Frank Comstock: “Tony was one of the few guitar players who could read when I started writing music for pictures. Most of the guys could wail away at anything, F minor 7th. and those things. They just plunk it and they go, but you wrote a series of notes out, they had trouble reading it. Bobby Bain was probably the best of all those guys cause he could read anything. Al Hendrickson was about the only guy that I really didn’t have anything to worry about. Tony had learned to play the violin first, before he switched to the guitar, so he knew about notes. Most of those guys that were good players just didn’t know where to put an F. They couldn’t read an F on the staff and say, “Here’s the note.” Of course, that changed very drastically after we got into the picture business and stuff like that."

"Les had broken up the band in New York in ‘46. He told anybody who wanted to play with the band, “Come out with us,” ‘cause he wanted to make LA his home base. I was thrilled with that cause I was born here so most of us came out and joined Les here. He had to pick up quit a few guys cause he missed trumpets, a couple sax’s and a guitar. He wasn’t using a guitar on the road, but I think when he got the Hope Show he had to get a guitar. Les asked me, “Do you know anybody?” ‘I said, “Get that Tony Rizzi guy. He plays pretty good.” ‘Tony was a neighbor of mine in the Englewood area. Bob Fowler, and Frankie Beech were two of my great trumpet players Both lived in the same area, so did Tony. We all rode together to Les’ rehearsals."

Paul Smith: "Tony and I were best friends for about 45 years. I used to have dinner over at his house once in a while. I knew his dad, his mother and his two brothers. He lived at about 78th and Central in LA, which now is not really the pleasantest part of LA to live.

I was drafted in 1943 and he got me into the band. After I got out of the Army in ‘46, I went out with the Les Paul Trio... there’s another guitarist. (lol) We ended up playing a bunch of theaters with the Andrew Sisters as the feature. I kinda got roped into being accompanist with the Andrew’s along with Les. From there, I joined Tommy Dorsey’s band. I was on the road with him until late ‘48, then, I came back out here and settled down. I didn’t see too much of Tony... I was too busy starving. (LOL).

"Tony was one of the most under-rated guitarists in town. He was a beautiful player. He played violin first - when he was younger, and he learned to read up a storm, so he could read anything and he had great facility on the instrument because of his violin playing.

"He was a good technician. He had a great sound on the guitar. He knew how to play rhythm, which is something that the guitar players don’t know too much about today, in the lines of the Count Basie Band, you know. He had a warmth to his playing. His style was..., if I heard him on another date or something, I could tell it was him by the phrases and stuff that he played. He had kind of an easy, lopping style of playing jazz. It was very recognizable. We did a lot of dates together. I think the last date we did together was an album with Tony Tennille - More Than You Know.

Bob Bain: "I was working at a real nice club on La Cienga Blvd. with Jud Conlon. I needed to take some time off. I’d heard about Tony but I never met him. I called him and said, “I need a sub. Would you like to do it?” ‘It was for six nights a week, but it really didn't pay anything. Judd was an accordion player then, who later, became a vocal group leader. He had a nice band. Jud DeNaut was the bass player. He had a good pianist with the accordion, bass and guitar. Tony subbed for me a few times. I’ll never forget this. I went to pay him and I said, “I’ll tell you what I’ll do. You take this check and I’ll pay you in advance for a couple of more days. If it doesn’t happen you can send me a check back.” He says, “I don’t have a checking account.” ‘He didn’t have a checking account then. So that’s how young we were. He went on the road with Les Brown eventually and then came back to town and took the job at NBC."

"Tony’s first instrument was the violin so he was one of the few guys that tuned a mandolin correctly. Most of us tuned it like the first four strings of a guitar, so, If somebody wrote a low note for him to play, he could play it. You know, like the way the violin is tuned; G - D, A and E. If they wrote a low G he had the low G - open. If we saw a low G, everybody’s scurrying around trying to find a 12-string to play that little passage. Tony was a good mandolin player. He had good tremolo and was a good sight-reader. He really was a studied guitarist."

"I remember one time Tony wrote a series of exercises. He got some arthritis in his hand and he figured out these exercises with the fingerings, that he said, helped stretch and was a good thing to practice to keep your hand in shape. I called him one time and told him that I was having a little trouble with my left hand and he sent me these pieces that he wrote. They’re studies and they’re very good."

