[Stranger56]

Just got this very sad news from Yahoo.

Guitarist Tony Mottola has passed away.


Here's the story:

http://launch.yahoo.com/read/news.asp?contentID=219253

Godspeed, Mr. Mottola.....Rest in Peace.

Jim

[Tony]

Sad indeed, the supreme Guitar Master so long Mr Mottola

[Barry]

Hi
RIP Tony.
I saw Tony live at the Royal Albert Hall in London
with Frank
They did his "Saloon" tune together. Just guitar and voice.
Wonderful.
Barry.

the duet was often the high point of the show. Frank and Tony was all that was needed for a great song. Rest in peace.

[Adam]

Such a tragic loss, these legends are not being replaced.

My thoughts are with his family.

Adam

[Rhodalee]

Sad news indeed, and Adam -- you are right, these legends aren't being replaced -- I actually think they cannot be.

Rest In Peace Tony

Rhodalee

[Ronald Sarbo]

Mottola also played for many years on Perry Como's recordings and TV shows.

He was also Johnny Desmond's musical director.

[RonnieC]

Here is Mr. Tony's obituary from Newsday. He was such a generous man sharing his memories of working with both Mr. Sinatra and Mr. Como over the years with me and my radio listeners. Required listening: It's Sunday with Mr. S. and Como in Italy from 1966! The two duets with Mr. S. on the '82 Concert for the Americas are phenomenal! Tony was a legend onstage and in the studio for his guitar playing and offstage for his kindness and genuine character! Perry Como gave me Tony's number many years ago. They thought the world of one another! Mr. C. called Tony one of the all time greats...a great Italian and an even greater guitarist!!!

Tuesday, August 10, 2004

Tony Mottola, guitarist, dies at 86

DENVILLE, N.J. -- Tony Mottola, a guitarist who played with Frank Sinatra and on NBC's "The Tonight Show" over the course of a 50-year career, has died. He was 86.

Mottola died Monday at Saint Clare's Hospital of complications from double pneumonia and stroke.
Longtime friend and colleague Bucky Pizzarelli described Mottola as being able to read any piece of music put in front of him.

"He could interpret something and it was really Tony Mottola," Pizzarelli told The Star-Ledger of Newark. "He put a stamp on it. His sound was very warm, tender and expressive. He never hit a bad note in his life."

Mottola's career began in 1936 when he toured with George Hall's orchestra. He made his recording debut in 1941 in duets with Carl Kress. Mottola recorded with Sinatra a few years later.

In 1951, he became music director for the CBS-TV drama series "Danger." He was a regular member of Skitch Henderson's orchestra on "The Tonight Show" from 1958 to 1972.

Mottola also received an Emmy for his score to "Two Childhoods," a television documentary about the early lives of Hubert Humphrey and James Baldwin.

From 1980 until his retirement in 1988, Mottola toured with Sinatra and was spotlighted in duets with the singer. Mottola performed for a month at Carnegie Hall with Sinatra and then went on to perform at the White House.

Mottola played nearly every day at home after retiring, his son said.

"He felt music kept his mind sharp," said Tony Mottola Jr. of Montclair.

Mottola and his wife Grace, known as Mitzi, were married for 62 years. He is also survived by his son, three daughters, seven grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

I saw him with Frank at The Stanley Theater here in Pittsburgh. They didn't make music, they made magic right before my ears.

Rest in Peace

[MMM]

If you have "It's Sunday" by Frank, backed by Tony, maybe give that a listen.

Rest in peace, Tony. Thanks for everything.

Very sorry to hear about the lost of Tony Mottola, he was a gentle man with his guitar...RIP.........Joe..

[Lourdes]

He was a genius.
Rest in peace, Tony Mottola.

[ARIES3032]

A true great guitarist, Tony Mottola. There must be beautiful music in the next demension . Rest in peace, Tony

[Paolo]

a very talented musician. A great loss to the world of music. RIP....., Paolo di Napoli.

[S V PELUZIO JR]

I agree wih you all.
Rest in peace Tony Mottola.

[Edwin]

great music behind. My favorite Mottola albums is his solo guitar album of Sinatra songs that includes his instrumental version of "It's Sunday."

The closing theme from my Sinatra radio show (1984-1992) was Tony's "Put Your Dreams Away" from that album. I wish they'd release it on CD.

Ed Spiegel

...

Anthony C. Mottola 86, guitarist and composer

10 August 2004
Daily Record

DENVILLE -- Anthony "Tony" Mottola, one of the most recorded guitarists in the history of popular music and an influence on a generation of jazz guitar players, died Aug. 9, 2004, after suffering a stroke several days earlier. He was 86.

During a career that spanned five decades, he recorded more than 50 albums and, as New York City's most in-demand session guitarist, he appeared on thousands of recordings by a hall of fame roster of artists including Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Burl Ives, Rosemary Clooney, Billie Holiday, Connie Francis, Johnny Desmond and many others.


