Gary James' Interview With Vito Picone Of
The Elegants



The Elegants were formed in 1956 by their lead singer Vito Picone, who wrote their number one hit single, "Little Star". That record sold over two and a half million copies world-wide on ABC Paramount's subsidiary label APT. The Elegants were named the number one R&B and the number one Pop Artists Of The Year. They were also featured on the cover of Cashbox magazine, receiving their Gold Record. In the late '50s and early '60s they toured extensively throughout the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The Elegants received the Million-Airs Award for "Little Star" airing one million times on the radio. "Little Star" has been featured in numerous movies and also in the HBO series The Sopranos. The Elegants have appeared eight times at Radio City Music Hall, were among the first Doo Wop artists to be presented at Carnegie Hall, the first Doo Wop group ever to perform at Lincoln Center and last but not least, Vito Picone made a cameo appearance in the Oscar winning film, Goodfellas.

Vito Picone spoke with us about The Elegants, the places he's played and the people he's met along the way.

Q - Vito, when The Elegants first started they were known just as The Elegants, correct?

A - Yeah. The reason it became Vito Picone And The Elegants was when the resurgence hit in 1970 there were a lot of newcomers and a lot of non-originals involved. The club owners, and there was only clubs at the time, very few concerts, the club owners wanted to make sure they had the original lead singer before they booked 'em and advertised 'em. So, they started using Vito Picone And The Elegants, Herbie Cox And The Cleftones, Larry Chance And The Earls, and that's where that came from.

Q - And so the other guys in the group didn't have a problem with that?

A - No, not really. It was quite obvious at that point. The sound was established because of the lead vocal that was pretty predominant at that point. And the other thing in the '70s is when it came back, a lot of the original members were not in the group any longer. The Beatles and the Army just about wiped out most of the original guys and all of the groups. We were the perfect age, 17, 18, 19 years old. You were being drafted at that time.

Q - I'm going to talk about that in just a minute. You co-wrote the group's hit, "Little Star"?

A - Yeah. I wrote it with Artie Venosa, who was the first tenor in my group. He just passed away about a month ago.

Q - When that song became popular, you did a lot of road work. Was that the late '50s or early '60s?

A - This was all in the '50s, 1958. As a matter of fact, one of the first places we flew to was Hawaii. At that point "Little Star" was the biggest selling record in the Hawaiian Islands. They closed all of the schools. There was no chute going to the terminal. You actually came down the ladder and you wound up on the tarmac. All the schools were closed and the kids were on the tarmac. The we got a police motorcycle escort to the hotel.

Q - That must have been something.

A - It was a great, great feeling.

Q - That was "Elegantmania".

A - (laughs) Yeah, it was at least six years before "Beatlemania".

Q - What kind of venues were you performing in, in Hawaii?

A - Well, that one we really worked out. It was one of the largest ones we had done. It was the Civic Auditorium. Thousands and thousands of people were in that particular venue. As a matter of fact, while we were there, if you remember, Hawaii wasn't even a state at the time. We had gotten to the Civic Auditorium and there was a soldier that came backstage. He was an attache for the commanding general of the Scofield Barracks, which was a big army installation on the Islands. He asked us if we would do a free concert for the boys over at the barracks. They would provide transportation and so on and so forth. Again, you got U.S. soldiers not in the country, and we said yes. Probably it was one of the most memorable concerts I ever did because when I opened up with the opening line of 'Where are you Little Star?' in the dark, there were thousands of soldiers out there. You couldn't see anybody from the stage with the lights. But when I opened with the line, 'Where are you Little Star?', some voice yelled from the crowd, they started giving me their home towns. It just mushroomed into Bayridge, Brooklyn Vito, Jersey City, New Jersey Vito. I got so choked up I really had a difficult time singing the rest of the song. That was an incredible, incredible experience.

Q - Too bad the technology of video taping concerts wasn't around then.

A - That really is true. I wish they had it. Year's later we got a call to do a job out in Rhode Island. The agent called up and I wasn't available for the date. He called back two days later and said, "How about this date?" and I wasn't available. "What about this date?" We were busy at the time. "I really don't have that date either.". So he said, "Give me a date you're available." So, I gave him a specific date. He called me back and said, "Okay, it's done." When we got there I went to get paid for the concert and there was a big amusement park, arena, condo complex all on the water. I asked the guy who was paying me, "Why did you keep changing the dates to accommodate us when there were so many acts available?" He said, "I want to tell you. I had very much success in the electronics business. I became very wealthy. This is all mine, what you see around you. I always told myself one way or another when the time came I would re-pay you for doing something years ago. I said, "What was that?" He said, "I was a seventeen year old soldier stationed in Hawaii and you did a free concert for us. I never, ever forgot that." He said, "I would definitely re-pay you if there was a way to do it. This is my way of saying thank-you."

