Famed accordionist Dick Contino headlined the Las Vegas strip for about 50 years. The Fresno native died Wednesday at the age of 87.
Dick Contino (January 17, 1930 – April 19, 2017) was an American accordionist and singer. Contino was born in Fresno, California. He studied accordion primarily with San Francisco- based Angelo Cognazzo, and occasionally with Los Angeles-based Guido Deiro. Early on he exhibited great virtuosity on the instrument. Although he graduated from Fresno High School in 1947 and enrolled at Fresno State College, he was unable to concentrate on his studies. Contino explained, “I enjoyed college, but while attending classes I kept thinking that if I was going to be a success, it would be my music that would take me there.”
Contino got his big break on December 7, 1947, when he played “Lady of Spain” (his signature piece) and won first place in the Horace Heidt/Philip Morris talent contest in Fresno which was broadcast on national radio. Contino also won first place in subsequent competitions in Los Angeles, Omaha, Des Moines, Youngstown, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, Harrisburg, and New York City. He won first place in the final round on December 12, 1948 in Washington, D.C. Eddie Fisher had much better success with the song in 1952. Contino’s song “Yours” was his first hit single. The song reached #27 on the U.S. pop charts in 1954. His second and only other hit single was “Pledge My Love.” It reached #42 on the U.S. pop charts in 1957.
Contino toured with the Horace Heidt Orchestra and was billed as the “world’s greatest accordion player.” He appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show a record 48 times.
Conscription issues
His success was interrupted when Contino was drafted during the Korean War. Contino, at the time earning a reported $4,000 per week, fled from pre-induction barracks at Fort Ord, due to extreme and unpublicized phobias and neuroses.
He was labeled a “draft dodger” and jailed for several months before serving in the United States armed forces and being honorably discharged as a Staff Sergeant and receiving a Presidential Pardon. The resultant scandal dealt Contino’s career a serious blow, but he continued performing, including acting in a few movies in the 1950s and 1960s.
Later career
Contino’s acting became known to a new generation in 1991, when Daddy-O, a low-budget 1958 movie in which he played the starring role as a faddishly-dressed beat rebel and singer, became the centerpiece of an episode of the third season of Mystery Science Theatre 3000. Contino also was featured in the 1959 film Girls Town along with other musical performers such as Paul Anka and The Platters.
He continued to perform regularly throughout the United States. His repertoire was eclectic, ranging from Italian songs such as “Come Back to Sorrento” and “Arrivederci Roma” to standards like “Lady of Spain” and “Swinging on a Star”.
Novella and other fictional works
James Ellroy wrote a novella, Dick Contino’s Blues, which is a mini-memoir and crime story based on Contino’s experiences as a struggling artist after the war. It is included in the 1994 Ellroy short story collection Hollywood Nocturnes. A version appeared in issue number 46 of Granta magazine (Winter 1994) along with several photographs of Contino and the author. Ellroy also penned a short story entitled Hollywood Shakedown, which appeared in his collected work “Crime Wave” and featured Contino as the central character. The story is entirely fictitious as it features numerous incidents of violence and murder which Contino had never been linked with or accused of in reality.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick_Contino
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Dick Contino, a Las Vegas lounge mainstay and the man who made the accordion hip in the 1950s, died Wednesday in his native Fresno, California. He was 87.
Starring in the 1958 B-movie “Daddy-O” was evidence of Contino’s teen-idol status in an era when the accordion was still a popular-music instrument.
“He put it in another place,” his son Pete, a Las Vegas musician, said Thursday.
“There were young icons and television stars who made (the accordion) popular then, like Dick Contino. He was the teenage sex symbol before Elvis,” Paul Pasquali, founder of the International Accordion Convention, once noted.
Contino lived in Las Vegas from 1975 to 2015 — except for a four-year spell in the Los Angeles area — raising three children here with his first wife, actress Leigh Snowden, who died in 1982.
After playing Las Vegas for years at bygone hotels such as the El Rancho Vegas, an offer of steady work in the Tropicana lounge motivated Contino to move here, buying a house near the Boulevard Mall from Las Vegas bandleader Vido Musso, his son Pete said.
Contino emerged as a bobby-soxer idol after winning Horace Heidt’s “Youth Opportunity Talent Show” in 1946, and he was said to have played the Ed Sullivan show a record 48 times.
Contino’s cult status was elevated with the short story “Dick Contino’s Blues,” part of best-selling crime fiction writer James Ellroy’s 1994 collection “Hollywood Nocturnes.”
Ellroy’s story blended fiction with facts, such as Contino’s recording and movie career being derailed after he spent six months in jail for ignoring his draft notice to the Korean War.
