Jazz Notes: Guitarist Lou Francavillo, Sr.

Lou Francavillo, Sr. confesses to us, “I didn’t do the right thing.” The choice he made while playing guitar in small clubs in the New York City area in the 1940s “was the worst thing I could have done.” But that decision was ultimately one he would never really regret.

It was 1947. 20-year-old Francavillo had moved from his native Brooklyn to Woodhaven, Queens, and with only a handful of formal guitar lessons; in the Navy he’d entertained shipmates with an old guitar aboard a minesweeper in the Pacific toward the end of World War II. Back in the city, he started playing in small jazz combos: piano, bass, guitar – that kind of thing. New York City got hit with a couple of feet of snow during the holiday season, and a bass-playing neighbor called asked him to sub for a storm-bound musician. “Can you help us out tonight?”

Lou obliged. It was a paying gig after all.

The gig went well. They liked his sound, and offered him another job a few days later. It was a Christmas party for the employees of a New York radio station. That led to an offer to play on some advertizing jingles. Things were looking up for this young guitarist.

The next gig with this trio would be New Year’s Eve in New York. “I can’t make it,” Lou told the leader of the group. Looking back, Lou knows that may have put the brakes on his budding jazz career. Why turn down that gig? “My girlfriend came before anything else.” When Lou decided a New Year’s Eve date with his girlfriend was more important than the job, his “boss” said, “You’ll never play with us again!”

If he’d stayed with that trio, it might have led to radio exposure, and then, who knows? But he was blackballed.

Why no regrets? Lou’s been married to that girl (Phyllis) for 67 years now.

While Lou has had many other opportunities to make jazz guitar his livelihood, he maintains, “I like my family life too much to go on the road and leave my wife and kids.” Still, staying home hasn’t meant the guitar stayed in the case very long. Lou Francavillo Sr. has been making music since he was five years old, and continues to sit in at various jazz venues in the Triple Cities area at the age of 90.

Lou moved to Endicott in the early 1960s, and his jazz guitar has filled places like the old Beacon Inn, the Paramount Lounge, Duke’s Place, and The Keg. More recently, Lou sits in at the Lost Dog Jazz Jams and the Firehouse Stage Jazz Sessions. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

His story begins on E. 2nd Street, Brooklyn, when five-year-old Lou could pick out a few tunes on the family piano. When he was 17, Lou got an inexpensive guitar and a friend taught him some basics. Two cousins were in a band and Lou went to a rehearsal and saw his first big band arrangements there. “I can do that,” the teenager thought. But at a tryout, “I asked the piano player to give me an ‘E’ so I could tune up. Well, most bands tune from ‘A,’ and from my experience, I didn’t really know an ‘A’ from an ‘E’ until the string broke!” But he got the job. The venue was the Dublin Palace, Brooklyn. The pay was $3 for the night. It was 1945.

Shortly afterward, he went into the Navy, while “the boys held that job for me.” At war’s end, with his “mustering out pay” totaling $230, he bought his “first real guitar - a Gibson.” The music of the post-war era was still that of the big dance bands, and among the most respected was Benny Goodman’s. Though Goodman’s guitar player Charlie Christian had died at the age of 25 in 1942, his artistry is given credit for moving the guitar from the band’s rhythm section to prominent jazz solo work. More than anyone else, it was Charlie Christian’s guitar work that influenced Lou Francavillo’s own music. “Even to this day, I try to emulate him,” he admits.

The other guitarists for whom he has high regard are Barney Kessel, Wes Montgomery, Charlie Byrd, and Tal Farlow. Unlike those guitar giants, however, Lou never played jazz full time. He’d get gigs a couple of nights a week and on weekends, playing in bars, small clubs, for weddings and bar mitzvahs. But his workdays were filled with selling paint. He worked full time at a New York City paint store, but often kept a suit or tuxedo at the store so he wouldn’t have to go home to Queens to change for a nighttime jazz gig.

After his move to Endicott (his brother lived there), Lou took a job as a kitchen designer, but the pay was lower than promised, so his guitar would help support his family. Though Lou Sr.’s kitchen design background is impressive, his music beckons in his retirement years. Looking back on his jazz career in our area (part-time as it may have been), he’s crossed paths with local jazz notables such as Slam Stewart, Al Hamme, Pat ‘the Cat’ and Tony Monforte, and Jim Noyes.

In the late 1960s, he also found himself at the Ed Sullivan Theatre in New York, thanks to the late cartoonist Johnny Hart. Hart had enjoyed Jim Noyes’ group at Duke’s Place (Noyes on bass and vocals, Don Zampi on piano, and Lou’s guitar) and had a connection in New York. He helped set up an audition for Jim Noyes’ group for Sullivan’s popular CBS-TV variety show. The group played through a couple of tunes and a producer told Lou he really liked his guitar work. “Do you guys have a record?” No, they didn’t. “Well, call us back when you do.” So much for TV exposure.

But here’s the thing: Lou Francavillo Sr. thoroughly enjoyed success on the local scene here. He played with a group called Just Friends, was a charter member of Al Hamme’s Music Unlimited band, and in the present tense masterfully plays jazz guitar wherever a gig opens up. He and Phyllis raised two sons, both talented musicians. Lou, Jr. plays trumpet and flugelhorn and Bobby is a composer and arranger, a Berklee graduate whose background includes the former BC Pops Orchestra. Now, Lou Sr. enters his tenth decade as one of the youngest sounding jazz guitarists in the business.

You can find Lou sitting in at Lost Dog Jazz Jams & Firehouse Stage Jazz Sessions; visit his Facebook page for more information.