Tony Rizzi‘s note to Bob Bain regarding hand exercises. Courtesy of Bob Bain.



Tony Rizzi‘s hand exercises. Courtesy of Bob Bain.


Tony Rizzi‘s hand exercises. Courtesy of Bob Bain.

"Tony was a great player and a student of the guitar. He loved to play and if you ever wanted to just get together and practice, boy, Tony would say “Yeah, I’ll do it. Come to my house, go to your house.” ‘We spent a lot of time together and worked as much together as our conflicting schedules allowed.

"Tony was with Les Brown a long time and eventually ended up on staff at NBC, where he did all those staff shows for years. He was doing studio work. He subbed for me on the Tonight Show and was free-lancing all the time, but his real love was that group playing the Charlie Christian solos. The Wire Choir, as he called it. He spent an awful lot of time on that. It was a lot of work taking those solos down and voicing them, and then the rehearsals. The results were great. The hard thing was getting five guitar players together - getting them in one place to rehearse. It was when there was a lot of studio work going on and it was hard to get guys, especially try to get the same person to show up week after week. I played a couple of times for him when I wasn’t busy because, you know, it was interesting."

A "Wire Choir" rehearsal. From left; Jimmy Wyble, John Pisano, Tony Rizzi,
Michael Anthony and Thom Rotella. circa '70s.
Photo courtesy of Mitch Holder.

i found a new baby (Charlie Christian's solo)

a new baby (complete mp3)

“I first met Tony when I moved to Los Angeles in ‘74. He was rehearsing a band at the union and I probably just wandered in and introduced myself to him. Tony was real nice. He said, “Hey, come on down.” I was able to read pretty good so I ended up doing it quite often. It was great because I met a bunch of guitar players. We always had a few guys playing the book. I think at the time Lee Ritenour was playing, and Barry Zweig and Jimmy Wyble. John Perett was playing drums, Putter Smith and the different guys that played in the rhythm section. I wasn’t really working much then so I started doing the band regularly and we did it as much as we all could. We played Donte’s and jazz clubs around and stuff like that. It was fun."

"He wanted to start on time and all that stuff, you know. He ran it like a gig. He was very specific and serious and would make sure that everybody got balanced the right way. There was a job to do. He took control of it that way. He was never abusive or mean. He would run the rehearsal - rehearse different sections, different things, one at a time or two at a time. It was hard music too! It was based on Super Sax..., with a different Charlie. It was a fun experience. It was good reading. It was all written out. It was a high level of reading - a lot of keys and stuff, and it was all ensemble stuff, so you stuck out if you weren’t right. Tony was a first-class musician, he really knew what he was doing. It was cool. It was a real fun guitar thing. We’d play, rehearse and go have lunch at some restaurant across the street. It became a nice hang.”

“I remember at some the rehearsals we would have two guys playing some, if not all, of the chairs except for his. He always played the first book. I mostly played the second book. Sometimes Lee (Ritenour) and I both played the second book.

“It was Lee, Grant Geissman and me and Barry. We were all in the band. We were young hot shots. You know, trying to be cool. (lol) We're playing something - most of it was ensemble, but Tony would give every chair a solo or two throughout the night so everybody had a chance to play a couple of choruses on something. So we would play and everybody tried whatever - play our hot, fancy shit, you know. Then, Jimmy would play. It would be his turn to take a solo and he would just drop everybody. It would just be like, “Ugh, man.” ‘Just the right note, and the right phrase, extremely sophisticated and beautiful. Of course he’d say, “Oh, no, That was, you know, this and that...” ‘Because he’s so modest it’s unbelievable. He would play that way. There was never a night when he was playing that somebody wouldn’t look, turn around with their chin on the floor. Jimmy is such a brilliant player. He’s such an intelligent player and plays all this beautiful two line contrapuntal things. It’s just very unique, very special to him. Improvising with two lines and three parts and stuff going on.”

