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ABOUT FAMILY How far should I go back? To Adam and Eve? I don't think so. Let's start with my grandparents. Three of my grandparents were born in Italy. My grandfather, Nicholas Viciconti, was born in New Jersey, USA. His wife, Elizabeth Cantasano, was born in Rome, of an Italian father and an Albanian mother. She came from a family of legal professionals and actually went to a university for a short time (an amazing accomplishment for a young Italian woman in the early 20th century). Nicholas told my father, Anthony (there are two of us), that our name used to be Visconti. My father changed his name 'back' to Visconti. One look in an Italian phone directory will show you that Visconti (meaning Vicount or Viscount), has many different spellings - Viciconti, Bisconti, etc. My father is one of 5 siblings, two of whom died very young.
My
mother, Josephine, is the only daughter of Gennaro Campo and Rachel
Antanasio. They are from Africola, Italy. My grandmother had 17 still
births or miscarriages. When she settled in America and changed her
diet to the more abundant nutrition in America (even in those days),
she became well enough to give birth to my mother. Like my mother and
my two cousins, I am an only child. I was born in Brooklyn, New York. My early education was extremely boring and I never had good marks except in English. My mother taught me to read at 4 and I was reading fluently by the time I was 5 (I cracked the code, but I didn't understand all the words). It wasn't until I attended junior high school at William McKinley that I realized I had certain musical talents that might pay off -- mainly in attracting girls, at that point. I played guitar in Assembly one morning and sang "Party Doll" by Buddy Knox. The girls screamed for me! After school I was met by five burly scowling guys who promptly beat me up and threw my guitar into the street. But that didn't stop me! I was already hooked on entertaining (but I made a mental note to learn how to fight, too). I was taught to play the ukulele at 5, by my father. Both my mother and father had good singing voices. My mom always sang old Italian songs as she cooked and did the house work. My dad belonged to various choirs and barbershop quartets. We had an old player piano which I used to sit in front of and create dissonant film score-type music, banging away until my parents pleaded with me to stop. When my hands and body outgrew the ukulele (I had learned many chords and could read music by then), my parents found an excellent guitar teacher to guide me through the mysteries of the six stringed monster. For the next three years (I was just 11 years old) I studied with Leon Block. He wrote countless guitar books and he emphasized a good music reading discipline (which has served me extremely well). He took me through very complicated pop and jazz pieces and taught me advanced harmony by improvising chordal structures under a melody line. We also blazed through the Bach Two Part Inventions book for piano, with him taking the left hand in the bass clef and me taking the right hand in the treble clef. Then he showed me how to read bass clef and we started the book again with me taking the left hand part. After a year and a half he introduced me to the nylon strung classic guitar and guided me through several tough books, the Carcassi method and many solo pieces from Paganini to Villa-Lobos. After three years he said, "I've taught you all you really need to know [a solid foundation]. You're welcome to continue to study with me but you may want to just practice and learn things for yourself." Since I traveled an hour and a half for these lessons, changing buses two times, I decided to take his advice and learn more by myself. I continued to buy more complicated guitar books and tutored myself. Then I discovered the joys of playing with other musicians. By 13 I was in my first band, Mike Dee and the Dukes. Mike was a sax player and his blind cousin was the drummer. We made five dollars each playing an Italian wedding in St. Bernadette's church hall and my fate was sealed after that, realizing I could make money at my favorite hobby. We played rock and roll for the kids and standards for the older people to dance to. When I entered high school I was admitted into both the orchestra and the brass band where I learned double bass and tuba respectively. My second most influential teacher was Dr. Israel Silberman, the head of the music department at New Utrecht High School. He recognized my talent and passion immediately. He twisted rules so that I could have as many music majors as possible. An average term for the next three years would consist of:
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