Obituary of Anthony C Mottola

Tony Mottola, Guitarist and Composer Tony Mottola, one of the most recorded guitarists in the history of popular music and an influence on a generation of jazz guitar players died on August 9 after suffering a stroke several days earlier. He was 86. During a career that spanned five decades he recorded more than 50 albums and, as New York Citys most in demand session guitarist, he appeared on thousands of recordings by a hall of fame roster of artists including Frank Sinatra, Perry Como, Johnny Mathis, Burl Ives, Rosemary Clooney, Billie Holiday, Connie Francis, Johnny Desmond and many others. Mainly self-taught, Mottola was renowned for a distinctive singing melodic tone and a rich and original harmonic technique that remain an influence for guitarists today. The Kearny, New Jersey native landed his first professional job with the George Hall Band at 18 years old and spent the next two years performing at ballrooms all around America. Among the highlights of the young musicians big band days were his first recording session, a hit record called Shine featuring vocalist Dolly Dawn, and a Battle of the Bands with the Count Basie Orchestra at Harlems Apollo Theater. It wasnt battle, Mottola quipped in later years, it was a massacre. Tiring of life on the road, Mottola returned to New Jersey and landed a job as a staff musician at the CBS radio network. At CBS he worked with Burns and Allen, Jack Benny, Kate Smith and backed Frank Sinatra on the singers first solo commercial radio show. As the heyday of network radio gave way to the fledgling technology of the broadcast television, Mottola became one of the first musicians to appear on the new medium. The Tony Mottola Trio provided music for the daily TV show Face the Music hosted by singer Johnny Desmond and is reputed to be the first group to do so on a regular basis. In the early 50s television director Yul Brynner hired Mottola as musical director for a new weekly live CBS-TV drama called Danger. The guitarist composed and performed scores for original scripts by Paddy Cheyevsky, Rod Sterling, Horton Foote and other top writers that featured then little known actors as James Dean, Rod Steiger, Sal Mineo and Eva Marie Saint. When Brynner left the show to launch a new broadway career I The King and I he replaced by director Sidney Lumet. Danger was a critical success and a hit show, which ran for six years. Many years later Lumet and the guitarist teamed up again when Mottola composed the score for the directors critically acclaimed 1988 film Running on Empty. Mr. Mottolas other television credits include a 25 years stint as accompanist to crooner Perry Como, Sid Caesars Your Show of Shows, the childrens show Howdy Doody, the game show Beat The Clock, 14 years in the Skitch Henderson/Johnny Carson NBC Tonight Show Band, and the kitschy 60s classic Sing -Along -With- Mitch (Miller) program. He also was acknowledged with an Emmy Award for a score composed for Two Childhoods, a 1960s television documentary examining the early lives of Hubert Humphrey and James Baldwin. All the while Mottola was active as a sideman in New Yorks bustling recording studios, and beginning in the late 1950s, he began recording his own albums for former bandleader Enoch Lights Command Records Label. In all, Mottola recorded more than 50 disks for Command and its successor Project 3Records. His debut opus on Command, Mr. Big, is considered a classic of ensemble jazz guitar playing and his best selling album Roman Guitar earned him a Silver Recording Award from the Recording Industry Association of America. Mottola retired from active playing in 1979, but his retirement was short lived. In December of 1980 the Guitarist received a call from violinist Joe Malin, an old friend from New York studio days and at a time of the call musical contractor for Frank Sinatra. Joe asked if Tony might be available to join Sinatras band for a week of shows in Atlantic City and another week at Carnegie Hall. Mottola, who had known the singer since their teenage years performing on WAAT Radio in Jersey City and the early days of television and New York record dates, jumped at the chance to reunite. The two weeks gig lasted until 1988, and the Hoboken, NJ singer and the Kearny, NJ guitar player performed memorable duets at each show during the eight years run in performances around the world, including a Command Performance for the Queen of England at Royal Albert Hall and a White House East Room concert for the President of Italy with old friends Perry Como and Guitarist Bucky Pizzarelli hosted by President Ronald Reagan. In 1983 the pair recorded Jule Stynes Its Sunday, Sinatras last released 45 rpm single record, and the only time the singer ever recorded with just a guitar for accompaniment. Mottola was member of local 802 of the American Federation of Musicians the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers and the Gibson Guitar Hall of Fame. He is survived by Mitzi (nee Massaglia), his wife of 62 years, his children, Joanne Clark of Norwalk, CT, Bernice Antifonario of Dracut, MA, Tony Mottola Jr., of Montclair, NJ, Nina DePietro of Ringwood, NJ, seven grandchildren and six great grandchildren. Funeral from the Norman Dean Home for Services 16 Righter Ave., Denville, NJ www.normandean.com, on Thursday August 12 at 11:00a.m. For a 12:30p.m. Liturgy of Christian Burial service at St. Catherine of Siena Church Mountain Lakes, NJ. Interment Gate of Heaven Cemetery East Hanover, NJ. Friends will be received Wednesday August 11 from 2-4 and 7-9p.m. In lieu of flowers donations to Local 802 Emergency Relief Fund, 322 W. 48th Street, NYNY 10036