Hyfler/Rosner
2003-12-31 23:53:36 UTC
A great obit.
Nicola Paone, 88, Italian Troubadour
SINGER OF FOLK SONGS OWNED POPULAR MANHATTAN RESTAURANT
By STEPHEN MILLER Staff Reporter of the Sun
Nicola Paone, who died Christmas day at age 88, had a career as the
sauciest of Italian singers before settling down to run one of the top
Italian restaurants in the city for 40 years.
To Italian immigrants of the 1940s and 1950s, Paone was the troubadour
responsible for sentimental folk songs like "Uei Paesano" ("My Countrymen"),
which ran in part:
Are you from Napoli, Pugliese,
maybe Sardo or Calbrese, Locano
or Siciliano?
It doesn't matter, you are Italian.
For Americans of all ethnicities, he was the charming Italian novelty
singer of "The Telephone No Ring" and "The Big Professor," which went:
If you wanna be a barber, or a waiter
in this land
You gotta speak the English that's
hard to understand
If you wanna gooda job, don't forget
to come to me
I teach you broken English and you'll
make lotsa money
He sold millions of records in America and abroad,especially in
Argentina, where he also made a film version of "Uei Paesano."
His self-named restaurant was long listed among the handful of top-flight
Italian eateries in Manhattan. It became a favorite of the staff of National
Review, which had offices nearby.
Paone was born in 1915 to Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania's coal belt,
where his father worked the mines for 20 years. His mother recognized his
vocal talents early on, and encouraged him to sing traditional Italian folk
tunes that would serve as his musical inspiration.
The family returned to Sicily in 1923, where he imbibed local folk
culture. Paone said it was at this time that he began to compose little
melodies to distract himself from his troubles. In 1931, he moved back to
America and settled in the Bronx with a sister. There, he worked as a
shoe-shine boy, a hat blocker,and a busboy at an Italian restaurant.
Dreaming of becoming an opera singer, Paone won amateur contests at local
theaters and radio stations, and sang in commercials. Lacking the money for
formal training, he learned the jeweler's trade. He opened a jewelry store
in 1942 while he was nurturing a part-time singing career for Italian
American audiences on the side.At one point. he bought a 10-minute radio
advertisement for his jewelry store in which he sang as "Il Cantante
Misterioso" ("The Mysterious Singer").
His compositions - eventually there would be more than 150 of them -
concerned the lives of immigrants in the new world struggling to get ahead
and send money home to the old country.Titles included "Tony the Iceman,"
"The Subway Song," and "Yakity Yak Blah Blah Blah," about a nagging wife:
Yakity,Yak, blah, blah, blah, blah
That's all you'll hear all day
If Tony tells his wife, "I'll take you
out," she'll say "What for?
I think you just don't like to stay with
me at home no more."
But if she likes to go some place, and
he don't want to go,
She cries, "You never take me anywhere, you so and so!"
By the mid-1940s, Paone had begun his own record label, Etna, and was
scoring hits, including the several-million-selling "The Telephone No Ring,"
which Professor Victor Greene, in "A Passion for Polka." described as "the
story of a frustrated foreigner who is trying unsuccessfully to cope with an
officious telephone operator and the complexities of modern communications
technology."
Paone became impresario of his own vaudeville troop. Hiring out the
Brooklyn Academy of Music in the later 1940s,his act included
comics,midgets, and a bear act.
His success spread back to Italy, as well as into Italian communities as
farflung as Israel and Argentina.In Buenos Aires, he once sang to a crowd
estimated at three-quarters of a million. When the boisterous throngs
threatened to riot, he was credited with calming them by singing "Uei
Paesano."
In the 1950s, Paone became involved in a legal wrangle with Louis Prima,
originally a jazz musician who had turned to Italian dialect novelty tunes
like "Please No Squeeza da Banana." Prima's recording of "The Little
Donkey" - a minor 1940s hit for Paone in Italian as "U' Sciccardeu" - seemed
to Paone a direct copyright violation. The two reached a negotiated
settlement, but Paone became convinced Prima was cheating on the
agreement.The affair seemed to dampen his interest in show business.
