INTERVIEW: Vito Picone on that ‘Little Star’ that keeps shining bright
Photo: Streetlight Harmonies features, from left, Straight No Chaser, Vito Picone, La La Brooks and Charlie Thomas. Photo courtesy of Ley Line Entertainment / Provided by Prism Media Group with permission.
After talking with Vito Picone for a while, one thing becomes clear: There’s not a chance he will ever retire. He’s having too much fun.
The founder of the Elegants, a doo-wop group from Staten Island, scored a #1 hit with his co-written tune “Little Star,” and he and the guys (with a few new members) still tour around and bring their harmonizing vocals to audiences who have stuck with the band for decades.
Picone’s story is one of many highlighted in the recently released documentary Streetlight Harmonies, directed by Brent Wilson — a film that details the influence of doo-wop and early R&B. The Elegants are prominently featured in the movie because of their long-lasting legacy and the ascendancy of “Little Star” as a timeless classic.
[Check out Hollywood Soapbox’s interview with another Streetlight Harmonies singer, Sammy Strain.]
“I’m thrilled to death,” Picone said in a recent phone interview about his inclusion in the documentary. “I’m really flattered by it. I hope it does well. I think it should do well, and we’ll do whatever we have to to try and help it along. … I wouldn’t have said no [about contributing], and if there was something scheduled, I would have tried to reschedule it. Somewhere along the line, I guess I’m a ham, I don’t know. I think that the purpose for it was well worth it.”
Although the Elegants were formed in 1956, Picone’s singing days actually predate the group. A couple years prior, in the mid-1950s, he founded a singing group called the Crescents, which had a female lead singer, Patricia Crocitto, and three background male vocalists — Picone, Carman Romano and Ronnie Jones.
“We wound up with a recording contract, and we actually did our first record called ‘Darling Come Back’ and a song called ‘My Tears,’” Picone remembers. “We just did a couple of promotional gigs, and there was some tragedy with the owners of the record label. And the label actually went out of business quickly, and the young lady decided that she no longer wanted to sing with the group.”
Picone headed with one of his fellow band members back to the old neighborhood on Staten Island and tried to find two or three other people to form a new group. That’s when the Elegants were born, with Picone, Romano, Artie Venosa, Frankie Tardogno and Jimmy Moschello.
“We were fortunate enough to find one fella by the name of Artie Venosa, who eventually wrote ‘Little Star’ with me,” Picone said. “We co-wrote it, and he became our first tenor. He had a good friend named Jimmy Moschello, who he brought along, and Jimmy joined the group. And Jimmy is still with me today. He’s still working with me today, and Artie unfortunately passed away about two or three years ago. And Carman Romano, who was the other fella that started the group with me, he passed away at the same time around three years ago. The remaining piece of the puzzle was a guy named Frankie Tardogno, who was in high school with me, and I brought him into rehearsal. And we had our original five guys.”
Picone said this quintet was a complete puzzle, and they were pleased with the sound they could collectively create. They were good friends, and working in the Elegants became a labor of love.
“We were all within a 10-minute drive from each other or a horse ride because at that time we were only 16-17 years old,” Picone said. “The common denominator there was an area that everybody hung out. There was a place where I was actually born and raised, a place called South Beach in Staten Island, New York. It’s basically now at the base of the Verrazano Bridge. There’s a boardwalk there. It’s a mile long, and that boardwalk used to have all kinds of rides, almost similar to Coney Island. And there were all summer residences there, all little summer bungalows all in and around the area, so in the summer we would have an influx of people. And the population would quadruple. People like Bobby Darin’s family from the Bronx, they stayed there for the summer. Johnny Maestro’s family came from the Lower East Side of New York. His family stayed there, so we hung out on this boardwalk together.”
Many doo-wop groups got their start singing under the streetlamp in Brooklyn, but the Elegants had a different scene: a boardwalk in Staten Island. And news spread fast about their vocalizing.
“We had 150-200 kids on any given night up there, and then little at a time we started to do some other things with the group,” he said. “We started to do church dances and festivals and bazaars and things like that.”
When “Little Star” became a #1 hit, the young guys never thought too hard about the business side of the music industry. They were having too much fun and were perhaps a little too naïve.
“We were looking for bragging rights in the neighborhood,” Picone admitted. “Every neighborhood had a singing group, almost like it was a musical West Side Story. Instead of going around looking for streetfights we were actually competing with other neighborhoods with the singing groups, so we were looking to at least represent our neighborhood with something strong. And then we wound up recording ‘Little Star,’ and everybody seemed to be high on the song. We liked it obviously, or we would have never recorded it. Never really knowing until the record just blew off the charts, and the next thing you know, we were traveling all over and had the #1 record in the country and probably most of the world.”
Picone said that at the time the five members of the Elegants were on cloud nine. They were at the top of their game, and that hit record has been a mainstay of the group this many decades later.
More than 60 years after forming, they continue to bring that song to audience members. In fact, they have concerts lined up this summer and fall, although the coronavirus pandemic has put a damper on several planned gigs.
“We were just kids,” Picone said. “We were having a great time. We were traveling with other groups, other guys from different neighborhoods and similar ages, so we were out almost like a camping trip. Yet the song itself was carrying itself. We would get off the bus. We’d do our job and get back on the bus and start partying again and have a good time with our friends. We were away from home for quite a while, so we didn’t know the success that it was having in the area and the feelings in the old neighborhood. … We were pretty much confined to the people that were on the bus with us and on those tours. We went out and did our job, and having a good time at it, too.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
Streetlight Harmonies, featuring Vito Picone, is now available to stream. Click here for more information on the film. Click here for more information on Picone and the Elegants.