"At first, we were always available to do the rehearsals, but then, as we started getting busier and busier, which is all our goal, to get into the session scene, pretty soon we weren’t able to make a lot of the rehearsals. Then, the band became other guys. I just phased myself out of it I guess just because of availability. It was a whole lot of fun but we were all trying to work. It happens a lot. When I started getting busy, I got real busy, real fast, then. Pretty soon I was kind of not available to much. Tony wasn’t all too happy about that. (lol) He would kind of give you some heat, “Awe, come on, man.” ‘You know, the band evolved.”

“I was playing in a country and western band; Bob Wills Texas Playboys, in 1943-44. I left that band and stayed in Los Angeles. I would go to places where they would have live jam sessions to hear people like Barney Kessel and Tony, often times. I remember sitting with him, listening to all these great musicians playing jazz. When I first came to Los Angeles, around 1944, Tony was playing with Les Brown. I heard Tony with Les Brown play solos that were so great. They were both great in terms of great awareness of harmonic structure, rhythmically and a great sound. He was also doing studio work. He was just a marvelous fellow and a great musician. He was very successful in the studios - motion pictures, television, working with people like Al Hendrickson, Bobby Bain - all the great players, which Tony was, definitely.

“I never really considered myself a true jazz player. I played, most of my life, in country and western bands, but when I settled in LA, I was fortunate I could read and I was getting some calls in the studios. That’s when I would see people like Tony, Al Viola, Bobby Bain, Jack Marshall. All wonderful, seasoned, well-established jazz figures - not only in the jazz world as guitarists, but people that were looked up to in the studios. They all worked for the great composers and conductors, meanwhile, playing jazz.

"Tony definitely was a heavy weight. In the studios, you know, you never know what you’re gonna run into. Tony was so capable. They’d throw all kinds of stuff at him. He was a great sight-reader. He knew the instrument and he knew music. Tony was a great writer himself.

“Tony was very strong. He was a very positive force, both as a person and as a guitarist. He definitely left his mark on you. I guess the best way to say it is that he was a very strong player. He was just very rhythmically strong and harmonically very astute, very Avante-Garde, if you wish. All that really showed up in his writing for the Charlie Christian guitars. Because not only did he write things that Charlie had played, but he wrote some things that were from the modern guys. Guys like Benny Golson and other prominent jazz figures, like saxophone players, trumpet players, etc. He was extremely capable, both as a guitarist and composer, arranger, orchestrator.

“I was fortunate to know Tony. I was so pleased to get to work in his guitar band - the 5 guitars play Charlie Christian, and Tony wrote all of that. I don’t think anybody could have done it better than Tony Rizzi.

“Believe me, the two years that I spent with Tony were so rewarding. God bless Tony Rizzi. He was not only a teacher but a joy in my life, and made me a better musician, a better guitarist. I just loved Tony. He was warm. He was just an honest kind guy about everything - his music, himself. He was a joy. He was a bright spot in my life.”

“Tony was a violin player, he started playing the guitar at 19 years old. My dad lived next store to him when they were teenagers. My dad told me that you could hear Tony’s dad yelling at him and practically beating him into practicing the violin.

“Tony was a mentor of mine. I first met him when I was 16 years old. He was a family friend. In 1958 I took lessons from my cousin Vito Mumolo. I started taking lessons from when I was 10 years old until I was 15 years old. He was a little older than Tony. He worked at Twentieth Century Fox studios contract band, where he did many Elvis Presley movies. Vito introduced me to Tony Rizzi. He said, “I can’t do anything for you.” ‘Cause Vito wasn’t really a jazz guy. He was more of a legit reader, rhythm guitar player, this and that. So, I wanted to take lessons from Tony, and I did."

"He loved Huntington Beach. He had a boat. He was a beach kinda guy. I asked why he lived so far away when all the studio work was up here in town and he said, "You know I tried to get the social thing happening with people. It just really didn’t work. So I finally just decided to go to be where I was happy. I love the beach. I love boats, so I got myself a boat and I found this house." ‘It was out on Balboa Island. That’s where he lived. That’s where the house was and that’s where I used to go for my lessons. It was quite a ride down there but it was worth it. It was a hell of a ride for him to come to Hollywood whenever he worked, but he didn’t care. That was before the freeways got as stupid as they are now. You could actually make it in 45 minutes or so. Now it would be like a 3 hour ride, you know.

