the denomination of “Original Dixieland Jass Band”, under the
direction of LaRocca (who replaced the clarinetist Nunez with Larry Shields)
went in the first days of June 1916 to the Del’Abe Café of Hotel Normandy,
located between Clarke and Randolph Street and then, from July, for five months
to Casino Garden, with a growing success granted by fans like Will Rogers, Fanny
Brice, Al Jolson, etc. The latter, arrived in Chicago to act in “Robinson
Crusoe” at the Garrick Theatre, succeeded in having from New York impresario
Max Hart who heard the group, engaged it for three weeks at 750 dollars per
week, to play at Paradise Ballroom in the Reisenweber Building, a restaurant of
Columbus Circle, in New York.
The band made its debut here on January 15, 1917, and two weeks later, on
January 27, at the hall “400” of the Reisenweber night club, with an
incredible success, demonstrated also by the fee’s rise from 750 dollars to
1,000 per week.
As a final demonstration of its spreading popularity (the band played on Sunday night, also in the shows of the “Winter Garden” where Fred Astaire and Ed
Winn were performing, and was often called by Al Jolson to play at private
parties in the most luxurious villas of Long Island) during the performance at
the Reisenweber, impressed the first records of the entire history of jazz.
At that time two firms both manufactures of the first mechanical gramophones
with handle, were competing the growing market of reproduced music: “Columbia
Gramophone Company” and “Victor Talking Machine Company” (later “RCA
Victor”); both in order to push the sales of their own machines were making
records of great stars of the show business (“Columbia”, absolutely had
begun since 1903); but the youngest Victor, thanks to the sales of records of
Caruso and Sousa, became in 1917 the leader industry. “Columbia”,
not wanting to be inferior to the competing firm, thought to secure in that year
the last explosion of Broadway, i.e. the “Original Dixieland Jass Band” of
LaRocca who was accepted in its studios on January 31, 1917, probably for an
audition or for a recording test, that was held in a studio where Columbia
usually was recording
some bow quartets, therefore not equipped for the roaring sounds of the
LaRocca’s bands.
As various musicians of the band remembered united the noise made in a
contiguous studio by some workers in that circumstance, and someone a
remuneration of 250 dollars (i.e. 50 dlrs. Each) before the band’s leave, it
is possible that the recording test was materially made and therefore destroyed
as technically un-publishable. “Victor”
demonstrated its technical superiority even in this primitive phase of
the discographic industry, at a time when there were no microphones or
amplifiers: the sound technician of
“Victor”, Charles Souey, understood that in order to obtain an
appropriate balancing, the musicians had to be placed at different distances
respect to the big pick up’s cone leaving a diameter of 4 feet, according to
the sonorous strength of the respective instruments: so the cornet and the drums
were placed at a distance of 25 feet, the trombone at 15, the clarinet and the
piano closer on account of their weaker sound
“And
when the red light was switched
– remembered LaRocca – we had the
time to count “one-two” and it was a miracle the way as we had to start
together: I don’t know, perhaps the good God was with us.”
The date was February 26, 1917, the pieces, “Dixieland Jass One Step”
and “Livery Stable Blues”; this record published by Victor had a clamorous
success that surpassed those of Caruso and John Philip Sousa: a million and half
of copies sold at 75 cents each.
 All
this happened in 1917, that is 8 years before Louis Armstrong made his first
record; at that time, obviously, there was no TV and the same radio was at its
first lights (just a year earlier, in 1916, Marconi had begun the first
experiments in radio-telegraphy on short waves); for this, the fact that of that
record one million and half copies were sold of that record deserves to
be analyzed for the effect it had not only on the simple listeners but also on
the musicians on that time.
The concordant testimonies given many years later (and, therefore, in a
atmosphere not influenced by contingent interests)
by musicians of that time such as John Wiggs, or Dink Johnson, consent to affirm
that there was the influence of the first records of the Original Dixieland Jazz
Band, and that it was relevant; a consequence of technical character came out:
the alignment of the type of formation of LaRocca’s band (cornet, clarinet,
coulisse trombone, piano and drums) of groups also asserted such as the one of
Kid Ory, where the presence – then frequent – of the violin was abolished,
as personally testified by violinist Manuel Manetta, who was dismissed even if
at the time he was with Joe Oliver one of the two unique musicians of Ory’s
orchestra, able to read the music.
The
elution deriving from the boom of sales of the Victor’s record was however
disturbed by a legal dispute that dissuaded the record company from further engaging the band for that year: the reason was the inclusion by LaRocca of the
piece “Dixieland Jass One Step” of the refrain of “That Teasing Rag”, a
composition of Joe Jordan of 1909.
