One fall day in 1977, jazz pianist Vincent Falcone got a phone call from Frank Sinatra’s manager. “Mr. Sinatra wants to know if you can conduct,” said the voice on the line. Falcone, a lifelong musician and relatively young member of Sinatra’s band, knew it was a once-in-a-lifetime shot. So, despite some nerves and uncertainty, he said yes.
“The worst thing that could happen is I’m not good enough,” Falcone recalls in a phone interview from his home in Las Vegas. “So of course I said yes. I figured, ‘Let’s see what happens.’”
The decision paid off handsomely. Falcone spent the better part of a decade as Ol’ Blue Eyes’ bandleader, skyrocketing a musical career that has taken him around the world and given him the chance to perform with artists from Tony Bennett to Paul Anka to Jerry Lewis. But before getting his big break in Las Vegas, before signing on with Sinatra and before having the chance to play for Ronald Reagan at the White House, Vincent Falcone cut his teeth at the nightclubs and music halls of Syracuse.
Although Falcone has been away for more than 40 years, the Syracuse native will return to Central New York on Friday, Sept. 21, 9 p.m., as part of the 2012 AmeriCU Jazz-N-Caz festival at Cazenovia College’s Catherine Cummings Theater, 16 Lincklaen St. Joining him for Friday’s show are flautist and sax player Bobby Militello, drummer Danny D’Imperio and bassist Linc Milliman.
Falcone’s relationship with Sinatra (which he describes in detail in his 2005 Hal Leonard Corporation book Frankly Just Between Us) began in 1976, just a few years after he moved to Vegas. He had just landed a gig as the resident pianist at Caesar’s Palace hotel and casino when he was dealt a twist of fate.
“The first act for whom I had to play at Caesar’s was Frank Sinatra,” he says. “Turns out he liked me and started taking me on the road as his pianist shortly after that.”
Within two years, Sinatra tapped him to be his bandleader. And during their time together, from 1976 to 1982, the two became close friends.
“He was always a big supporter of mine and a good friend,” Falcone says. “I went to his parties, ate dinner at his house and met kings, queens and politicians from across the world. He’s the one who started calling me ‘Vinnie’ instead of ‘Vincent.’ It was lovely.”
Falcone was born and raised in Syracuse—the third generation of a family of Italian immigrants. His grandfather lived on Teall Avenue and owned Urciuli’s, a popular Italian grocery store. When he was 16, Falcone started playing regular gigs at a South Salina Street nightclub called The Coda.
“The Coda was one of the places I really got into it,” he says. “There were a lot of jazz clubs in Syracuse in those days. The city, and even the country, was a very different place then {the mid-1960s}.”
Falcone attributes much of his extraordinary musical success to taking risks and making difficult decisions. His first big decision came after one year as a classical music student at Syracuse University. “I realized a degree wasn’t going to help me play music,” he says. “It was how you played and what you knew.”
Falcone gave up his studies and began playing more frequently at nightclubs and took a job selling pianos for Clark Music. And it turned out the expert pianist made a pretty good salesman. He started working full time at Clark, which dramatically cut into the time he spent playing.
After three years of sales, the time came for another risky decision. Falcone found he could make money as a musician in Syracuse, but couldn’t make a living. In 1970, he packed his bags and made his way to the small desert city in Nevada.
“In those days Vegas was a paradise,” he says. “It was gorgeous, inexpensive and much smaller than it is today.”
Realizing he had no desire to return to Syracuse, he soon brought his wife, two sons and his parents with him to Las Vegas. He’s been there since.
Falcone doesn’t often get a chance to return to Syracuse. He estimates he’s been back to the area roughly five times since leaving more than four decades ago. And while Syracuse has shrunk significantly in size and clout since then, Vegas has exploded as an entertainment and gambling mecca.
When Falcone moved to Vegas, the city was smaller than Syracuse, which had a population close to 200,000. Today Vegas boasts more than 2 million inhabitants, in addition to hundreds of thousands of annual tourists.
“When I came here it was a small town where everybody knew everybody,” Falcone says. “There was no traffic, no pollution, and very little crime. There were nine hotels.”
While he’s most critical of the changes in the entertainment scene in Vegas (“Musicians didn’t have tattoos and nose rings in my day!”), the city has become his home. And, he says, he decided long ago that he would never leave. But despite no plans to move back to Syracuse, he returns this weekend to entertain and show what he’s learned over a 40-year career.
Cazenovia’s 11th annual Jazz-N-Caz festival commences on Thursday, Sept. 20, 7:30 p.m., at the Brae Loch Inn with the roots rock band Gent Treadly. The fest shifts to the Catherine Cummings Theater with Friday’s performances featuring Nicki Parrott, Bucky Pizzarelli and Chuck Redd (7:30 p.m.) and Vince Falcone (9 p.m.). The Cummings will also host Gap Mangione and the New Big Band on Saturday, Sept. 22, 7:30 p.m. There will also be after-hours jazz jams at 10:30 p.m. on Friday and Saturday at the Lincklaen House, 79 Albany St.
WAER-FM 88.3 deejays Eric Cohen and Jim Tobey co-host the entire weekend of events. The festival is free, although a $10 donation is appreciated. For more information, call 655-7238.