Q - What a nice story, really!

A - Yeah, yeah.

Q - That's why you have to be kind to people. You never know who you're going to meet down the road.

A - Absolutely.

Q - You performed with some of the biggest acts of the day. Now, who are we talking about?

A - Oh God, we probably worked with everybody but Elvis. We didn't miss many. As a matter of fact, I just came back from Iowa a couple of months ago. We did a tribute to Buddy Holly and The Big Bopper and Ritchie Valens at the Surf Ballroom, which was the last job they did before the plane crash. That particular venue I was asked to do because we were on the tour with Buddy right before the plane crash. We were together thirty days or maybe a little more. Then the tour split into three segments. Bobby Darin went down to the coast with a couple of acts. We went to California with Bobby Freeman and The Olympics. Buddy Holly went to Iowa with Dion And The Belmonts and they picked up two newer acts, Ritchie Valens and The Big Bopper, who had just had their records released and were doing very well. So, the connection to Buddy Holly brought us to doing that tribute concert. We actually went out to the crash site. They have a monument there for the three of them. What an eerie feeling that was, God almighty!

Q - You're one of the few guys I've ever interviewed who knew Buddy Holly. You sat down and talked with him, did you?

A - Oh, absolutely. We ate together. We drove together on the same bus for quite awhile. He got a van at one point and literally started following the bus. His driver did that so he could have a little more room and privacy and relax a bit. He had gotten married and taken his wife on a couple of the jobs later on during that time. He literally became a little more private for a good portion of the time. We were all together. We'd be jamming backstage and get to talk a little bit. Then I wound up going to Lubbock, Texas where he was from and we did a concert there at Texas Tech I believe it was. We did a lot of work together.

Q - When you think about it, Buddy Holly was only 21 or 22 when he died and already a huge, international star. Most guys are just getting started at that age.

A - And not only that, he was like an old man to me. I was only 16, 17 years old. So, he was the oldest guy on the tour. Dion I think was a year older than me. Jimmy Clanton was on the tour with us. We had Clyde McPhatter on the tour with us. Clyde may have been the oldest.

Q - 16 years old and on the road? Did you quit school?

A - I had just finished. I was a class clown. I was always fooling around and getting myself in all kinds of trouble. I wound up every year finding myself in summer school. So, I actually did eight years in high school, four in summer school. (laughs) So, I was coming out of my last class of summer school, trying to pick up the extra credit for English. Jimmy Moschella, who's still with me, one of the original members, he was two years older than me and had just gotten his license. He pulled up in front of the school and he's beeping the horn and beeping the horn. I got up there and he said, "The song just hit number one." I just threw my books in the garbage pail and said goodbye. I got in the car and that was it. But, I did do four years of high school and it was in the Summer. The record was actually on the charts for the entire Summer of '58, of which we're celebrating the sixtieth anniversary of "Little Star" this year.

Q - To me anyway, it almost follows that if you can write on hit song, you can write another hit song. Did that happen for you or not?

A - No. We wrote quite a bit. Artie wrote a few. I wrote a couple. We wrote some together after that, but we never had another national hit, meaning number one or charted across the country. We had number one hits, regional hits. Hawaii we had a couple of songs in the Top Ten. Texas we had a couple. Things like that, but not nationally. The biggest problem we had is we had a young manager. A 19 year old girl was managing us who literally knew nothing about the business. She was told there was more money to be made on the road than there is in the records, the sale of records. So, she kept us on the road so long after "Little Star" was released that by the time we got back into New York to re-record, record our second record, we literally were finished. Our style of singing had been copied by just about everybody, namely The Mystics with "Hushabye". That label literally sent one of their writers out to a record store on Broadway, Colony Records to buy "Little Star" and they broke it down completely and utilized everything there was in there to create "Hushabuy". So, like I said, by the time we came back with our stuff, our style of songs were pretty much played out. Every time we signed with a new label all they wanted was another "Little Star". So we'd have to write something similar to it and it was futile. I wrote a song called "Tiny Cloud" which was one of my favorites, but it was just like another "Little Star". I took the word Tiny to replace Little and Cloud to replace Star. I just did a little cameo spot in a movie called The Irishmen, which is coming out in the Fall (2018). It's Martin Scorsese's new movie. It's with De Niro, Pesci, Pacino, Ray Romano, Leonardo Di Caprio and Harvey Keitel. While we were shooting it Martin Scorsese oddly enough stopped shooting and called me over to him. I came over and he said, "What's the name of your second record?" I was totally shocked that he even knew. I told him "Please Believe Me". He said, "That's it, that's it. I love that song better than 'Little Star'. I love the intricacies, what you did with your voice," and so on and so forth. He kept complimenting me about that song. Then he asked me to step inside the trailer and talked for about forty-five minutes about Doo Wop music. I'm saying here's a guy who's listening to a song and thinks it's better than "Little Star", then why didn't everybody buy that record? So, the fact was at that time, as I said, our style of singing was played out.