Contino remained hearty well into his 80s and played through most of 2014 — including the accordion convention — after bouncing back from a broken hip the previous year, his wife, Judy, said Thursday.
https://www.reviewjournal.com/entertainment/accordions-hep-cat-dick-contino-dead-at-87/
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On the list of famous Fresnans, Dick Contino ranks as a superstar.
In the 1950s, Mr. Contino was a high-profile musician and actor who married starlet Leigh Snowden and appeared multiple times on “The Ed Sullivan Show;” more than 40 over his whole career. Author James Ellroy used parts of Mr. Contino’s life and name for his 1994 novella, “Dick Contino’s Blues” and in 1991 the actor was featured heavily in an episode of “Mystery Science Theater 3000.” In 2011, The Showbiz Society honored Mr. Contino at an event in Las Vegas that included the reading of a letter from President Barack Obama.
Among musicians, he was billed as “The World’s Greatest Accordionist.”
Mr. Contino was fresh out of Fresno High School in 1948 when he gained national attention by winning the Horace Heidt Amateur Talent radio show in Washington, D.C. He went on to tour with Heidt’s orchestra and later the Musical Knights before breaking into the movie business. He was in the 1958 film “Daddy-O” and 1959’s “The Beat Generation.”
While he spent the majority of his life in Las Vegas – he was a well-known headliner in the early days of the strip – Mr. Contino never forgot his hometown.
And it never forgot him. When Mr. Contino performed in Fresno in 1998 to celebrate his 50th year in the business, 500 people showed up at TorNino’s to hear him play and sing. That included then-Fresno City Councilman Sal Quintero with a city proclamation declaring it Dick Contino Day in Fresno.
Mr. Contino moved back to the area several years ago while recovering from hip replacement surgery and had been staying at Golden Living Center prior to his death.
He’d mostly retired from performing. That was not by choice, says his son Pete Contino.
Mr. Contino loved to be on stage and was a physical performer, says Pete Contino, who followed his father’s footsteps and became a musician in Las Vegas. He, too, plays the accordion.
“He was just an animal, man,” he says.
It was part of his charm and one of reasons the accordionist was so successful, even later in his career. Pete Contino played drums in his father’s band for several years in the mid-1980s. This was well after Mr. Contino had made his mark as an actor and musician yet even then, he drove fans wild. Pete Contino remembers being pulled away by security guards at a show in Chicago. In the chaos of the fans, they didn’t realize he was in the band, or that he was Dick Contino’s son.
“He touched people’s lives with his music,” says Mr. Contino’s daughter, local singer Diedre Contino. “They would be in awe. And I just loved that.”
Some of her best memories involve watching her father on stage. She remembers being a kid and staying up until 4 a.m. while he performed at a neighborhood block party. Later in life, Mr. Contino would join her on stage, playing along as she sang with her band. Sometimes, he would just stand there on the sidelines, taking it all in as a proud father.
“We were best friends,” she says.
“He’s going to be missed.”
Read more here: http://www.fresnobee.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/joshua-tehee/article146036429.html#storylink=cpy
Stats on Mr. Contino:
Born: Jan. 17, 1930
Died: April 19, 2017
Occupation: Famed accordion player, musician and actor
Survivors: wife Judy; brothers Pete and Victor Contino; children Deidre Contino, Peter Contino, Merri Scaife; two grandchildren
Services: Private service was held at St. Peters Cemetery in Fresno. A public celebration of his life is planned in Las Vegas in June.
By Joshua Tehee | jtehee@fresnobee.com
Read more here – story includes a video of Mr. Contino playing: http://www.fresnobee.com/entertainment/music-news-reviews/joshua-tehee/article146036429.html#storylink=cpy
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Other Notable Musicians’ Deaths… April 2017
23: Jerry Adriani, 70, Brazilian singer and actor, cancer.
21: Lucky Akhand, 60, Bangladeshi singer-composer, lung cancer; Sandy Gallin, 76, American talent agent (Barbra Streisand, Michael Jackson, Nicole Kidman) and producer, multiple myeloma; Kristine Jepson, 54, American mezzo-soprano, cancer.
20: Cuba Gooding Sr., 72, American soul singer (The Main Ingredient).[34]
19: Ed Blaylock, 64, American voice actor (Fullmetal Alchemist, One Piece) and radio personality (WRR), cancer; Dick Contino, 87, American accordionist; Pat Fitzpatrick, 60, Irish keyboardist (Aslan), cancer.
18: Frank Dostal, 71, German music producer and songwriter (Yes Sir, I Can Boogie); Gordon Langford, 86, English composer.