Mainly self-taught, Mr. Mottola was renowned for a distinctive singing melodic tone and a rich and original harmonic technique that remain an influence for guitarists today.

A native of Kearny, he landed his first professional job with the George Hall Band at age 18, and spent the next two years performing in ballrooms around the country.

Among the highlights of his big band days were his first recording session, a hit record called Shine featuring vocalist Dolly Dawn, and a "Battle of the Bands" with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlem's Apollo Theater.

"It wasn't battle," he quipped years later. "It was a massacre."

When he grew tired of life on the road, Mr. Mottola returned to New Jersey and landed a job as a staff musician at the CBS radio network, where he worked with Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Kate Smith and backed Frank Sinatra on his first solo commercial radio show.

As the heyday of network radio gave way to the fledgling technology of broadcast television, Mr. Mottola became one of the first musicians to appear on the new medium. The Tony Mottola Trio provided music for the daily television show "Face the Music," hosted by singer Johnny Desmond, and is reputed to be the first group to do so on a regular basis.

In the early '50s, television director Yul Brynner hired Mr. Mottola as musical director for a new weekly live CBS-TV drama called "Danger." The guitarist composed and performed scores for original scripts by Paddy Chayevsky, Rod Serling, Horton Foote and other top writers that featured the then little-known actors James Dean, Rod Steiger, Sal Mineo and Eva Marie Saint, among others.

When Yul Brynner left the show to launch a Broadway career in "The King and I," he was replaced by director Sidney Lumet. "Danger" proved to be a critical success and a hit show; it ran for six years.

Many years later, Sidney Lumet and Mr. Mottola teamed up once again when Mr. Mottola composed the score for Mr. Lumet's critically acclaimed 1988 film, "Running on Empty."

Mr. Mottola's other television credits include a 25-year stint as accompanist to crooner Perry Como; Sid Caesar's "Your Show of Shows"; the children's show "Howdy Doody"; the game show "Beat The Clock"; 14 years in the Skitch Henderson/Johnny Carson NBC Tonight Show Band; and the kitschy '60s classic, "Sing Along With Mitch (Miller)" program.

He won an Emmy Award for the score he composed for "Two Childhoods," a 1960s television documentary examining the early lives of Hubert Humphrey and James Baldwin.

All the while, Mr. Mottola was active as a "sideman' in New York's bustling recording studios, and beginning in the late 1950s, he began recording his own albums for former bandleader Enoch Light's Command Records label. In all, he recorded more than 50 disks for Command and its successor, Project 3Records. His debut opus on Command, Mr. Big, is considered a classic of ensemble jazz guitar playing, and his best-selling album Roman Guitar earned him a Silver
Recording Award from the Recording Industry Association of America.

Mr. Mottola retired from active playing in 1979, but his retirement was short-lived. In December 1980, he got a call from violinist Joe Malin, an old friend from the New York studio days who had since become musical contractor for Frank Sinatra. Mr. Malin wanted to know if Mr. Mottola might be available to join Sinatra's band for a week of shows in Atlantic City and another week at Carnegie Hall. Mr. Mottola, who had known Frank Sinatra since they were teenagers
performing on WAAT Radio in Jersey City and who had worked with him in the
early days of television and the New York record dates, jumped at the chance to reunite.

The two-week gig lasted lasted eight years. during which the singer from Hoboken and the guitarist from Kearny performed memorable duets at each show in performances around the world, including a command performance for the Queen of England at Royal Albert Hall and a White House East Room concert for the president of Italy, with old friends Perry Como and guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli, and hosted by President Ronald Reagan.

In 1983, the pair recorded Jule Styne's "It's Sunday," the last 45 rpm single that Frank Sinatra released, and the only time he ever recorded with only a guitar for accompaniment.

Mr. Mottola was a member of Local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians, the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers, and the Gibson Guitar Hall of Fame.

He is survived by his wife of 62 years, Mitzi (Massaglia); his children, Joanne Clark of Norwalk, Conn., Bernice Antifonario of Dracut, Mass., Tony Mottola Jr. of Montclair and Nina DePietro of Ringwood; seven grandchildren; and six great-grandchildren.

The funeral will start from the Norman Dean Home for Services, 16 Righter Ave., Denville, www.normandean.com, at 11 a.m. Thursday Aug. 12, and proceed to a 12:30 p.m. Liturgy of Christian Burial at St. Catherine of Siena Church, Mountain Lakes.

Interment will be in Gate of Heaven Cemetery, East Hanover.

Friends will be received Wednesday, Aug. 11, 2-4 and 7-9 p.m.

[Dean]

Thanks, SC.

Peace, Dean

[George Lyons]

I close my eyes and I can see and hear FS and Tommy Mottola onstage at The Concert for the Americas doing "Send in the Clowns".....and it's real and it's now and they will always play...

"Isn't it bliss, are we a pair....me here at last on the ground - you in mid-air ?????"

[Jake]

May Tony rest in peace. This is indeed sad news. At least Tony and Frank will be reunited and may they entertain the heavens from here to eternity!