Oct. 7. 1972: Jackie Jocko

 

A snapshot of one of Buffalo’s most beloved nightclub entertainers right after he came home for good. For his complete resume, check him out in Wikipedia. 

Oct. 7, 1972 

Two Talented Musicians

Come Home Again –

Entertain Old Friends 

SOME WRITER out in L.A. once quipped about him that you might laugh at his name, but you’ll never forget it.

        So when a friend mentioned last week that he’d seen Jackie Jocko at David, the fancy new club on Elmwood Avenue near North Street, it activated the pinball bumpers in the ‘50s section of my mind.

* * *

JACKIE JOCKO. Somewhere in the happy raunch of Chuck Berry and Elvis and Buddy Holly, he’d flashed once onto the charts, crooning some catchy ballad or something. No, you don’t forget Jackie Jocko.

        But what have 15 years in entertainment done to him, I speculated. Had he become some sad figure scratching his way to salvation on the murky edges of showbiz?

        “You’ve gotta ask him about astrology,” my Aquarian friend goes as Jackie Jocko ends a Friday night set in the white plastered surrealism of David and it’s time to catch him for an interview before he gets away from that white piano.

        It turns out I don’t have to ask. He hits on it first. No sooner shake hands than he asks what month you were born. What day? “Oh, you’re on a cusp,” he beams, “that’s very powerful.”

        For the interview, he offers to meet in a friend’s store next to the Century Theater downtown. “I don’t have a house here,” he says. “I just have five or six friends I stay with. These people, I open up the store for them.

        “Here,” he digs out a record album from behind the stage. “Take this and tell me Tuesday what you think of it.” Aquarius Records. His own label. His name in red and blue letters like on the book cover to “Love Story.”

        He’s on the cusp of Capricorn and Aquarius, but there’s no doubt which is the dominant. He shines with Aquarian gregariousness. His longtime companion, drummer Joe Peters, is an Aquarian too, but he’s quiet.

* * *

“I’LL PLAY something for you,” he tells my Aquarian friend after an animated discussion of the planets. “What would you like to hear?”

She thinks for a moment. “You’re an Aquarian,” she goes, “you’re going to play what you want to anyway.”

        “You’re right, of course,” he grins, then turns to ask the couple at the next table what their signs are. “A Pisces and a Capricorn,” he remarks. “You two can be very good for each other.”

        Behind the piano, he pulls back the sleeves of his dinner jacket (he and Joe wear matching suits, ties, shirts) and ripples happily through “More.”

        Jackie Jocko is an entertainer in the old sense of the word, the sort of guy who can sit down at a piano any place and captivate anybody within hearing distance.

        “My partner and I, we never practice together,” he says. “We do everything natural. I like to interpret between the lines. If you use a set pattern, then you can deviate from it.”

        Never makes up sets either. There’s probably 300 song titles magic-markered onto a piece of cardboard on top of the piano and he just picks them out like hors d’oeuvres, bridging them with a dedication or some comment, never letting the pace drop.

        Urbane in the style of ‘50s nightclub crooners, his smooth, playful voice is best in the older songs. He plays tag with rhythms, bends a phrase here and there, lifts a hand above his head, changes words if the spirit moves him. Jackie Jocko definitely has a good time.

        Jackie Jocko was born John Giaccio in Buffalo Jan. 21, 1929, with his moon in Gemini. He grew up in the North Fillmore area and went to East High School.

        His fascination with the piano at age 2 led to lessons from his brother Ralph (who now owns Park Dale Radio & Television Service), and he was still in grade school when he started playing for crowds.

* * *

“I’VE BEEN playing in saloons since I was 12 years old,” he says, “and I don’t drink. I used to watch everybody get bombed out.”

        He hadn’t been doing saloons for long before a local music man named Jiggy Gelia encouraged him to start singing. In those days, Tony Bennett and Frank Sinatra were big and his voice naturally fell into that range and style.

        For two years he had a quartet here, then pared it down to the partnership with Joe Peters, which has lasted for about 20 years. Joe, a Buffalo native and Hutchinson High graduate, has a home in Williamsville.

        John Giaccio became Jackie Jocko after he went to Cleveland in the mid ‘50s and signed a contract with Mercury Records. Jackie because everybody called him Jack. And Jocko was what the kids in school called him if they couldn’t pronounce Giaccio.