The
violation of the copyright was corrected – for the formal part – by adding
in the reprints on the record’s label “Introducing That Teasing Rag (J.Jordan)”.
But
it is thought that something happened also for “Livery Stable Blues”, since
the “Barnyard Blues”, recorded later, is practically an identical piece; in
this complex situation Columbia’s initiative to retake the contacts with the
band has to be framed, and is explained also the choice of his managers to
record “Darktown Strutter’s Ball” and “Indiana”, being two pieces
composed by authors strangers to the group, and that, among other things, were
requested by the record dealers.
In
the files of CBS the originals of the registration cards of Columbia have been
found, where May 31, 1917 is indicated as the date of recording of the group of
six matrixes from which come the two with which the Columbia record A2297 was
made (that is “Darktown Strutter’s Ball” by Shelton Brooks and
“Indiana” by James Hanley); therefore, one can reasonably conclude that the
famous Victor record 18255 including “Dixieland Jass One Step” on side A and
“Livery Stable Blues”on side B, is not only the first jazz record
“published”, but also the first ever waxed disc.
On
the wave of the sales’ boom of this record, besides Columbia, also another
record company, the Aeolian, invited LaRocca and his band to record between July
and November 1917 seven pieces (“Barnyard Blues”, “Ostrick Walk”,
“Tiger Rag”, “At the Jazz Band Ball”, “Look at me doin’it now”,
“Oriental Jazz” and “Reisenwerber Rag”), but his particular system of
engraving of the record’s groove (at vertical excursion instead of horizontal)
did not have any following.
In 1918 the band returned to work for Victor; during four
different sessions (18th and 25th March, 25th
June and 17th July) the Original Dixieland Jazz Band recorded 10
pieces, “At the Jazz Band Ball”, “Ostrick Walk”, “Skeleton Jangle”,
“Tiger Rag”, “Bluin’ the Blues”, “Sensation Rag”, “Fidgety
Feet”, “Mournin’ Blues”, “Lazy Daddy” and “Clarinet Marmalade”.
The following jump pf the Original Dixieland Jazz Band from New York to London
is on April 1919; other jazz groups had gone to Europe from the United States,
but it never happened before that a tournèe of 10 weeks (at 1,056 dlrs. a
week|) could be changed in a stay of 17 months on end!
The band, that on the eve of departure for Europe had replaced the pianist Henry
Ragas, deceased for Spanish fever, with J.Russell Robinson, and trombonist
Eddie Edwards, engaged with the military service, with Emile Christian, arrived
in Liverpool from New York on April 1st,1919.
The first contract was at the “Hippodrome” of London, as an attraction
number of the show “Joy Bells”, but the debut real and true took place on
April 14th at the “Palladium”.
From here the band moved to Glasgow, in Scotland, later,
once again, in London, at “Marten Club” (a premise of Old Bond Street that,
for the occasion, changed its own name in “Dixie Club”) and then at
“Rector’s”, at “400 Club” and, finally, at “Palais de Dance” at
Hammersmith (5,800 paying persons!).
The most impressing event of that long stay in London is June 1919, when the
Original Dixieland Jazz Band was chosen as official orchestra of the “Victory
Ball” by which was celebrated at the Savoy Hotel the signature of the
Versailles Treaty putting an end to World War I: LaRocca and his band played in
the presence of George V, of the royal family, of Marshall Foch and of Generals
Pétain and Pershing, surrounded by the entire diplomatic corps and by the high
society of London.
The success is further demonstrated by a Command Performance organized later
at the instigation of Lord Donegall (a noble-man fond of music, friend of the
Prince of Wales), an exhibition reserved exclusively to the members of the
English royal family.
During the English stay Nick LaRocca recorded in London from April 1919 to May
1920 seventeen pieces for the British Columbia, the first eight with Robinson on
piano, and the other nine with the English Billy Jones who, starting the month
of January, took the place until the departure of the band for the States.
In 1921 Larry Shields leaves the orchestra still playing
at Broadway, but even exploiting the arrival of the “charleston”, with lower
remunerations (as a consequence of groups such as “The Memphis Five”) while
the era of “symphonic jazz” of Paul Witheman was coming close dangerously.
The year 1922 gave birth to a strong movement of opinion against jazz. The
Cotillo Act banned dancing after midnight at Broadway, with consequent reduction
of work and pays for the orchestras; in particular, a dance, the “shimmy”
was banned and, more in general, the jazz from all respectable entertainment
premises, while Victor ceased the recording of jazz discs.
