Jerry Vale - A Singer's Life
FOREWORD by Buddy Hackett
Anybody can have a friendship that lasts more than forty years. The trick is to live long enough. The other components are trust, caring, crying (when necessary), and above all the narcotic of laughter, which is vital in a forty-year relationship. My family, and Jerry Vale and his beautiful wife and children had those components. Also "leftovers."
Leftovers are my personal, best kind of foods, especially in a family that does not put pet food in Tupperware in the fridge.
Rita Vale - a great cook - had leftovers for me all the time. I suspect she always cooked extra, just in case I came around the next day. I especially liked it when they came in off the road and the food was already getting a light mold. This was Vale penicillin - I ate it anyway, and, I never had a cold or flu until we moved to Beverly Hills, where, as you know, it is illegal to eat leftovers.
By now, you realize that I have been in love with Rita Vale all these years, but, it went unnoticed because everyone is in love with Rita Vale, even fresh food eaters.
What about Jerry?
Hey! Hold your horses!
Who wants to hear about a machine that never hit a sour note? Or a robot that never left an audience unsatisfied? Or a man who never deserted a friend in need? The first time I saw this young, handsome, slender, gray-headed man, he was looking in a mirror and the mirror was very happy. That afternoon in Philadelphia started a brotherly love that still endures. I would never trade his friendship and companionship for anyone except Curly Howard of the Stooges, or Peter Minuet, the one-legged Governor of Manhattan in 1620. If he were around today, I would teach him how to punt.
Jerry and I appeared together many times, each time setting a new record. We would have worked together much more, but we both were expensive and equal headliners, so it took large venues and some comprimise. Jerry has a great voice, an inexplicable stage presence, and an understanding of every instrument except a five iron. I will leave him to explain five irons, and more about our wondrous years in the coming pages.
I hope you enjoyed this teaser, the way I enjoyed, no loved, our forty or more years together.
Good luck on your book, Grampa.
Buddy Hackett
Beverly Hills, California
January 19, 2000
It's Jerry Vale's wondrous story of his life as a kid from teeming Bronx streets of the 1940s to his legendary appearances in the great theatrical venues of America, and his three triumphant Carnegie Hall concerts, and appearances at New York's Copacabana and Las Vegas Hotels and nightclubs, whose magnificent voice has beautifully interpreted the 20th century's most beautiful love songs for his millions of fans.
This is also the story of the rejections, the panic, the victories, the backstage portraits, the big break, the heartbreak, the heights and the depths, and all the other complexities that make up the ubiquitous profession called show business.
There are the relationships to the great and near great: Sinatra, Rickles, Hackett, Dean Martin, Jimmy Durante, Mickey Mantle, Pete Rose, Jayne Mansfield, Robert Goulet, Al Martino, and the great Joe DiMaggio.
His story is illuminating and insightful, without complaint or regret, a charming and refreshing glimpse of a sturdy, passionate, music-loving, vital hit maker, who is still working at his craft.
With a foreword by his friend, comedian Buddy Hackett, this story unfolds and is dedicated to Jerry Vale's fans all over the world. Richard Grudens, author of Jukebox Saturday Night and Snootie Little Cutie - The Connie Haines Story, provides the personal, special insight into Jerry Vale's life as both premier vocalist and private citizen. With over 50 photos, Jerry Vale - A Singer's Life is the book Jerry Vale fans have been waiting for.
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