Although he was still charting singles by the late 1950s - "Blah, Blah,
Blah" hit no. 1 in the Cash Box magazine song charts of 1959 - he determined
to quit to spend more time with his wife and young son, whom he said he
hardly recognized after years of touring.
In 1958, he opened his eponymous restaurant on East 34th Street, and it
soon grew into a bastion of classical Italian cookery, with the owner
manning the stove at times and contributing favorite recipes with names like
"Veal Boom-Boom" and "Pasta Serenata." While he rarely performed - making
exceptions for brief tours of Argentina in the late 1960s and some charity
gigs in the late 1980s - he could be found in the restaurant at the start of
each day plucking his guitar and singing softly. Some mornings, he would
sing his changing menu in radio ads on WQXR. He celebrated the restaurant's
Caesar salad with a cute ditty:
Put the salt and put the pepper and the vinegar just thus Put the oil and
put the garlic, garlic is salubrious
The whole thing ran to 16 verses. In a 1978 review of the restaurant,
William F. Buckley, the National Review's editor,opined,"I can name my
favorite restaurant as glibly as I can name my favorite wife, country,
religion, and journal of opinion." Buckley found Paone's zucchini
particularly piquant. So enamored was Buckley of Paone that he named a
character for him in his novel "Spy Time: The Undoing of James Jesus
Angleton."
Paone retired from the restaurant in 1998 and recently moved to New
Mexico to live near his son Joseph. Sadly, Joseph died suddenly in August,
and Paone's last days were in some ways more melancholy than any of his
laments of an immigrant for his mother back in the old country.
Nicola Paone
Born in 1915 in Barnsboro, Pa.; died December 25 in New Mexico of
pneumonia; survived by his wife, Dalia, two grandchildren, and three
sisters, Antonia Antonazzo, Nicolina Imperiele, and Nina Licata.
Nicola Paone, 88, Italian Troubadour
SINGER OF FOLK SONGS OWNED POPULAR MANHATTAN RESTAURANT
By STEPHEN MILLER Staff Reporter of the Sun
Nicola Paone, who died Christmas day at age 88, had a career as the
sauciest of Italian singers before settling down to run one of the top
Italian restaurants in the city for 40 years.
To Italian immigrants of the 1940s and 1950s, Paone was the troubadour
responsible for sentimental folk songs like "Uei Paesano" ("My Countrymen"),
which ran in part:
Are you from Napoli, Pugliese,
maybe Sardo or Calbrese, Locano
or Siciliano?
It doesn't matter, you are Italian.
For Americans of all ethnicities, he was the charming Italian novelty
singer of "The Telephone No Ring" and "The Big Professor," which went:
If you wanna be a barber, or a waiter
in this land
You gotta speak the English that's
hard to understand
If you wanna gooda job, don't forget
to come to me
I teach you broken English and you'll
make lotsa money
He sold millions of records in America and abroad,especially in
Argentina, where he also made a film version of "Uei Paesano."
His self-named restaurant was long listed among the handful of top-flight
Italian eateries in Manhattan. It became a favorite of the staff of National
Review, which had offices nearby.
Paone was born in 1915 to Italian immigrants in Pennsylvania's coal belt,
where his father worked the mines for 20 years. His mother recognized his
vocal talents early on, and encouraged him to sing traditional Italian folk
tunes that would serve as his musical inspiration.
The family returned to Sicily in 1923, where he imbibed local folk
culture. Paone said it was at this time that he began to compose little
melodies to distract himself from his troubles. In 1931, he moved back to
America and settled in the Bronx with a sister. There, he worked as a
shoe-shine boy, a hat blocker,and a busboy at an Italian restaurant.
