July 15, 1972: December, featuring Dolly Durante

         In which an object that’s not easily moved meets an irresistible force with red hair: 

July 15, 1972 

‘December’ in Sunshine All Year Long 

DECEMBER, that’s the name of the group, is wailing some Janis Joplin song at the club on Buffalo’s upper West Side. December is all fancied up in tuxedoes. And wearing those little bow ties. All except the singer, whose ruffled blouse is open at the throat.

        “Yes, I’m rea-day,” she and the guitarist and the bass guitarist are doing in this rich little Three Dog Night harmony on the Pacific Gas & Electric song.

        When Big Fred Casserta, assistant to booking agent Fred Saia, talked about December, he mentioned that Dolly Durante was a potent singer, but he didn’t say how potent.

* * *

ON STAGE, she cuts a commanding figure, long red hair and all. And she has a real belt-it-out voice, low and strong, lower than either guitarist Bob Campbell or bass player Mike Ruffino. But she keeps it under control, as if she knows what level’s most comfortable.

        Bob Campbell, the group’s musical leader, takes a competent wah-wah guitar break, keyboard man Gary Greco throws on some punchy piano rhythm and there’s a big rave-up ending for the crowd of dancers, who look somewhat underdressed in contrast to the band’s elegance.

        Dolly’s exercising more control than usual, it turns out, but not because she wants to. Before they plunge into the energetic wailing of Jefferson Airplane’s “Somebody to Love,” she explains:

        “We played for this wedding last night in a back yard up in Amherst and it was about 50 degrees out there. We froze. And we got hoarse voices already.”

        To close the set, she says a few words about the tuxedos. Then they go into a short “I Don’t Need No Doctor” and depart for the dressing room.

        The tuxedos, Bob says, they needed for a dress-up date and they got a discount for promoting them. They only wear them on Fridays and Saturdays.

        “And the manager said I’m the only girl who has the nerve to wear one of his tuxedos,” Dolly puts in. “He’s gonna bring the big boss of the whole chain of tuxedo stores up from New York City to see us.”

* * *

“I DON’T KNOW whether it’s right,” Gary says, “us wearing tuxedos a couple nights and wearing our regular clothes the other nights. You know, we should be all the way one way or the other.”

        Dolly, meanwhile, is borrowing a cigarette from soft-spoken drummer Vince Zarcone and talking with the visitor about Las Vegas. She’s been there once. She wants to go back.

        “They stink out there, those little groups in the casinos,” she says. “I think we could do real good in Vegas.”

        Rest of the band’s been through it before. Dolly talks about going out there next year and the group gets this you-gotta-be-kidding attitude about it, just to tease her. They kid around a lot, this band.

        Except she isn’t kidding. She wants the whole band to go. If it comes to doing it alone, she’ll do it, she says, but she’d rather have the band along.

        Back on stage, the next set’s got their “Superstar” medley. “This next song is about a great artist,” Dolly says deeply, “and I’d like you all to pause a minute to think about her soul. Janis Joplin, superstar.” And it’s quiet a moment except for the background the band is laying down.

        For the sake of her voice, however, she skips the heaviest Joplin numbers, just does “Move Over” before she steps down to rest her voice and lets the others carry on.

* * *

WHILE DOLLY talks about growing up on the West Side and the musicians she knows and how she used to stay up nights listening to Ray Charles and Aretha Franklin, the band knocks out a couple heavy rockers – like Grand Funk Railroad’s “Foot Stompin’ Music,” with a strong high vocal by Bob.

        “We do a variety of music,” Mike says, “and I like it that way. It doesn’t get boring. With some of the other bands I’ve been with, we did the same thing all the time.”

        “We try to get music that everybody really likes,” Dolly puts in. “Everybody’s different, you know, and people is our business.”

        Gary got the group going 19 months ago with a drummer he played with in the rock band Net Weight. Dolly arrived two months later, eager to get back into performing after a year off.

