I looked at the date and realized that Friday, May 11th, 1973 was the beginning of a wild adventure that I am still enjoying.

On May 11, 1973, I was a senior at Oak Park River Forest High School on Chicago's westside. In high school I was a 3-sport jock, class president, on student council but most importantly, I was the leader and leadsinger/guitarist of "Jade" a "top-40's" teen band. We weren't great, ... we were "OK" at best. 

That same year, two very creative history teachers, Tom Graziano and Jim Locke had a great idea. They wanted the entire school to live and breath a history lesson. Their brilliant idea was to have the entire 5,000+ - student body transported back to the 1950's. The teachers taught as if it were the 1950's again, ... history classes taught nothing but the 1950's. Math became arithmetic, and on Friday May 11th, all students and teachers dressed as if it were the Fabulous Fifties again.

Our band was asked to perform a set of 1950's rock and roll music during lunch periods and after school at a Sock-Hop. After being promised to be let off of school for the day, we all agreed to perform at the teachers request and we were even paind $200.00! What a deal!

We performed music by Bill Haley and the Comets, Danny and the Juniors, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, The Big Bopper and Dion and the Belmonts. We wore leather jackets, tight jeans, T-shirts and we slicked our hair back with Brillcream. (a little dab 'il do ya)

As fate would have it, this project was covered in all the local and Chicago papers and to my amazement, my photo showed up on the cover of the Chicago Daily News. A few days after all this great publicity, schools from all over the Chicago-area called the teachers and wanted to try the same project at their high schools and colleges. The best part was that they wanted to hire our band for their Sock-Hop. At that time, Sha Na Na was the only other oldies-act in the USA. We gladly performed for a fraction of what it would cost to get Sha Na Na to their schools.

By the following September, we owned our own PA system, a truck, a complete 4-set wardrobe and had a 3-man road crew. More importantly, we had bookings every weekend at area high schools, junior colleges and colleges for very good money (still a fraction of what Sha Na Na would get!).

We developed a great choreographed show with nightly appearance by (our versions) Elvis, The Beatles, every "teen idol" we could impersonate and a "Vinny Fontane Dance Contest" complete with Fantabulous prizes! We slightly changed our name to, "Jade 50's, ... Chicago's Own Westside Story ... The New Band With The Old Sound, ... The Best in Good 'Ol Rock and Roll!"

I want to thank Graz and Jim Locke, who went on to manage us. Jim co-managed us for a few months but poor Graz suffered with us for years.

A few years later, in 1977, Dick Clark decided to go on the road again and rejuvenate his "Cavalcade of Stars" shows from the 1960's, ... he needed a band to open the show and to back-up original oldies stars like Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Danny and the Juniors, Dion and Bill Haley and the Comets, to name a few of the over 60 artists we performed with and befriended. Like in high school, we were at the right place at the right time and got the gig! I was about 22-years old at the time. My adventures in the entertainment business became very interesting after that, and there hasn't been a dull moment since. I have had the honor to perform all over the world with some of my childhood heroes. When the world changed in 2001, so did I, and I started focusing on giving back a little and I focused on real heroes. I have had the honor to perform many times in New York City for the great FDNY Firefighters and their families. This adventure has taken me to Africa, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Northern and Southern Iraq and I have the honor to perform on the steps of Saddam Hussein's Baghdad Palace for American and coalition troops; ... and the adventure continues. All because a few teachers had an idea and included me. Am I the luckiest man on earth or what?

I want to thank my original band mates, Nick Calabrese, Paul Curtis, John Galasek, Brent Cutro, Dave Stewart, Tommy Schieve, Don Rubino, Don Corkel, Herb Weinand and Don Cozzi, member of OPRFHS Class of '73 and who rocked with me in high school. We shared some great times together and many of us still get together every so often and perform for charity events in our hometown of Oak Park. I still reminisce about the great old days of actually becoming the teen idols we impersonated for high school girls across the USA, ... what a blast we had.

 

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