Q - How did you write your songs? Did you play the piano or guitar?

A - What I played had nothing to do with how I wrote the songs. I did play trombone in grammar school. They gave me a trombone in the fourth grade and away I went. But it was not a chord instrument, so you couldn't really write anything from the knowledge of that. But it did give me a feeling of what I was trying to do chord wise, but I had to do it all mentally. I would physically get my head into a position where I would sing the song while I was writing it. I don't know what gift that is from God, but I can open up a drawer with five thousand songs in it and pick up any one, no matter how long ago I wrote it, and sing every note of that song to you the way I wrote it. It's not even written on paper. It's written on loose-leaf. I don't know what gift that is, but I definitely can do that.

Q - And someone else would be able to figure out what key it's in and transcribe it for you?

A - Right. Once we did it we put it on tape and we'd give it to the musical arranger for the record company and they would do all the arranging for it. We'd just show up in the studio and everything was already written. But we didn't have much input at that time. As 16, 17 year olds at the beginning of the industry we didn't have the input that these acts have now with their recordings. It was pretty much left up to the powers that be. They literally did it and away we went. We just got out there and sang. I wrote "Please Believe Me" on a tour bus. Dion was sitting next to me. We were traveling together for about thirty days on another tour. He loved that song. He had mentioned the fact that he would love to do it. I was pretty bent on going back to New York and recording it for ourselves. When he left The Belmonts and created his style of singing "Run Around Sue" and "The Wanderer", those are exact copies of "Please Believe Me", my second record. He makes no bones about it. He said he made a career copying Vito Picone. In his Box Set he listed me as one of his inspirations. A great, great compliment. I'm very proud of that, but that's exactly what it was, writing and singing next to him. He got to hear it as I was doing it. If you listen to "Please Believe Me" you'll hear the connection between that and his style of singing. I spoke to Duane Eddy not too long ago. Duane Eddy of course had the record "Rebel Rouser". He's been working for years. He was on the road with The Everly Brothers for awhile. He had a package with them, opening for them. He's still around. He's just endorsed a guitar for Gretsch. They put out a Duane Eddy model. So he's still pretty active. He told me he would stand in the wings when we were on tour and he'd watch me sing every night. He said it was a combination of Dean Martin and Ray Charles. I don't know where that combination comes from, but everybody saw something different in my voice, but the fact that they were listening made me very humble and very proud. I guess there was something there. I just did what came natural for me.

Q - Who was booking The Elegants in the early days?

A - G.A.C. General Artists Corporation. They literally had all the Rock 'n' Roll groups. I say Rock 'n' Roll because today Rock 'n' Roll is so diluted. Everything is Rock 'n' Roll, but at that point we were Rock 'n' Roll. There was nothing else but us. The musicians that we were using were all guys from the Big Band era. I had Bucky Pizzarelli on guitar playing "Little Star". Bucky Pizzarelli is probably one of the best known guitar players of his time

Q - You were out on the road in the late '50s and early '60s?

A - Yeah, but we stopped when The Beatles came out. That was literally the death knell for most of the '50s acts.

Q - Prior to The Beatles' appearance on Ed Sullivan in February, 1964, did you ever hear anything about The Beatles or read anything about The Beatles?

A - A very unique story about The Beatles. I probably still kick myself. There was a so called Atlantic Music and Beechwood Music. It was a publishing firm in Manhattan. The fella that owned it was a guy named Lenny Hoates. He had the foresight to see music changing and he wanted to get something youthful into his company, somebody with youthful thoughts. So, he contacted me through another manager we had later on in the '60s, a fella named Murray Barber. He contacted me and told me he was looking to open a publishing company subsidiary called Spartan Music, and that he would like to put some younger material in there and if I was interested in being a part of it. Obviously I was. We decided we would do it. Johnny Mercer used to be very close with him. He would be in his office with us every day we were negotiating this. They did a lot of stuff overseas. One time he came back from England with this record. He said, "Wait 'til you hear this. Let me know what you think of it." And he played "Please Mr. Postman" by The Beatles. Nobody heard of The Beatles in the States at that time. He said, "What do you think?" I said, "I love it. I love it. I'd like to do it with The Elegants." He said, "Stop thinking like," and he said it to me in Yiddish, "a Tulano and put your Yiddish cap on," which means stop thinking like an Italian and put your Jewish brain on. I said, "Yeah, but I want to resurrect The Elegants. We haven't had a hit in awhile." No, no, no. We had such a disagreement over this. Not an argument, but a disagreement that literally we never followed through with the publishing firm, but Lenny did. Lenny ended up bringing in The Beatles' material and the public relations guy with the firm that we were going to have, a fella by the name of Buddy Bash, he wound up becoming the public relations guy for The Beatles for awhile. There was a lawyer who also drew up the papers for us, a fella by the name of Walt Hofer , who had a small, little office down the hall, Walt Hofer became The Beatles' manager when Brian Epstein died. So, all those people were in the room with me during that whole time we were trying to put Spartan Music together, they all became multi-millionaires. Walt Hofer went from that little office down the hall to a seventeen man office on Broadway. Everybody gravitated towards The Beatles and benefiting from it except poor Murray Barber, who came with me and ended up selling sheet music at Colony Records.

