Archival Buffalo News feature articles

  What became of this band, the String Men? Bandleader Clyde Bonnas moved to another garden spot,  Eden, and died in 2007. Vibes player Al LaMarti lived to the ripe old age of 92 and just passed away in November in Florida . Guitarist Al Parker, meanwhile, may have become the most famous, but not for music. I’ve pretty sure he’s the guy featured in a New York Times article in 2010 and many other places in recent years. Right age, right occupation, right number of children.  So if that’s really the right Al Parker, he’s a full-blooded member of the Tonawanda Band of Seneca Indians and goes around portraying his great-great uncle, Ely Parker, military secretary to Gen. Ulysses Grant in the Civil War. Ely Parker transcribed the articles of surrender that Robert E. Lee signed at Appomattox and is buried in Forest Lawn cemetery.   Jan. 16, 1971 Country Rock with Vibes   Memory may be deceiving, but these Saturday afternoon color TV wrestlers look more g...

  Meet some more lost legends – the Burruanos. Google hardly knows them, except for the shout out Dolly Durante gives them in her Buffalo Music Hall of Fame bio. When they were the Midniters, she snuck out of the house to hear them playing a place called the Riptide on Connecticut Street . They let her get up and sing “Dedicated to the One I Love” and liked it so much they offered her her first gig.   Jan. 9, 1971   Isaac Features Tight Sound           If anyone ever feels the need to compile a rock ‘n roll history of Buffalo , here are three contacts:         Stan Szelest from Stan & The Ravens. The Terranova brothers, backbone of The Vibratos. And Tommy Burruano.         Tommy and his twin brother Sammy share a first-floor apartment on Buffalo ’s upper West Side , two blocks from Niagara Street , with Tom Calandra, a bass player with the forme...

  Bassist Pete Haskell, who has hung his hat in his hometown of Elmira for the past two decades plus and has kept playing music professionally. He also has reunited regularly over the years with his bandmates in the Coincidentals and has been a longtime member of Local 92, AFM, the musicians’ union in Buffalo. What’s more, Pete still has a great collection of photos, including the one which accompanies this article and a few with Stan Szelest. Check them out on his website, peterhaskell.com , along with his memories about the bands he played with in the 1960s.   Oct. 3, 1970 The Coincidentals They Follow the Middle Ground   The TV flickers noiselessly in color on some Canadian station and that green push-button phone is miraculously quiet for an afternoon like this at Pete Haskell’s house in Depew . Up above the chair where drummer Joe Ferrara sits is a photo of The Coincidentals when Pete’s blonde wife, Dee Anna, was still singing with them and singer Stan Ro...

  One of my perks as a newly-minted music writer was getting to chat with some of my favorites. Here’s the first of them – singer-songwriter Eric Andersen, who grew up in suburban Snyder and whom I admired since I was a folkie. I caught him in concert back in 1967, opening for the Blues Project in Floral Hall in Dunkirk . Despite his optimism here, 1970 was a low point for Eric. He continued to look like someone out of Edgar Allan Poe in photos with Janis Joplin that summer on the Festival Express train, where the collective level of inebriation was legendary. The song he talks about recording with the pop producer flopped as a single and never reappeared elsewhere. The deal with Warner Bros. ran out. It took until 1972 before he could enjoy a rebound. S igned with Columbia by then, that was the year of  “ Blue River ,” his most successful album.   Oct. 3, 1970   Happy Folk Singer – ‘Sittin’ in the Sunshine’   Being an old Eric Andersen fan (since 196...

  United Sound was inducted into the Buffalo Music Hall of Fame in 2003 – same year I was – and their brief HOF bio notes that they were among the first racially-mixed groups to play the nightclub circuit locally. They also toured nationally and were successful for a many a year, providing a gig for numerous players in the area.  Most durable performer of the group is undoubtedly singer Isaac (Ike) Smith, who has fronted a bunch of bands, most recently the Boogie Monsters.  Dec. 26, 1970 ‘United Sound’ Makes The Moves You’ve Got to See Them As Well as Hear Them   Satan’s Roost, one of the twin citadels of rock on Transit Road near Lockport , is so jammed with cars for Wilmer & The Dukes this particular Sunday that you wonder if Keystone 90s is even open. Turns out Keystone is jammed too. Poke through the lumpy, ice-covered parking lot and you hear what sounds like a soul band. Hustling beat. Organ. That’s United Sound. What you hear outside is only...

  Bernie Cesar, the patriarch of this piece, crosses my mind frequently, not only because of his incredibly generous involvement with the band, but also because his insurance agency on South Cayuga Road in Cheektowaga is within hailing distance of the place where I play bridge. His son Bernard Jr. runs the agency these days. One of his daughters is co-owner and corporate secretary. His other son, Michael, is an anesthesiologist and the pastor of Grace & Truth Church in Amherst . The group’s singer, Debbie Winstel, became his wife. Pianist Joey Santora, who died last January, continued to pursue a career in music. He joined the Rochester-based jazz fusion group Cabo Frio in 1978, recorded several albums on MCA with them, and eventually became an assistant professor at Roberts Wesleyan College in Rochester , where he directed the jazz program.   Dec. 19, 1970   ‘Cesar’s Children’ One Big Family   It’s late Sunday afternoon and Bernard Cesar’s house...