Art Robins
Born in South Carolina as Art Robinson, he was brought north, and eventually to Syracuse, through music. He was introduced to singing in church when he was 13; by age 17, he was in a group in Pittsburgh, Pa., when he was discovered by a touring band in 1957 and joined Willie Love’s AllStars. “We traveled all over creation,” Robins recalls. “Cleveland, Boston, Montreal, New York City, we just went everywhere.” Robins became close friends with keyboardist Herb Nelson, who left the AllStars to hit the road with Little Richard, but later landed in Syracuse. When he did, Nelson was in need of a singer and called Robins, who joined the Herb Nelson Trio in 1962. In 1965, Robins enlisted in Blue Greens and Beans, with Bobby Green, Chuck Moore, John Taylor and Slim Simms. In 1967 he founded his own band, Art Robins and the Soul Brothers, with Bobby Schribner, Brian Sanders, John Kane, Ringo Styles and Jeff Chappelle. He went on to form and join additional bands in 1972 and 1978. Currently, he performs with Prestige, featuring Don Martin, John Mangicaro, Jerry Brown and Jake Capozzola.
Art Robbins, Michael Davis Photo
—Jessica Novak
The Flashcubes
The Flashcubes, Michael Davis Photograph
—Jessica Novak
Ronnie James Dio
Ronnie James, Michael Davis Photograph
—Jessica Novak
The Tiffault Family
Leighton Tiffault grew up in Winsted, Conn. and moved to Central New York when he was 16 years old to pursue his master’s degree in composition from Syracuse University. He stayed local following his graduation and began a career in music, adopting the nickname, “Sox,” from his dad. Tiffault worked in radio and was the pianist/arranger for the Jim Deline Gang, then-WSYR-Channel 3’s live televised variety show. He began the Sox Tiffault Orchestra and was house accompanist at Andre’s Tic Toc Club, where he played with greats spanning Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan and Vic Damone. He went back to SU later in his career to earn his master’s in education and went on to work in Phoenix and Fayetteville-Manlius schools. He also distributed many of his arrangements nationally through Alfred Publishing and served as president of the New York State School Music Association. “He was, if not the first, certainly totally in the first wave of developing vocal jazz in schools in this area,” his son, drummer Mark Tiffault, says. “He played in bars and bands while he went to school. And I remember one band would rehearse in our living room every once in a while. They were rockin’.” Not only did Sox have a significant effect on his students in school, but his own children, Mark, Lee and Suzanne, also went on their musical paths. Mark remembers with fondness seeing his father perform piano during silent movies and how his greatest influence on him was simply to keep an open mind. “He had a lot of influence on me, but it had to do with being a good listener,” Mark says. “Not getting in people’s way. And in life situations, he tried to talk me out of being a musician a million times. I think he wanted me to prove how much I wanted it, make sure I had the courage of my convictions.” Suzanne has been a music educator and director with North Syracuse Junior High School and is active in musical theater. “My sister, what she does, she’s my dad out in the schools,” Mark explains. “She’s much like him. She’s tough and demands your attention, but you get something back. I know her students love her.” Lee, a guitarist, has played in bands including Out of the Blue, Dave Hanlon’s Cookbook, the Roy Bean Trio and many others, very often with his brother. “Lee is my inspiration,” Mark says. “When he got out of college, he moved somewhere to be in a band and he called to talk to my parents and actually asked for me and I got on the phone and he said, ‘You still want to play in a band?’ I said, ‘Yeah.’ And he said, ‘Then join one. Tomorrow. Get in a band, get going.’ The next day I called the only people I knew and tried to start a band. I didn’t look back from there.” Mark performs gigs with Los Blancos and has an impressive resume of past bands including The Kingsnakes, Out of the Blue, the Shuffling Hungarians and Built For Comfort. “To be recognized, it’s OK,” he says. “Not to sound ungrateful, I am grateful, but we’re trying to promote my dad. That’s who we feel belongs, honestly.”—Jessica Novak
Homel-Alaniz Band
Homel Alaniz, Michael Davis Photograph
—Mark Bialczak
The Madisons
There were good times to be had on the road, Jimmy Foran recalls of the days in the mid-1960s when Syracuse doo-wop group the Madisons toured the country with the Dick Clark Caravan of Stars. They’d take part in more than 100 road shows a year. “Sometimes we’d play a matinee in the afternoon, go to another village or city entirely, and play another show at night,” Foran, 73, says during a recent phone interview from his home in Liverpool. Yes, the singers met tour presenter Clark, the graduate of Syracuse University who went on to legendary status as host of American Bandstand. “But no, we didn’t get to really know him,” Foran says. “He’d only come out to two or three shows. He was busy.” But Foran says he and fellow Madisons singers Carl Irving, Terry Golden and lead singer Johnny Whipple met interesting musicians from around the country, including popular acts such as Bobby Vee, Three Degrees, the Shirelles, The Supremes and Gene Pitney. “One night we got iced in in Buffalo,” Foran recalls. “We’d been on the Bud Ballou show on Buffalo TV, and done a live show, and then Buffalo got hit with six inches of ice. We were in a motel with members of the Ad Libs, the vocal group known for the song ‘Boy from New York City.’ What we did was choose up sides and go off and see who could come up with the best song. And drink some beer.” The Madisons will be the recipient of Frank Malfitano’s Founder Award at the Syracuse Area Music Awards show at the Palace Theatre. Foran will be there to accept the award. He’s made sure that another original member, Donnie Jones, will be there with him, even though Jones was no longer with the group during their hit-making years, 1963 to 1966. “We started off as the Impressions,” Foran recalls. “Then Jerry Butler and the Impressions had a hit, so we had to change our name. We were recording for Madison Records, so we said, what the heck, and became The Madisons.” The vocal group’s biggest hit was “Looking for a True Love,” backed with “Cheryl Anne,” released on MGM Records in 1965. It was written by Larry Santos and arranged by Charles Colella, who worked with the Four Seasons. Foran says that lead singer Whipple was usually the star of the group. “He was an entertainer,” Foran says. “He was really the heart and soul of the group. We got those songs from the Four Seasons, and Johnny was really more of a rhythm’n’blues and soul singer. But, hey, you take what you can.” When they weren’t touring, the Madisons played regular local gigs at the Three Rivers Inn and the Little Brown Jug, which was in downtown Syracuse. “Dan Leonard was our agent, and he wanted us to play as much as possible,” Foran says. Sometimes they were backed by the Monterays, sometimes by Don Barber & the Dukes. Foran says there really wasn’t much competition in Syracuse at that time, as far as vocal music goes. “We were kind of in between. We came after the 1950s wave,” he says. “One band that was very popular at our time still was Jimmy Cavallo and his group.” The group’s last single was “Valerie,” released on the Twin Hits label in 1966. Foran says he caused the dissolution of the group. “My wife was pregnant with our first child. I couldn’t be on the road anymore,” Foran says. “Even before the band, I had a good job with General Electric, running a department. Carl Erving had a job like that, too.” Irving, Golden and Whipple have died. Foran says he was in for a surprise when Whipple died, in February 2013. “His obituary said he was 80,” Foran says. “He had told us when we were singing that he was five or six years younger than he was. Some people can really keep a secret.”—Mark Bialczak
Gerber Music
Terri Gerber says she was always predictable when her friends invited her to birthday parties when she was growing up near Nottingham High School in Syracuse. And popular. Very, very popular. “I would have the same square, flat package,” Gerber, 60, says in a recent phone conversation from her home in Boston. “Everybody thought my parents were cool.” Yes, three generations of the Gerber family had pretty good access to the best records a gift-giver could wrap. In 1964, Bill and Jean Gerber and son Bill III bought Shoppingtown Music & Records, in DeWitt. When they opened a second store, in Fairmount Fair Mall, shortly thereafter, Jean’s mother got involved, too. Their third store was in Northern Lights, and they decided to call them all Gerber Music. The Northern Lights store moved to Penn Can Mall, and the family had a fourth location, in Auburn, for a while. Gerber Music will be inducted into the Syracuse Area Music Awards Hall of Fame at the ceremony Thursday night at Upstairs at the Dinosaur Bar-B-Que. “My parents. My grandmother. My brother. It was all-encompassing,” says Gerber, who worked as a bookkeeper for a stretch and clerked every summer and Christmas vacation of her youth. The Gerbers did more than sell records. They sold instruments for the everyday player and expanded into high-end equipment. “I remember we’d get a call at 10 at night, and it would be, ‘This is Watkins Glen. Our sound board broke down. We need a replacement,’” Gerber says. She also recalls her father not getting home from the store until after 11 one night, and explaining how he stayed open late because an 11-year-old boy showed up a minute before closing time looking for a drum set. Bill Gerber Jr. would not go home until that boy left happy, with his drums. The Gerbers were known for hiring Syracuse musicians to work in all of their stores, perhaps as many as 100 over the years, until they sold the stores to Cavages in 1982. Dave Novak, a member of the Sammys Hall of Fame, was a manager. Tommy Allen, Gary Frenay and Arty Lenin, who are going into the hall this year, too, as members of the Flashcubes, worked at Gerber. Sammys Hall of Fame guitarist Mark Hoffmann worked there. They also hired smart and connected music fans, such as Randy Potter and Mark Olech. It built a sense of community, Gerber says. The musicians would sell their records and T-shirt memorabilia