Radio and television mirror (July-Dec 1948)

My Winning Nights with Heidt (Continued on page 49) FLORIDA FASHIONS SANFORD 882 FLORIDA I Please send .."Susan Sanfords" on approval Iol $3.98 each, plus postage and C.O.D. charges. If not delighted, I may return purchase within ■ ten days for refund. (You may enclose purchase price plus 20 cents postage, saving C.O.D. fee. I Same refund privilege.) I Circle Color: Pink, Blue & Lime Gray, Rose & Green ■ Circle Siie: 12 14 16 18 20 40 42 88 Name Address City & State m This was the beginning of what the radio announcer on the program lavishly calls my "triumphal cross country championship tour" but what I considered privately to be "the miracle of the bellows." But before I talk about that, I'd like to go back to the very beginning of my story. From the time Dad won Mother's hand by serenading her with his accordion, that instrument has played a dominant role in my life. Dad came from Sicily where the accordion has always been a favorite instrument. Mother was an old fashioned girl even though she was born in Pittsburgh, so with my maternal grandpa sitting discreetly between them on the couch, Dad had to let the accordion do most of his talking. MARRIAGE to mother put an end to my father's role as a romantic musical vagabond. They §ettled down in Fresno, California and started a butcher shop. The accordion lay, gathering dust, until I was old enough to toddle around. At that point my parents were always afraid that I'd hurt myself badly if I ever succeeded in my attempts to pull it down off its shelf. As a kid, I was always crazy about the accordion, but when I asked for one of my own, the answer was always: "Wait until your taller. You have to be a big boy to handle an accordion." Finally when my thirteenth birthday rolled around, the long wait was over. My parents proudly presented me with an accordion that was the best money could buy, and built especially to my measurements. I was almost bursting with joy. I knew that years of work and sacrifice had gone for the money it took to buy that accordion. Mom had to be a "butcher lady" by day and cook, housekeeper and guardian angel for her growing family in every other • spare moment. Dad had scrimped and gone without many things too, in order to give me what I wanted. As fate would have it, the very next year I shot up like a weed. The irony of it all was unbearable. I had waited twelve years to be big enough to play the accordion, my parents had saved all that time to buy it, and then I had outgrown my instrument in less than ten months. Mom and Dad grimly set their lips, gave me a look which implied that I had better not pull a stunt like that again, took my precious instrument, traded it in on a new one. From then on, it was practice, practice, practice, and for variety, a little more practice. When I first went to San Francisco to meet my teacher, Angelo Cagnazzo, he threw up his hands in horror at my fumbling attempts. "You call this music?" he bellowed. "Stop! Stop! Your technique is terrible. Here, let me show you . . ." And he did. He taught me everything .1 needed to know plus giving me that extra something that makes a great teacher more of an inspiration than a task-master. I gladly traveled the two hundred and fifty miles to San Francisco and back every weekend because there was no one else quite like Mr. Cagnazzo. He took advantage of every spark of talent I possessed. I worked an average of five hours a day, and I have spent as much as thirteen hours in one day on the accordion. But "for love or money" my efforts have been amply repaid. At the time though, I worked so hard at my music that it worried my Mom. One day she dragged me to the doctor. "Can there be something wrong with Dick?" she asked the doctor anxiously. "He never goes out and has fights like the other kids in the neighborhood. He'd rather practice or listen to music." There was one time though when I was almost torn in two by conflicting desires. Californians are great sports fans, and in the high schools especially, a boy doesn't rate unless he's a star athlete. I'm six feet tall and weigh one hundred and seventy pounds, so when I was approached to try out for the football team at Fresno High, I was only too happy to attend the first practice session. That night, after practice, my father sat down with me. "You like football a lot, don't you?" he asked quietly. "I'm crazy about it," I admitted. "You know that one football injury . can ruin your hands for the accordion." "Gee, Dad," I replied, struck by the truth of his statement. "I hadn't realized that." The next day I went down to the coach's office and asked him to excuse me. That was the first real sacrifice I ever had to make for my music. Later on, in high school, I was kept so busy that I didn't have time to worry about football. I was doing an early morning all-request program for station KARM which was a lot of fun except for one thing. I had to do my own radio announcing and that threw me for a while. But Bob Carlson and John Garrick at the station made me do it, and as it turned out, it was good training for the little "thank-you" speeches I had to ad lib later with Horace Heidt. IN addition to the morning broadcasts, I was working nights at the California Hotel in Fresno with Lou Math's orchestra. I had always planned to work with an orchestra or with what musicians call a "combo," but my mother wanted me to be a soloist. She would watch me perform and say: "When you stand up there alone, Dick, you play with your heart. I can tell." I guess she was right. It was as a soloist that I competed on the Horace Heidt program from Fresno. That first coast to coast broadcast was very hard on my nerves. For three days before it, I couldn't eat. "Dick, why are you so upset?" my mother chided me gently. "The broadcast will be held in Fresno. It's your home town. Everybody knows you here." The audience was filled with people I knew, but they might have been total strangers for all the confidence I had in their reception of me. Besides, there was Halyard Patterson, a boy I'd known from Fresno High, setting a swift pace with his tricky, brilliant piano styling. I knew I had just barely beaten him out, when the official judges announced that it was "Dick Contino, plus thirty." The words meant I had won. The next day I boarded the special car that was taking Horace Heidt's band to Los Angeles. Mr. Heidt had reassured my folks that I would be well taken care of, but I was feeling very lonely in spite of my excitement, when I saw a small, lively boy dressed in a white