Donald's Encyclopedia of Popular Music

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COSTANZO, Jack

(b Jack James Costanzo, 24 September 1919, Chicago IL; d 18 August 2018, Lakeside CA) Bongo and conga drummer. As a young teenager he frequented a dance hall that had an annex for young people; this was a time when youngsters studied ballroom dancing, thinking of making a career of it. (There was a Depression on, and any job would do; Vernon and Irene Castle had made dancing a national pastime, and dancers were popular in the movies.) Costanzo was good enough so that older kids wanted to dance with him; later, he and his first wife worked as a dance team, billed as Costanzo & Marda.

But meanwhile, a Puerto Rican band came to play at the dance hall, and Costanzo was enchanted with the bongos. There was no place in Chicago to buy bongos, so he made his own out of butter tubs and taught himself to play. He served in the US Navy 1942-45, was discharged on the West Coast and settled there. He was teaching dancing at a hotel in 1946 when bandleader Bobby Ramos offered him a job, because Ramos had a gig coming up and needed a bongo player in a hurry. Costanzo joined the Stan Kenton band in 1947, which was then a very prominent place to be. He worked with the Nat Cole trio from 1949 at least until a Carnegie Hall show in 1953, making at least ten recording sessions with Cole, and coming back for a reunion in 1956. Marlon Brando, a keen bongo player, came to the Carnegie Hall show and introduced himself; he and Costanzo became buddies, and a segment of Edward R. Murrow's Person to Person TV series included them both.

In retrospect, the bongos seem to have been a kind of Hollywood fad for a while; Costanzo added little to Nat Cole's recordings of 'Rose Room' and 'Down By The Old Mill Stream' in 1952, but there is no denying the excitement he could bring to a hot Latin number. He was a natural drummer, which was a good thing, because (he said later) Latin percussionists resented him and wouldn't teach him anything. His television appearances included a segment of the Dinah Shore Chevy Show in 1957, accompanying Ann Miller in 'I'm Gonna Live 'Til I Die'; Miller's dancing and her costume have dated badly, but Costanzo was nothing if not reliable. He gave lessons to actors (Gary Cooper, Rita Moreno, Caolyn Jones) and himself appeared in Elvis Presley's Harum Scarum in 1965; the scene with Presley looks creepy today, but that's not Costanzo's fault.

He made a dozen or so albums, none of which charted; the bongos never really made the hit parade. Mr. Bongo Plays Hi-Fi Cha Cha (on Tops, a supermarket label) was probably typical in the 1950s;  he also performed and recorded with his third wife, vocalist Gerrie Woo. He came back to recording in his 80s; Back From Havana on Cubop in 2001 was among his most authentic Latin Jazz offerings, receiving a nice review by Scott Yanow at AllMusic. He was still playing professionally at age 96.