"Tony was the greatest teacher. He put it all together. He had all the scales and the interval exercises, the chord scales, the triad scales, the 7th chord scales. He had it all nailed down and could present it in logical, organized fashion. Tony turned my world around. I used to go over to his house, expect to be there for a half hour lesson, and it was like an hour and a half later. Because he was just so generous as far as being really into it, you know."

“When I first moved to LA, back in the early ‘70’s. I was walking through the Musician’s Union parking lot and I heard this incredible sound coming out of one of the rehearsal rooms. He (Tony) was rehearsing with the guitar group and I went and stood in the door and I listened and was just totally taken in by it. I was amazed.

I had just come from Berklee School of Music and I thought myself a pretty good reader. After listening for a while, I introduced myself to Tony. I said, “You know, I’d love to be able to play in this group sometime.” ‘And he said, “You know you gotta be a really good reader.” ‘And I said, “Well, I am! I’ve been reading since I’m eight years old. I’ve made that part of my thing, to be a really good reader, cause I’ve come out to LA to be a studio musician.” 'And he said, “Well, you know, you could be a good reader but you gotta be a really good reader for this.” ‘I said, "Well, gimme a shot.”

“So, a couple of weeks later, I get a call from him - one of the other guys was unavailable for the rehearsal, and I went down to the union into the rehearsal hall. I sat behind one of the books and WOW, talk about being able to read! I realized, even though I thought I was a good reader, that you had to be exceptional - beyond exceptional, almost phenomenal to be able to sit down and read this. It became a challenge for me, but he saw that I had some potential and he asked me if I’d like to keep coming back. In fact, I sat at Grant Geissman’s chair, which was the melody an octave below Tony. I began to do the weekly rehearsals.

"I got so enchanted with it and so attached to it that I asked him if I could take the book home - make a copy of it, so that I could practice it. He said, “Okay.” ‘I did that and I spent - I don’t know, thousands and thousands of hours sitting at home practicing and reading down the charts. It got to the point where Grant Geissman went off on his own with Chuck Mangione and I took his place in the group.

"As far as the group goes, I remained in that group until Tony passed away. I became quite close with the family. I became part of the family. Tony and I were very, very close and he called me his “altered ego.” That was my nickname because I played the melody down an octave below. It got to the point where I played some of those things so good he said, “You know, I can’t even keep up with you any more.” ‘Well, the fact of the matter was that I was practicing at home because I wanted to get really great at it. It was a feather in my cap to be looked upon by him as a good player and a good reader, somebody who could interpret the Charlie Christian stuff and make it sound right.

"I’m the only guy that’s got the charts. I’ve got my parts. I don’t have the other four parts. Joe Jewell, another guitar player who played in the group toward the end, he’s a really good guitar player as well, had custody of those charts for awhile. We tried, after Tony passed away, to try and reassemble the group and, well, guys were flaking out, you know, can’t make it, they wouldn’t show up and it just wasn’t the same. Finally, it just sort of disintegrated. We didn’t do it anymore.

“When Tony died it was very sad. I knew then and I know that I lost one of the best friends I ever had in the world of guitar. I know this whole story about what happened to him His wife told me over lunch one day when I went over there to get some of the guitars to play. He had been having some kidney problems or some kind of internal problems and they had him on medication that made him dizzy. He was in the kitchen one day about to open the refrigerator to get something. He got a little dizzy spell and he just fell straight back on his skull on the kitchen floor. It jostled his brain. It actually made his brain move. They took him to the hospital and all his systems started to shut down one-by-one. That’s what finally made him pass away. I don’t know if it was maybe a heart attack in the hospital or something, but it was that fall in the kitchen that started his demise. Laurel showed me the spot and said, "It’s right there where he fell. That’s where he hit his head, right there on that spot on the floor. Every time I look at it I get a pain in my stomach." 'They had a pretty tight partnership the two of them did. They were a tight couple. She would come to all our jobs and she’d be the biggest fan of all.