        His hit, a flippant version of the old show tune “Lover Come Back To Me,” he’d worked up as a joke.

        “We used to do it all over Buffalo,” he says, “and we used to swing it. I did it with Lou Powers and Joe Strada. That was years ago.”

        After the hit, he and Joe Peters toured. “Chicago, Dallas, we played every city,” Jackie says.

        He spent five years at the Sahara in Las Vegas, two years at Harrah’s in Reno, toured up and down the West Coast, spent half a year in Hawaii.

        “I was wild in those early days,” he recalls. “I went everywhere and met some of the greatest thinking people, but I didn’t appreciate them then. Now I learn through people.”

* * *

“FORGET THE TAX. Who needs it? Just give me $1.25,” Jackie Jocko smiles at the first customer of the morning in the little Main Street gift shop.

        “I open this place up for half a hour in the morning,” he says. “I just stay here to have fun. You should see the people that come in here.”

        This week he’s opened at the Airways Inn on Genesee Street near the airport, where he’ll play Tuesdays through Saturdays for the rest of the year.

        “It’s small, very intimate,” he exclaims. “I like the intimacy.

        “This is the first time I’ve played my hometown and really loved it. Before, I was always fighting it. My thinking was so wild. I wanted to go other places. Now I’ve been there and I’m happy to be back and see my old friends.”

        After Viola Heiney, manager of the shop, takes over, we adjourn to a newly-remodeled restaurant nearby for a rambling talk.

        We’re interrupted by an animated old friend from the shop named Lee (“The first time I saw Jackie,” she says, “he was dancing on a table and I asked someone: ‘Who is this idiot?’”) and a Main Street fixture called The Professor, who shows Jackie a bruise on his leg from where he fell.

* * *

JACKIE TALKS about Joe Peters: “He’s had many opportunities to play with big bands. He’s very conscientious in everything he does. He’s very good for getting jobs and he could be a promoter if he wanted to. And he helps a lotta people. Kids who don’t have money, he helps them get drums.”

        Mental development: “My sister, she’s in her 50s, she taught me meditation, the spiritual things. If you learn them, the clairvoyancy comes to you.

        “I’ve studied the science of the mind. Norman Vincent Peale brought this thinking out into the open. You know Oral Roberts? He’s got these three principles that can’t fail.

        “One, God is your source. Two, go out and do something and give of what you have. And three, expect a miracle. Don’t just hope for a miracle. Expect one. Every day.”

        And Frank Sinatra: “You listen to Sinatra’s songs and each one of them was written for him. They’re all about his life. That’s why he puts so much feeling into them. This is him.”

        In the parking lot, Jackie picks up a blue station wagon with Ohio plates. “All our business is out of Ohio,” he explains. “I have a manager in Cleveland, Henry George, I’ve been with him 15, 16 years.

        “I was talking to a friend yesterday and he says: ‘Jocko, you’re lucky. You do what you want to do. Any place you want to go, you can go and you have friends.'

        “That’s why I don’t have all these hang-ups. I don’t look at things as problems. Maybe it’s Pollyanna, who knows? People say: ‘Jocko, you’re acting.’ But I’m not acting. I really feel that way.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Jackie Jocko, left, and Joe Peters.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: Walk into the room where Jackie Jocko was playing and before you could find a table, he would work your name and some piece of personal information about you into the song he was singing. He knew a gazillion people and he did it for everyone.

        He wound up doing long engagements at supper clubs – the Cloister, St. George’s Table, Fanny’s and, for a 20-year finale, E. B. Green’s, the steakhouse in the Hyatt Regency Buffalo downtown. In his later years, he’d stopped driving and friends volunteered on a rotating basis to take him to the gig and back.

        By then he was solo, but I would see his sidekick, Joe Peters, playing duplicate bridge. I was even Joe’s partner a few times – a very savvy player, but totally instinctual. You’d have to read him like he was your mate in a band.

        Until Joe died in 2016, he and Jackie were housemates in Eggertsville. Joe’s Death Notice began: “Dearest partner in music and life of Jackie Jocko.” When Jackie passed away in 2019, it felt like the whole city had lost a dear part of its life.