Gary James' Interview With Frank Reina Of
The Capris



They are best known for a song called "There's A Moon Out Tonight". That song took them to concert halls throughout the United States. And it didn't hurt that Murray The K was a big fan of the group. The group we are speaking about, The Capris. Original member Frank Reina talked to us about his group.

Q - Frank, there is a Capris group today, isn't there?

A - Yes. Unfortunately three of the original members passed away over the last six or seven years. There is another original member left, but he lives in Arizona and he hasn't been with the group since 1962. Unfortunately I lost the lead singer about eight years ago. We got a new lead singer, Wayne Smith. He was with us about eight years or so and unfortunately he passed away. So now we got a new guy, Michael D'Amore. He was a local guy in New Jersey with a band called Yesterdays, but he lives in Florida now. He does a one man show down there. He's terrific. He's only forty-nine years old. He's been singing this music for years. Big guy. About six foot, three. My guitar player and drummer have been with me for thirty years or so and they sing with the group. And my bass player, John Monforte. We got a pretty good group going.

Q - How's the work situation?

A - We've been working pretty steady the last couple years. It's gotten better over the last few years and we keep on goin'. That's it.

Q - The venues you would be performing in would be theaters as well as cruises?

A - Yes. We're doing theatre shows. We did one cruise already with Rocky And The Rollers from Florida in February (2019) and now we're doing another one with him in November (2019). We're doing two more in February, back-to-back. We do some private parties in-between. The people are still coming out. As long as the people are still coming out, we're gonna go. (laughs) It's when they stop coming out you back off a little bit. Go with the flow. That's it.

Q - Do The Capris owe much of their success to Murray The K? He played your record, "There's A Moon Out Tonight" quite a bit on his radio show.

A - What happened with "There's A Moon Out Tonight" is we recorded that in 1958 on Planet Records. Unfortunately the record company didn't do anything with it. It laid on the shelf and we had broken up in the meantime. We thought we were going to have a hit record, but unfortunately we didn't. Two years later there was a record store in New York called Time Square Records. It's not there anymore. There was a young guy, Jerry Greene, who was working there and he comes across the record on Planet Records. He said, "Wow! This is a terrific song. Nobody did nothing with this." So, how smart he was, him and his friends chipped in and they bought the master tape from Planet Records and they put it on their own label, Lost Nite Records, and he gets in on the radio. I don't know how he did that, but he gets it on the radio. I was driving down the street one day in my neighborhood. I had the radio on and all of a sudden there it is. It came right on the radio. (laughs) I had to pull over. I was flabbergasted. Right away we called each other up and we got back together, one, two, three and that was it. We started playing around, entertaining all over the place.

Q - When Jerry Greene bought the master tapes, what did it mean in terms of royalties for you guys?

A - We didn't get royalties. Well, we did get royalties. What happened was Lost Nite Records, if you got it on the radio, the song started picking up around the country and it was a small company. He couldn't handle the distribution all over the country, so he turned it over to Old Town Records in New York City, Hy Weiss. Hy Weiss had that national distribution. Number one in pretty much most of the country. We hit number three on Billboard. But we got some royalties afterwards with Old Town Records. Nothing to brag about, but back then nobody made any money. I know everybody in the business. We worked with so many people over the years and most of them tell you the same thing, they never made any money back then.

Q - But, somebody made the money.

A - Oh, yeah.

Q - I don't know who they were.

A - Exactly. Look at Little Richard, all the hit records he had. He used to complain they screwed him out of a lot of money. The money's great, but the performing end of it keeps you going. The group is so solid now that we get a standing ovation at the end of every show we do. You know what it is? It's the end of "There's A Moon Out Tonight", the falsetto, with the lead singer and the background harmony, people just stand up. It's terrific. It's still good. We're still doing it.

Q - How many records did "There's A Moon Out Tonight" sell?

A - (laughs) It must have sold half a million at least, but we got a count for 125,000.

Q - That's the official count?

A - That's the count we got. How would we know if it sold a million or a hundred thousand? That was it. We were just happy to have a hit record. That was our goal. Doo Wop singers, that's their goal, to have a hit record, and we're lucky. And how lucky we were, in 1982 we got a call from a promoter, Marty Pacar, that he wanted to do an album with five different Doo Wop groups and ours was one of 'em. So, we had split with the original lead singer, Nick Santo, years before. We called him up and said, "Listen Nick, they want to do an album on us. Do you want to come back to the group?" And he agreed. They needed songs for the album and he wrote seven of the songs that were recorded. He wrote "There's A Moon Out Tonight". There was a song we had way back then, but we never finished it. So, when we did the album, he finally finished the song. That was the "Morse Code Of Love". If we had that right after "There's A Moon Out Tonight", it would've been a monster back then. It became like a second hit for us because all the oldies stations picked it up. It was all over the country. In fact, twenty-one years later it was like a second hit for us. That was terrific. You go to a weeding, every wedding the D.J. plays that song. It's one of the best Lindy dances ever, it's so catchy.

Q - You were in Hy Weiss' office and Paul Simon tried to pitch you guys a song. You didn't record that song, but how different would your career have been if you did record his song?

A - Paul Simon had a different name back then. Hy Weiss said, "There's a fella from Queens, writes a lot of songs, would you be interested in listening to some of his songs?" Nick, the original singer, said, "No. I write all the songs for The Capris." (laughs) That was it.

