Sauce

A Quick Self Portrait

When I was 25, I went on the road with Maynard Ferguson’s band. Fourteen exceptional players; two hundred fifty dates a year in North America and Europe – in concert halls, not clubs, which meant big, attentive audiences eager to be dazzled. As an aspiring guitar player, this was the graduate school of my dreams. Every three months we’d take a break and I would somehow magically discover that I had learned more in the previous twelve weeks than I would have learned in five years playing in just about any other venue. And I’d already been playing for several years with industry legends who taught at the renowned Eastman School in Rochester, NY.

But in the two years I toured with Maynard, I went from having a gift to having a deep, soulful connection with my instrument. What I received most from Maynard, however, had nothing to do with music itself. In Maynard’s band, everybody got solos. That’s just the way he was. Maynard loved to see you show off, express yourself, be great for heaven’s sake. On the first night that I was scheduled to be in the spotlight, it wasn’t the audience I was scared of. It was my peers: thirteen talented, accomplished, competitive musicians from all over the world. We were always challenging one another through our playing. And I would have rather whistled elevator music naked on Sesame Street than not rise to the occasion in front of my fellow musicians. Maynard, of course, knew this. He knew everything. And just before the set when I was to perform my inaugural solo, Maynard shuffles over to me and says, “Rizzo, I don’t care how well you play out there, but if you don’t have fun, you’re fired.”

I’ve been blessed to make my living as a player, a composer, an arranger, and a producer of all kinds of music from bebop to Gregorian chant. For several years I was the composer slash arranger & guitarist for Doc Severenson’s Tonight Show band. I also wrote the music for Doc’s jazz combo, Xebron, and produced the group’s only CD, in addition to playing on it. I’ve been the composer on literally hundreds of episodes of various hit television programs, including “In Living Color,” “The Wayans Brothers,” and “Not Necessarily the News” – plus a number of dramatic series, pilots, made-for-TV movies, documentaries and independent films. I was music director for the ACE awards, the Emmys for cable television, as well as for “Comic Relief,” the philanthropic venture of Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoopie Goldberg. There are lots of other assignments I could mention, but I think you get the point: I’m a working stiff in the best music city on earth. And underlying everything I do is a passion to have fun – to allow the truest expression of my spirit to fly, even if sometimes I fly out of control and land on my chin. That’s what real jazz is, after all, as far as I can tell. Talent, practice and collaborating with terrific people has the most meaning for me when it is accompanied by the freedom to create beyond anything I ever imagined possible. That’s what Maynard was reminding me that first night: Forget trying play well. Be on fire! And to do that means being willing to have fun.

I knew this in my own way long before I met Maynard Ferguson. I’ve been singing my heart out in public ever since the nuns found out I was the kid with the angelic voice. First grade I think it was. Every Sunday my name was in the church bulletin. Soloist, Tommy Rizzo. But then, for Christmas in 8th grade, my dad made the mistake of giving me a guitar along with an instruction book and some prudent guidance, “When you finish every exercise in this book,” he said, “only then will I pay for lessons.” I finished the whole book that very day, and because my dad had neglected to include a pick with the guitar, I went to bed that Christmas night with tangible proof that the guitar and I would be inseparable for the rest of my life. My fingers bled, and I was the happiest kid in Buffalo.

“Overwhelming Odds” was the name of my band in high school. I was the next Paul McCartney. We even won the regional “Battle of the Bands” contest. Could the world be far behind? But my dad himself had been a musician, a bit of a celebrity even, so he knew that making a living playing music was harder than teaching chickens to bowl. As I began to think beyond high school, therefore, my sweet pop sat me down for a nice fatherly chat.

“You go to music school, I kill you. You go anywhere else, I give you big kiss.”

Actually, my B.A. in psychology from St. Bonaventure is more valuable than you might imagine. Providing an environment where all of us are pushing the envelope of possibility requires a lot more than musical skills. Of course I wasn’t on campus five seconds before I formed a band. And while St. Bonaventure may not have been Julliard, you wouldn’t have known it by the hours I spent pretending to be everybody from Wes Montgomery to B.B King.

After college, my passion drew me to the musical community surrounding the Eastman School. There I came under the spell of the masterful Gene Bertoncini, a guitarist I consider my mentor to this day. I was never a formal student at Eastman, but since guitarists were scarce, I was invited to sit in regularly with some of the best players God ever made. One little trio was pianist Bill Dobbins, saxophonist Ray Ricker, and me on bass guitar. It was like Marlon Brando, Robert DiNero and Wally Cleaver, or so it sometimes seemed until I realized that if these guys wanted me play with them, either they were lunatics or I had potential. Occasionally, I even earned the ultimate compliment. After one of the old guys thought I’d played something special, he leaned over and whispered in my ear, “That one had some sauce.” I doubt there’s a doctoral thesis on earth that conveys the power of music more eloquently, at least to a musician.

By the time Maynard called, I was living the young jazzman’s balanced life: practice, perform & teach – and if absolutely necessary, eat and sleep. I’d started a guitar school and, before it burned down six years later, more than a dozen teachers were serving a couple hundred students. In fact, I was running the school by remote control while playing for Maynard, writing payroll from the back of the bus. So I was on the road when the fire hit. My feelings of helplessness and loss were only intensified by the distance. Maynard, of course, knew this. He knew everything. So on the very night of the fire, Maynard asked me to lead off a blues number, and the way he introduced me reminded me once again that being a musician is about much more than music.

“Now I want to introduce the best guitar player this band has ever had,” Maynard began, ignoring the fact that I was the only guitar player the band had ever had.

“Tonight, he’s going to lead us in a blues number. And believe me, this is a man who knows the blues.” And then Maynard went on and told the audience the whole story of me creating the guitar school, and that the business had just burned down, and here I was out on the road, unable to get home, and yet like all real blues players, able to pour my feelings into my music.

“And now, ladies and gentleman, please welcome Tom Rizzo.”

I don’t remember what I sounded like. All I felt was pain and heartache flowing through my fingers into the guitar and out into the universe. But I must have done okay because, when I ended, not only did I feel a lot lighter, but I also felt the spirit of blues players all the way back to Africa – and I could hear their voices growling in my ear, “That one had some sauce.”