The Passing of Music Icons - Buddy Greco, January 10, 2017 | Eastern North Carolina Now

Buddy Greco, January 10, 2017

    There are singers and there are musicians. Occasionally you find someone who is both. Buddy Greco was an accomplished musician as well as a great stylist of the Vegas Style of performing arts. He started with Benny Goodman. He recorded many albums but is most remembered for his rendition of "That's why the Lady is a Tramp". It was a swing version which highlighted his piano talents as well as his singing talents.

   "He was born Armando Greco in Philadelphia. His mother introduced him to piano at the age of four. At an early age he was singing and performing on radio and, during his teens, in Philadelphia clubs. When he was 16, he was hired by Benny Goodman and toured worldwide. He spent four years with Goodman's orchestra, singing, playing piano, and arranging.? Wiki Buddy Greco

   I often wonder what it is about the water in Philadelphia that spawned so many singers and musicians. I have a buddy who was born and raised there and he says the street corner singing groups was on every block. It probably also helps that there was a large Italian contingent in the city, not that I am particularly partisan towards that ethnicity. After all I am only a half breed WOP, but I do know that if it has a good beat you probably cannot stop an Italian from breaking into a full throated rendition of any song. On the Italian side of my family, I know for a fact that there were numerous Would-Be-Opera-Singers. In addition, on the Irish side of my family there was that one particular Irish Tenor who could hold his own.

   Buddy passed recently at the age of 90. It has been said that "Medicine heals the body, but Music heals the soul." Perhaps Buddy's longevity hints that music is also good for the body.

    Here is a 1964 version of him singing this tune.

    Here is another version of the same song with what I think was one of the most talented performers of the Rat Pack era. Sammy Davis, who was born and raised in the entertainment industry. Both men were main stays in Las Vegas. I never saw either of them there. My first and only visit to Vegas was in the early 1990s, and by that time the town had become a corporate business instead of a Mafia haven. Leave it to the bean counters to do what the FBI could not do.