Dreaming of becoming an opera singer, Paone won amateur contests at local
theaters and radio stations, and sang in commercials. Lacking the money for
formal training, he learned the jeweler's trade. He opened a jewelry store
in 1942 while he was nurturing a part-time singing career for Italian
American audiences on the side.At one point. he bought a 10-minute radio
advertisement for his jewelry store in which he sang as "Il Cantante
Misterioso" ("The Mysterious Singer").
His compositions - eventually there would be more than 150 of them -
concerned the lives of immigrants in the new world struggling to get ahead
and send money home to the old country.Titles included "Tony the Iceman,"
"The Subway Song," and "Yakity Yak Blah Blah Blah," about a nagging wife:
Yakity,Yak, blah, blah, blah, blah
That's all you'll hear all day
If Tony tells his wife, "I'll take you
out," she'll say "What for?
I think you just don't like to stay with
me at home no more."
But if she likes to go some place, and
he don't want to go,
She cries, "You never take me anywhere, you so and so!"
By the mid-1940s, Paone had begun his own record label, Etna, and was
scoring hits, including the several-million-selling "The Telephone No Ring,"
which Professor Victor Greene, in "A Passion for Polka." described as "the
story of a frustrated foreigner who is trying unsuccessfully to cope with an
officious telephone operator and the complexities of modern communications
technology."
Paone became impresario of his own vaudeville troop. Hiring out the
Brooklyn Academy of Music in the later 1940s,his act included
comics,midgets, and a bear act.
His success spread back to Italy, as well as into Italian communities as
farflung as Israel and Argentina.In Buenos Aires, he once sang to a crowd
estimated at three-quarters of a million. When the boisterous throngs
threatened to riot, he was credited with calming them by singing "Uei
Paesano."
In the 1950s, Paone became involved in a legal wrangle with Louis Prima,
originally a jazz musician who had turned to Italian dialect novelty tunes
like "Please No Squeeza da Banana." Prima's recording of "The Little
Donkey" - a minor 1940s hit for Paone in Italian as "U' Sciccardeu" - seemed
to Paone a direct copyright violation. The two reached a negotiated
settlement, but Paone became convinced Prima was cheating on the
agreement.The affair seemed to dampen his interest in show business.
Although he was still charting singles by the late 1950s - "Blah, Blah,
Blah" hit no. 1 in the Cash Box magazine song charts of 1959 - he determined
to quit to spend more time with his wife and young son, whom he said he
hardly recognized after years of touring.
In 1958, he opened his eponymous restaurant on East 34th Street, and it
soon grew into a bastion of classical Italian cookery, with the owner
manning the stove at times and contributing favorite recipes with names like
"Veal Boom-Boom" and "Pasta Serenata." While he rarely performed - making
exceptions for brief tours of Argentina in the late 1960s and some charity
gigs in the late 1980s - he could be found in the restaurant at the start of
each day plucking his guitar and singing softly. Some mornings, he would
sing his changing menu in radio ads on WQXR. He celebrated the restaurant's
Caesar salad with a cute ditty:
Put the salt and put the pepper and the vinegar just thus Put the oil and
put the garlic, garlic is salubrious
The whole thing ran to 16 verses. In a 1978 review of the restaurant,
William F. Buckley, the National Review's editor,opined,"I can name my
favorite restaurant as glibly as I can name my favorite wife, country,
religion, and journal of opinion." Buckley found Paone's zucchini
particularly piquant. So enamored was Buckley of Paone that he named a
character for him in his novel "Spy Time: The Undoing of James Jesus
Angleton."
Paone retired from the restaurant in 1998 and recently moved to New
Mexico to live near his son Joseph. Sadly, Joseph died suddenly in August,
and Paone's last days were in some ways more melancholy than any of his
laments of an immigrant for his mother back in the old country.
Nicola Paone
Born in 1915 in Barnsboro, Pa.; died December 25 in New Mexico of
pneumonia; survived by his wife, Dalia, two grandchildren, and three
sisters, Antonia Antonazzo, Nicolina Imperiele, and Nina Licata.