NJ Jazz Society Presents Guitarist Al Caiola at Shanghai Jazz

Like Frank Sinatra, Jersey City native Al Caiola got his start in music as a teenager at the city’s WAAT radio station in the 1930s. He served in the U. S. Marines during World War II, where he played alongside Swing Era bandleader Bob Crosby, and toured much of the Pacific Theater, until the band members were assigned to active combat in the assault on Iwo Jima.

After the war, he used the G.I. Bill to study music composition and theory at the New Jersey College of Music. Not long after graduating, Caiola was hired as a staff musician by the CBS radio network in New York, and he spent much of the subsequent 50 years working as a guitarist, arranger and producer in the city’s busy recording and broadcasting studios.

Al Caiola recorded over 50 albums as a leader and — as a sideman, — worked with some of the biggest stars in music, including Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Sarah Vaughan, Peggy Lee, Rosemary Clooney, Buddy Holly and Tony Bennett, to name just a handful. He also scored Billboard chart hits with his instrumental covers of TV and movie themes, including “Bonanza,” “Hawaii Five-O” and “The Magnificent Seven.”

The guitarist can be heard on an astonishing number of hit records as diverse as “Mrs. Robinson” (Simon and Garfunkel), “Spanish Harlem” and “Stand By Me” (Ben E. King), “Mack the Knife” (Bobby Darin), and “Chances Are” (Johnny Mathis), among scores of others.

Still active at age 91, Caiola recently recorded a CD of Italian music, The New Jersey Guitar Mafia, with star guitarists Bucky Pizzarelli, Lou Pallo and Frank Vignola at Showcase Studios in Dover, NJ

He will perform with bassist Gary Mazzaroppi, and share memories of a storied musical career, at this month’s New Jersey Jazz Society Jazz Social at Shanghai Jazz in Madison at 3 PM on Sunday, February 19. The event is open to the public, and is free for NJJS members with a $10 cover for the general public, and $10 food/beverage minimum.