Strangely, in countertendency, the radio that in 1923 broadcasted absolutely for
the first time some jazz, calling LaRocca’s group to play.
For
a certain time LaRocca played at Harlem, where the anti-jazz had not yet been
passed, when in January 1925, depressed, dissolved the band to return to New
Orleans, driving personally his Buick; the reason: a strong nervous breakdown,
but also the perpetuation within the orchestra of bitter quarrels that always
occurred among the components and caused, mainly, by the attribution of
paternity of the various original compositions played by the group and,
therefore, by the consequent collection of the royalties from author’s rights.
For ten years, suspending also, on definite doctor's order, any
musical activity, LaRocca devoted himself to the work of building contractor and
refused various jobs, such as contracts and engagements; but, in 1936, having
heard on the radio some of his compositions, decided to demonstrate to the new
generations that the swing music was the old jazz in modern clothes.
He found Larry Shields, inactive like him, in New Orleans for ten years, and
together returned to New York to be reunited with Edwards, Robinson and Sbarbaro.
After three weeks of rehearsals the William Morris Agency signed with them a
contract for the participation to the weekly radio broadcast of Ed Winn, carried
on by NBC Red Network. With the “Tiger Rag” of LaRocca the band attracted
more listeners than of all previous broadcasts, receiving 750 dollars for ten
minutes of work, while offerings of contracts were arriving from anywhere.
Among these, two distinct groups of engraving for Victor, the first one, with a
formation enlarged to 14 elements, that during two sessions of 2 and 9 September
1936 recorded “Bluin’ the Blues”, “Tiger Rag”, “Ostrick Walk”,
“Original Dixieland One Step”, “Satanic Blues”, “Toddlin’ Blues”,
“Who Loves You?” and “Fidgety Feet”; the second group instead, was
realized on November 10, 1936 with the usual formation, recorded the last six
pieces of the band’s history: “Barnyard Blues”, “Original Dixieland One
Step”, “Clarinet Marmalade”, “Bluin’ the Blues”, “Tiger Rag” and
“Skeleton Jangle”.
T
he band was later invited to various radio broadcasts such as the one of Benny
Goodman (who recognized the influence received, as a young man, by the
“Original Dixieland Jazz Band”), to the “Tommy Dorsey’s Radio Show”,
to “Cavalcade of America”, etc.; in 1937 the band participated to the tournée
of a vaudeville of Ken Murray and to the film “March of Time”.
On their return to New Orleans LaRocca and his companions were object of great
welcomes and made also a concert at the St. Charles Theatre, followed by a great
banquet organized by the theatre’s president.
Until 1938 the tournées went on with success, when, on
account of the usual contrasts, LaRocca, after the last exhibition at “Casa
Manana” of Forth Worth, in Texas, dissolved definitely the group and returned
to New Orleans where, having abandoned for ever any musical activity, and retook
the work as building contractor.
A short time later Nick met Ruth Dorothy Petrie, a fantastic Cajun girl of
Thibodaux; it was a Sunday afternoon in the ballroom of the “Capitol”, one
of those cruising river boats sailing on the
Mississippi.
LaRocca, not yet fifty years old, with wavy hair, elegant
and perfect dancer; she, 30 years younger (but already divorced and mother of a
daughter, Virginia, 3 and a half years old), was working as a waitress at
“Meal-A-Mint”, a restaurant of Carondelet Street.
Ruth was beautiful like a movie star: “Nick
asked me for a dance – she remembers –
and, then, another; I told him: You can ask me all”. Her blue eyes spark
when she says of having been captured by a man met for his way of dancing, not
certainly for being a trumpet player. “I
have not met my husband as a musician – asserts Ruth – but
as a carpenter and electrician”.
For
his numerous family Nick built personally, at 2218 Constance Street, the
house where Ruth still lives today; on the main entrance – last
coquetry – set the reproduction on beated iron of the riff of “Tiger
Rag” perhaps the most famous of his compositions.
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They
got married on March 15, 1938 and, during thirteen years together, had
six children: James Carl (1939), Ruth Dorothy (1941), Dominic James
(1943), Jerome Leonard (1944), Carolyn Louise (1946), and Carl (1952).
Of all of them only James, a skilled cornet soloist, goes on today
brightly his father's activity directing a renewed formation of the
mythical “Original Dixieland Jazz Band”.
