Feb. 26, 1976: Buffalo sidemen for the Three Suns

 

One of First Lady Mamie Eisenhower's favorite groups. One of my mom’s favorites too. I remember them well from hearing their version of “Twilight Time” on the kitchen shelf radio when I was a kid.

Feb. 26, 1976

Three Suns: Same Sound, New Local Faces

“MUSIC MAN” WAS HIS CB RADIO handle when he was trucking steel for automobiles from here to Flint, Mich. Then came last year’s auto slump.

          Emmett Nolan sat home in Cheektowaga watching his business taper off and decided to put his music to work.

          “I play nine instruments,” Nolan says, “but up to then I’d just played weekends. I called some agents in New York City and one of them called back to ask if I wanted to work with the Three Suns.

          “I said yes and he said send me a tape and I was preparing the tape when I got another call. This time it’s from Artie Dunn of the Three Suns.

          “He said he didn’t have time to wait and would I play something over the telephone.

* * *

“MY DAUGHTER Cathy held the phone and I auditioned for him right there. A little later he called back and said his accordion player couldn’t make it.

          “I said I know one and I called Gordy. We went right down and joined him in Cincinnati.”

          The Three Suns, for those too young to remember, were a hot item in the ‘40s and early ‘50s. There was Dunn, the trio’s organist and leader, and his cousins, Al and Morty Nevins.

          Starting with an eight-year stand (1941-49) at the Piccadilly Hotel in New York’s Times Square, they set the whole nation humming to the wistful accordion and organ in their big instrumental hits, “Twilight Time” and “Peg O’ My Heart.”

          They took the long road down from the peak of their success – the hotel and resort circuit. Then, seven years ago, Al died, Morty retired and Dunn continued alone, hiring sidemen.

          For Three Suns sidemen, it would be hard to find a more compatible pair than Nolan, whose talents include guitar, banjo, pedal steel guitar, trombone and ukulele, among others.

          And accordionist Gordon Jaffe, who also doubles on piano, guitar and vocals.

          “We’ve played together here in Buffalo for 15 years,” Jaffe notes, “and we’d always imitated the Three Suns. ‘Twilight Time’ was one of our big numbers.”

          Nolan’s always been into music. He started playing by ear as a kid. Harmonica, then trumpet in South Park High School.

          In 1950, he bought his first guitar and started playing weekends in places like the Am-Rock Grill in Black Rock, Gene Wahl’s on South Park and the Hotel Buffalo.

          He met Jaffe, “the mighty mite of the accordion” and winner of a Horace Heidt talent contest as a Kenmore High School senior in 1948, when the two were on a pickup gig together.

          They started Buffalo’s first banjo parlor, then led the house band at the Chez Ami, the Town Casino and the Glen Casino.

          They rubbed shoulders with the likes of Jerry Vale, the Mills Brothers, the Smothers Brothers and Al Martino.

          “We’d seen Dunn perform,” Nolan says, “but we never met him. When we first went to Cincy (Cincinnati), we had to pick him up at the hotel at 2 p.m. and be ready for the gig at 9:30. We had seven hours of rehearsal in between.

          “That first month was really work,” he remembers. “We had to rehearse and rehearse and rehearse to get the Three Suns sound the way Artie wanted it.

* * *

“WHAT MAKES that certain Three Suns sound is the fill-ins. Like ‘Peg O’ My Heart,’ where the guitar goes wa-wah-wa-wa. We got it down very close to the original.”

          Cincinnati was the warm-up. Then Louisville for Kentucky Derby week. By the time they played the plush Copley Plaza Hotel in Boston, they were cooking.

          “A perfect evening of nostalgia,” was the Variety reviewer’s verdict. “Songs like they used to play them in the radio days.”

          Jaffe’s wife and children joined them in Boston, daughter Marianne getting a little solo with the group.

          Commitments at home (Jaffe gives music lesions) kept him from completing the rest of the summer’s schedule – Cape Cod, Pittsburgh, Chicago, Elkhart, even Flint.

          This time “Music Man” was hitting more than CB airwaves.

          “When we’re on the road,” Nolan says, “we’re stars. The hotels always get us interviews on radio and TV. We get invited to people’s houses for dinner. This professor from Harvard took us down the Charles River on his boat.”

* * *

THIS WEEK Nolan’s off to Orlando, Fla., where the Suns are playing Doe Valley Country Club. Chances are they’ll look up a Suns contemporary, organist Lenny Dee, who has his own club in Clearwater.

          Another contemporary, Frankie Yankovic, has a club in Cleveland. Dunn, who lives on Long Island, likes the idea of having his own home base and is considering the Buffalo area. Jaffe and Nolan are checking out a spot in Cheektowaga for him.

          Nolan will be back next weekend for duets with Jaffe as the two begin a Friday-Saturday engagement in the Ground Round Restaurant in Seneca Mall.

* * *

JAFFE DOES Thursdays solo in Ferrante’s, Maple and North Forest Road, Amherst.

          “It’s a real honor to be associated with the Suns,” Nolan says, “because it’s a very high-class trio. That’s why I’m not Red Nolan any more. Dunn thought it was too country-western, like Red Foley and Red Sovine.

          “And I heard about it one night in Cincinnati when I slipped my jacket off between sets. Dunn told me you don’t take your coat off in public when you’re working. With this kind of group, you don’t do those kind of things.”

* * * * *

IN THE PHOTO: Emmett Nolan, left, on guitar, and Gordon Jaffe, right, accordion, carry on a 35-year-old tradition with Three Suns founder Artie Dunn, center.

* * * * *

FOOTNOTE: According to spaceagepop.com, the Three Suns are “the leading small group in exotica” and “were a concept as much as a group, since Al Nevins dropped and added players to suit the material.” Meanwhile, the history of the group in Wikipedia is at broad variance with what's reported in this article. According to Wikipedia, Al retired from performing in 1954, Artie Dunn reformed the Suns in 1957 and kept touring. Artie died in 1996.

Wikipedia notes that Al Nevins went on to form the landmark publishing company Aldon Music with Don Kirschner, which fostered the songwriting careers of Carole King and Neil Sedaka, among others. He also got into experimental sounds in the studio. Spaceagepop.com notes that “Danny’s Inferno” from the Three Suns “Movin’ and Groovin’” album in 1962 “is included on more recent exotica compilations than perhaps any other cut and is one of the leading examples of a classical kitsch number.”

First appearance in these pages by 4-foot-11 Gordon Jaffe was in January 1975. As noted in the footnote to that article, he moved his wife and kids to Las Vegas in 1978 and became attraction there as a strolling accordionist in an Italian restaurant there called Battista’s Hole in the Wall. He did that for more than 30 years and I believe he's still with us. Same with Emmett Nolan, apparently. Near as I can tell, he's living here in the Buffalo area. They never succeeded in luring Artie Dunn to Cheektowaga.

* * * * *

FURTHER NOTE: All of these transcripts of old feature articles about the Buffalo music scene can be found in a somewhat more legible and searchable form on my Blogspot site: https://www.blogger.com/blog/posts/4731437129543258237.