        She lined up a practice-and-play arrangement at McVan’s, that venerable Niagara Street stop, and there’s where booking agent Fred Saia saw them and signed them up.

* * *

THEY HAD a four-month break last winter while Dolly had a baby (she has two sons, one adopted), but it was a working vacation – practice seven nights a week on a new collection of songs, getting them into tight 40-minute sets. Their Beatles medley took a month of rehearsing.

        Even in the medleys they find places to kid around and occasionally they’ll surprise a crowd by inviting people up from the audience to play an instrument or sing a song or just plain dance.

        “We don’t like to stand away from the people,” Dolly says. “We enjoy ourselves up there and we want them to be part of it, too.”

        The group will be at the Barrelhead in West Seneca tonight and tomorrow. Tuesday through next Sunday, they’re at the Cross Bow on Sheridan Drive. After that, there’s two weeks at the Big Ten Club in Angola and a week at Lockport’s Keystone 90s.

        Meanwhile, Fred Saia’s arranged a recording session for them at Buffalo’s Act-One Studios in a couple weeks. The selections haven’t been decided, but the band thinks one of them will be an original number.

        “I’m really excited about it,” Dolly says, “but I’m not gonna get my hopes or wishes up. Whatever will be, will be. But I’d still like to climb right up there to the top. I don’t wanta stay there forever, but I’d like to be there just once.” 

The box/sidebar: 

Dolly: A Real Singer 

        They call the band December because that’s when Gary Greco got it together. Dec. 5, 1970, to be exact.

        He lined up the drummer he used to play with in the rock band Net Weight and, through a booking agent, Bob Campbell and his bass-playing brother, Ken. During early rehearsals, Nick DeStefano of the former Road was with them for a while.

* * *

BOB, WHO PLAYED with The Cascades and Cherry Blend, stayed on, but his brother left to run the family elevator repair business. Mike, a veteran of Blue-Eyed Soul, came in to replace him. Vince, who succeeded the original drummer, had played with National Trust.

        Dolly Durante’s been singing with bands for nine years. On Connecticut Street, there’s still a sign for Dolly Dee & The Midnighters, a band which included those veteran rockers the Burruano brothers. With The Truth, she sang in clubs from New York to California.

* * *

THE BAND lines up like this:

        Dolly Durante, 25, vocals, Grover Cleveland High School, attended beauty school, divorced, two sons.

        Bob Campbell, 22, guitar and vocals, Frontier Central, Buffalo State graduate, works for family business as salesman, taught adult education art classes, married.

        Mike Ruffino, 21, bass guitar and vocals, Bishop Fallon and Grover Cleveland, attended Bryant & Stratton Business Institute, races motorcycles, single.

        Gary Greco, 24, piano and organ, Grover Cleveland, UB graduate, single.

        Vince Zarcone, 27, drums, Amherst High, attended Ithaca College, single.

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Front row, from left, keyboardist Gary Greco, singer Dolly Durante and drummer Vince Zarcone; top row, guitarist Bob Campbell and bass guitarist Mike Ruffino.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Unless this is the same Bob Campbell who started the group Emery Nash, the archives can’t tell me anything about the guys in the band. Singer Dolly Durante’s deeds, however, are pretty well documented.

        A Buffalo Music Hall of Famer, she went not to Vegas, but to Palm Springs, where she linked up with Buffalonian Mike Costley, who’s a nightclub institution there. According to her BMHOF bio, her stint in Palm Springs got her noticed by none other than Ike Turner, who hired her for studio work.

       “He was always good to me," she told biographer Elmer Ploetz. "He trusted me and my sister with money and jewelry. We would read the Bible to him. He’d tell us stories about when he was a little boy, what they had to do to survive.  I think he deserves a little more credit than he’s been getting."

        Through Turner and some other connections, she rubbed shoulders with a bunch of stars before she came back to Buffalo in the mid-1980s. She’s been performing here regularly ever since. I caught her one night a couple years ago at the Club 31 downtown. She's still irresistible.