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Here
Nick LaRocca, for many years carried on the activity of building
contractor until the minimum limit pension (65 years), suffering from
heart since 1958, year when he had to be admitted urgently to an
hospital for an attack of angina pectoris. He dedicated the last years
of his life to compose music, generally songs, among which, in
particular, one. “Give Me That Love” composed for his wife whom he
loved to call simply “Ruthie”, and to attempt to restore the
historical truth about his contribution to the birth of jazz, “the
Truth of God”, used to say, making clear he did not deserve merits not
of his own, but that his work should have the right recognition. LaRocca
died at 3:40 A.M. of 22 February 1961, at the age of 72 years, and rest
in this chapel, most probably built by himself.
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Except
Tulane University (precisely at William Hogan Jazz Archive of which is
curator Bruce Rayburn, son of orchestra leader Boyd Rayburn) that has
received in donation in 1959 the whole archive of Nick LaRocca (2844
pieces among pictures, letters, notes, contracts, posters, records,
films, etc.) where the musician is well worthily remembered, no trace
can be seen in all New Orleans of his passage on this earth and less yet
of what he has done for jazz.
< In an interview of
April 1989 to the New Orleans weekly “Gambit”, Ruth LaRocca so
expressed her regret for this forgetfulness: “Here
is a great statue of Armstrong and a park dedicated to him. Do you think
that a statue or something to remember Nick in his birth town is asking
too much?”
It was this phrase, learned
in 1990 in New Orleans that has pushed me to begin an action of
historical re-exploitation of Nick LaRocca. A first real realization in
Sicily has been done in July 1992, at Salaparuta, Sicilian town of
origin of the LaRocca family, with a “Nick LaRocca Memorial Day”, so
to celebrate, with a convention of studies and a concert by the
“Sicilia Jazz Big Band” directed by myself, the 75th
anniversary of the engraving by LaRocca of the first record of jazz.
In December 1992, always at Salaparuta, with the unveiling of a bronze
bust of Nick LaRocca, realized by the Sicilian sculptor Disma Tumminello,
in the foyer of the “Auditorium Nick LaRocca”, which I inaugurated
with a concert of my “Sicilia Jazz Dixielanders”.
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 In
October 1998 the “Committee in Memory of Nick LaRocca” is constituted
in Palermo, of which I am nominated Secretary-General, and
also a component of the Board, together with Carlo Fernandez, President
of the Rotary Club of East Palermo, the critic Luigi Martini and
Marcello Piras, President of the Society of Studies about Afro-American
Music, among the members of the Committee Mr. Giuseppe LaRocca, Mayor of
Salaparuta and Leoluca Orlando, Mayor of Palermo.
First objective of the Committee has been the one of bringing as a gift
to the “Louisiana State Museum” of New Orleans the second of three
originals of LaRocca’s bronze.
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On
May 6, 1999, together with Carlo Fernandez, Steve Teeter, jazz curator
of the Museum, Ruth LaRocca, with her sons James, Dominic, Ruth and
Carl, and a delegation of 26 Sicilian personalities arrived specially in
New Orleans, with the “Rotary Jazz Tour”, I paid homage to Nick
LaRocca, uncovering the bust that, as said by the Museum’s
presentation card is for the U.S.A. the unique existing in western
hemisphere.
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One
of the pictures of the ceremony shows the LaRocca family reunited (from
left: Ruth, James, Dominic, Mrs. LaRocca, Carl and Claudio Lo Cascio).
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The
initiative of the “Committee in Memory of Nick LaRocca” has been
much appreciated with this letter written by the Museum’s Direction.
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 UPDATE!
The third - and last - LaRocca bronze has been unveiled in the "Vincenzo
Bellini" Palermo Music Conservatory during a "Nick LaRocca Memorial
Day" concluded with a performance in the Conservatory Scarlatti
hall by my "Sicilia Jazz Band", playing eight tunes for orchestra,
recorded by LaRocca in September 1936.
In order to complete the greetings to Nick LaRocca, remains:
a) In Sicily , entitle a street or a public square in Palermo and in Salaparuta
b) In New Orleans, replace the photo located in the airport in which Nick
LaRocca is represented as a musician of the drummer Johnny Stein orchestra with
the one of "Original Dixieland Jazz Band" which in the 1917 recorded
the first disc of the jazz history.
More can be seen at Mr. Claudio Lo Cascio's - Sicilian Jazz
website:
www.sicilyjazz.org
You may also reach Claudio Lo Cascio by email:
celleci@libero.it or clocascio@sicilyjazz.org
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