Q - It sealed your fate.

A - I know, early. (laughs) If he had agreed, who knows what would have happened? We could've had two or three more hits. Who knows?

Q - In 1958 The Capris were auditioning for two record producers. At one of these auditions was Tiny Tim.

A - Yes.

Q - Do you remember seeing and hearing Tiny Tim at that audition?

A - Yes. We were in the same studio.

Q - What was that like?

A - Oh, that was weird. (laughs)

Q - Even then?

A - Oh, yeah. He was very strange. He did "Tip Toe Through The Tulips" there. Oh my God! That's pretty good that you got all this information.

Q - We've got to get the facts out there.

A - We had a good career back then. After we didn't have hit records, we all went out and got day jobs. And we did shows on weekends all those years. Then we just continued. Finally, we got lucky. We got Nick back in 1982. We did the album and it was pretty good. It didn't sell a lot of copies, but it was a great album. A lot of good songs on there. Then we performed from then on to the 2000s.

Q - Is it true that all the guys in The Capris met at a baseball field?

A - What happened, the other four members lived in the East section of Brooklyn. We used to go to this dance every Saturday at a church called St. Fortunato in Brooklyn, and I happened to go to the men's room and I hear these guys singing. I said, "Wow! Could I join in?" They said, "C'mon. Join in." So we started singing and it sounded okay. We were rank amateurs at the time. Then we went our separate ways and a couple of weeks later a friend of mine said, "Hey, the guys in South Ozone Park want to come down and try out for the group. I said, "That's great!" I was singing with local guys, just fooling around here and there. What happened is, I got on the bus. I went down there. I met them down there. I sang it. They said, "You sound pretty good. You're in the group." So that was it, 1958, beginning of the year, March or so. Three months later we recorded "There's A Moon Out Tonight". I used to tease 'em all the time. I said, "Listen, you guys were going nowhere until I got in the group." (laughs) That was it. That's pretty much the story.

Q - Well, there's more to your story. The Capris weren't initially called The Capris. You were called The Supremes?

A - Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was Nick coming up with that name. Another thing with The Capris, we're all of Italian descent, the five of us. Everybody thought we named it (the group) after the Isle Of Capris, which would've been right, but we said no. Nick named it after the (car) Lincoln Capris.

Q - Where did you guys rehearse in the early days? Did someone have a garage or basement?

A - Well, it was in one of the basements. One of the guys, Vinnie had a basement. He was living in South Ozone Park. I used to go down there. The four of them lived there. We rehearsed down there.

Q - At the same time your group was out performing, there was another group called The Capris in Philadelphia.

A - Yes.

Q - Did that cause any confusion? Did they call you? Did you call them?

A - No. We were never in contact with them and they were never in contact with us. They had a record called "God Only Knows". I don't think it was a big success or anything and that was before us. It probably was in the middle '50s to late '50s. Our record came out at the end of 1960.

Q - When "There's A Moon Out Tonight" became popular, did you go out on the road?

A - Somewhat. We didn't do that much traveling. We did a theatre in Washington, D.C. We did a theatre in Chicago and then the Tri-State area. We worked all over. That was it. Then it died down. No more hit records, so everything sort of spilt up. Nick went his way. We all got jobs. The four of us performed for awhile without Nick and then that dissipated. That was it. And today we're still going.

Q - In April of 1961 you were performing at The Apollo Theatre alongside James Brown and Etta James. Was that a tough gig?

A - I'll tell you, we were the only White people there. I mean, it was a Black theatre, a Black audience, but they were great. If you sounded good, you'll get the applause. If you didn't sound good, they'd let you know it. It was terrific. As a matter of fact, the shows we did in Washington, D.C. and in Chicago was also a Black Theatre. On the show in Washington we were with Aretha Frankln, Ike And Tina Turner and James Brown on that same show. They were just starting out at the time and nobody really knew of them yet. When you think back on it, wow! We sang with them? Look where they went. (laughs)

Q - You were at that theatre for how long?

A - Five days. We did one song and that was it.

Q - How many shows a day?

A - Maybe a couple, two or three maybe.

Q - Did you get to hang out or talk to James Brown?

A - Well, that's it, yeah. We hung around them in the restaurant in between shows. Everybody talking back and fourth. But like I say, it was good. It was terrific. We had a good time. There were no problems. Everybody got along well.

Q - You performed on Murray The K's shows. What was that like?

A - With Murray The K there were like fifteen acts on the show. I mean everybody! Even Johnny Mathis was on one of the shows. Jackie Wilson was on the show. Tony Orlando. We were there almost five or six days and we used to do two or three shows there, but those were great. All our friends came to the shows. We were like regular people from the neighborhood, meanwhile we had a hit record.

Q - You also did The Paramount Theatre?

A - Yeah. We did the Brooklyn Paramount. We did the Brooklyn Fox Theatre. Those two theatres.

Q - You worked in Kentucky as a traffic forwarder. What's that?

A - Oh, I worked for an air freight company. We used to import and export freight. That's what that is. They're called freight forwarders. We would pick up freight and ship it over to Europe or Asia or wherever. They would make coats out of them and they'd ship 'em back to New York and we'd bring 'em back. That's a freight forwarder. I retired from there about eighteen years ago. (2001)

Official Website: www.TheCapris.net

© Gary James. All rights reserved.