there, too. “We gave them their day job so they could put bread on the table and play music at night,” she says. “The musicians were like my brothers and sisters.” And all the Gerbers went to shows around town. “Most of the kids my age had parents who says they couldn’t go to the concerts. My parents would go to the concerts,” says Gerber. Gerber was there for Central New York music lovers as they discovered the Beatles and when they tuned into the Woodstock generation. In fact, among the tickets they sold out of a little gray box, she says, were tickets for that get-together thrown in Bethel by Michael Lang and friends. “And as I recall, we got three tickets as payment,” Gerber says. With the advent of Ticketron (now Ticketmaster) and big-box vendors, the business changed. The family knew when it was time to sell. “It was sad,” she says. “For 20 years there, we were at the right place at the right time.” Siblings Terri, Bill III, Leonard and Heidi will be present to accept the award. They’ll know their late grandmother and parents did right by the community. After learning about the pending award, Terri Resch started a “I Worked for Gerber Music” group page on Facebook, and more than 50 people have become members. Before she died at age 90 in January 2013, Jean Gerber felt that kind of support. “My mother spent the last two years of her life in Syracuse. And a lot of musicians would come visit her in the Jewish Home,” Gerber says. “They’d tell her, ‘You taught me. You gave me the basics I never had before. You were more than a boss.’ She was a friend. And she was kind of a mother, too, to a lot of people.”—Mark Bialczak
John Spillett
When John Spillett accepts his Syracuse Area Music Award as educator of the year Thursday night, the music teacher and saxophonist says he’ll be thinking: It’s a wonderful life.
Make that the movie It’s a Wonderful Life, complete with George Bailey’s discovery with the help of the angel Clarence that he was put on this earth to influence the life of others.
“It’s George Bailey two ways,” Spillett says during a recent phone interview, his voice bouncing happily at the thought.
First, Spillett says, he’ll be thinking of all the people whose musical lives helped him become a serious student of music.
His mother, Rose Santoro Spillett, is No. 1 on his list, for noticing his affinity for music and buying him his first saxophone. And she made sure he got to meet the second person on his list, Mario DeSantis, who helped him secure a scholarship to attend Bishop Ludden when he hit the eighth grade.
Spillett went on to earn his bachelor’s degree in music from Syracuse University and a master’s degree from Northwestern University. DeSantis hired him to teach at the DeSantis Music Schoolhouse, arranged for him to get a part-time job at Ludden and Bishop Grimes, and used his influence to help Spillett get the band director’s job at Solvay High School under principal Robert O’Donnell. O’Donnell allowed Spillett to start teaching jazz band during the school day, as a credit-earning class.
“Only a handful of schools in New York state offer that,” Spillett says.
His teaching career also included a nine-year span at Le Moyne College, where he helped develop the college’s instrumental music program and served as an adjunct professor. Spillett also taught private individual saxophone lessons.
He credits Ed Lisk, of Oswego, and Joe Riposo, of Liverpool, as music educators who always allowed him the opportunity to pick their brains about teaching students.
And, oh, what students he was able to teach at Solvay High School.
“That’s the second part of my George Bailey story,” Spillett says, pointing to trumpeter Sean O’Laughlin, drummer Jeff Tortora and pianist Anna Yevseyeva as three former students who have gone on to major success.
O’Loughlin composes, tours nationally with pop acts and is principal pops conductor with Syracuse Symphoria. Tortora plays drums for the Las Vegas-based ensemble Blue Man Group.
They were part of a rich stream of students Lyncourt teacher Anthony DeAngelis sent to Solvay, Spillett says. Their 1989-’90 Solvay band class also included bass player Jimmy McKenney. “That year, they all were rated No. 1 at the {New York State School Music Association} solo recitals,” Spillett says with pride.
A decade later, Yevseyeva moved to Solvay from Russia. She couldn’t speak English, but her hands on the piano convinced Spillett that she had perfect pitch. She learned English, and he helped her secure lessons from Kevin Moore, of Onondaga Community College, and Anthony DeAngelis’ wife, Pat, who taught at Colgate. Upon leaving Solvay, Yevseyeva was awarded a near-full scholarship to the Eastman School of Music, in Rochester. She teaches music at Onondaga Central Schools.
Spillett retired from Solvay in 2011, at age 57. “I figured I wanted to leave while I could still smell the roses, not when I was pushing up the roses,” he says.
At 60, he still plays 100 gigs a year, with a rotation of piano players that includes standout jazz players Dino Losito, Rick Montalbano, Dave Solazzo, Andrew Carroll and band partner of 23 years Tom Witkowski.
“I’m blessed,” Spillett says.
—Mark Bialczak
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