Q - I've heard of Walter Hofer . Are you sure he took over at The Beatles' manager when Brian Epstein died?

A - Walt Hofer definitely took over everything for a great period of time with The Beatles as their manager. He might have been their managing agent or whatever title it was. I don't know, but he was definitely running the managerial end of The Beatles for awhile.

Q - You heard "Please Please Me" in what year? 1963?

A - Yeah.

Q - Were you shown a picture of the group?

A - No. He just played the 45 for me.

Q - Do you remember when you saw a photo of The Beatles? Did you first see them on The Ed Sullivan Show?

A - There was promotional material that came out before they hit here. I did see that. The long hair was something interesting, but don't forget they were still dressed in costume the way we were. The Stones really changed the appearance of people onstage. They just came out with whatever street clothes they had on. That literally just threw away the tuxedos and the matching outfits.

Q - What's really interesting here is Brian Epstein was the one who pushed The Beatles to get into suits and ties. The Beatles were like The Stones in the beginning, as far as their stage clothes went. They did not wear matching outfits.

A - The Dave Clark Five and all those acts as they were coming out were all dressed in matching outfits, especially at the time when the Nehru suits were coming out. Everybody had the collars and the same thing. But yeah, I did the promo material.

Q - You say two things happened that changed the trajectory of your life, The Beatles and the draft.

A - Absolutely.

Q - Were you drafted?

A - No. This is another thing that actually ended the relationship with myself and the group as we knew it. I had an accident and I had a piece of steel that went through my eye and completely shattered the lens and I was not able to see out of my left eye. I was in the hospital for six weeks and I was laid up for six months. I wasn't able to do anything. I couldn't talk loud. I couldn't yell. I couldn't scream. I couldn't sing. Anything that would create a problem, a vibration. So, I literally had to take a hiatus. They guys had an opportunity to do one recording and they did a song called "Dressing Up" and "Dream Come True". They recorded those two songs without me. Right after that, that's when everything started to break up. When I got out of the hospital and through that whole six month period, they had already broken up and I just went out as a single. I signed with Laurie Records, which is Dion And The Belmonts' label and I did about six sides. I think I did six records on Laurie and then I did a couple of independents after that. But that was it. I just formed a band in the '60s and worked through most of the late '60s with a band that I formed called Beau Geste And The Legions. The reason I did that was The Rascals were out at the time and they had the Lord Fauntleroy outfits on, and Paul Revere And The Raiders had their schtick going. Everybody had some type of costume that was identifiable to the name. So I created this group, Beau Geste And The Legions. We had like Legionnaire outfits on. I had the Van Dyke all from the movie Beau Geste, which was all about the Foreign Legion. And I went through the '60s that way. There was a reunion or revival in 1970 of the '50s music concert that was going to be done in the Academy Of Music in New York City. And then I wound up doing one of the revival shows. It was supposed to be a one shot deal and the next thing I knew it just caught on and from the '70s on we've never been out of work.

Q - Vito, you were on the ground floor of what the world would come to know as Rock 'n' Roll.

A - Yeah. There's nothing that can change that. That's the greatest thing I can hang on to. No matter what happens, if I had a hit record or never had a hit record, nobody can take away what we had. If you look at a lot of the things I take for granted today, we were the second White Rock 'n' Roll group to have a number one record. We were only beat out by Danny And The Juniors by a few months. No matter who comes along, The Four Seasons, The Beach Boys, The Bee Gees, The Beatles, you can keep on bringing 'em, nobody can say they had it before we did. Look at Sinatra. We had a Gold Record before Sinatra did. There's a lot of those little things that mean nothing to nobody.

Q - But Vito, they are important. People have to be made aware of your accomplishments.

A - Well, more importantly, at the present time we're still working. We're still seeing the fans come out. We just did four shows in the last eight days or nine days, whatever the hell it was. So, they're still coming out and they know every word we're singing and they're very appreciative. We shake hands. We kiss babies. We pass out cigars. I don't consider myself a star in the sense that I have fans. I have friends. So I make sure that we shake hands and do whatever we have to do to show them we appreciate what they've done for over sixty years.

Official Website: www.TheElegants.net

© Gary James. All rights reserved.