“When he passed away, like I say, I was part of the family, and his wife Laurel called me and said, “Would you help me sell some of Tony’s guitars? I’ve got a house of guitars and I’m not gonna know what to do with them.” ‘So I did. I made it sort of a mission and I went into Hollywood to a couple of the stores there and sold a lot of his guitars for her. She said, “You’re the son that Tony never had. He always referred to you that way and I would like for you to pick whatever you’d like to keep.” ‘I picked these two Martin guitars; a nylon string and a steel string. The steel string is from 1936 and the nylon string is from 1957. I continue to use those guitars today on recording sessions. He was a dear, dear friend and I think of him all the time, especially when I play these guitars that I got from him.

“I had a lot of great teachers through my life. I associated with a lot of really top-notch guys who were all helpful, but Tony, he takes the cake. I think of him all the time. I named my son after him. That sweet, sweet man. He had a very sweet disposition. You couldn’t rile him too much. He had a temper but you didn’t see it very much. He was very sweet when he dealt with people. Like sometimes, we’d be playing in the rehearsal hall over at the union and these homeless guys would wander in off the street. You could tell they’d been living in the street - they’re filthy, they haven’t shaved in six months, they haven’t taken a shower in a year, you know. They’d wander in off the street half drunk and instead of kicking them out, Tony’d say, “Hey, how ya doing? How are ya today? Yeah sure, you want to sit down and listen? Come on, come on in and listen.” ‘He was that way. He’d be friendly to everybody... even a bum off the street.

"He set an example for a lot of us young guys. To be hospitable and to be respectful of other people, no matter what their slot in life was, you know, and I loved that man. I really loved that man. I miss that group. I really do. It was quite a work out and I wouldn’t miss that rehearsal at ten o’clock on Friday mornings for the world. I would have to have a job in order to miss that rehearsal. Otherwise, come rain or come shine - no matter what was going on, I would be there. And I’d be the first one there, always, just so I could have a couple of minutes to shoot the breeze with him.

"It was only because of my reading ability that I could walk in the morning and just open a book and go just go. All the guys I worked with on those cartoons were all Tony’s age. I was the baby in the group. And that stuff was simple compared to the stuff that Tony wrote for us. I would never of been able to secure that job had I not had the training I had with Tony in making me a good reader. I was a very confident guy. I could walk in and just, you know, put it in front of me, I don’t care what it is. I would of never been like that had it not been for Tony. So I owe a lot to him. I owe a lot of my career to him."

“I moved to LA from San Jose to study at Cal State Northridge. I was in the jazz band over there and somebody in the guitar department, I don’t remember who, said, “Oh yeah, there’s this Tony Rizzi, 5 guitar band. You should go down on Friday’s sometime and check it out, you know, go listen.” ‘So I went down and kind of heard about an hour’s worth of the rehearsal. After I hung around and I kinda introduced myself to Tony Rizzi and he goes, “Oh, Grant Geissman I know your name.” ‘Because they played this cut from the Cal State Northridge Jazz band album on the jazz station here and I had a guitar solo. So he goes, “I wrote your name down cause you sounded like you would be a guy that would, you know, that would be good for this band.” ‘Somebody left, it’s been so long I don’t remember who, but the number five guitar chair opened up. Almost immediately, he started calling me to make those rehearsals.

"The rehearsals were ongoing, every Friday unless it was some kind of holiday or something like that, literally every Friday. In those days the answering services were big. So, “Your Girl” or somebody would call all the guys, “This is your reminder call for Tony Rizzi’s rehearsal, union room number 5.” ‘You know, whatever. (LOL) And this cost Tony money by the way. Literally every week there’d be a call reminding you to show up at this rehearsal.

“This whole thing was a labor of love for him. I would imagine he made almost no money. We probably only made $25.00 a man playing at Donte’s in those days. I played every date they did at Donte’s. Essentially, he made zero money on this. This had to have been hundreds of hours of work to transcribe these solos first of all and secondly, to harmonize them like they were done by a sax section, which was essentially the way he was doing it. In other words, if it wasn’t five guitars you could take the same voicings he wrote and put them into a sax section in a big band. That was the concept. You can imagine hundreds of hours of effort for something because he loved it.

"He was always very positive and loved music. He was also very particular. He had a certain thing in mind and if you didn’t come in there with the right guitar sound and you were slow on reading, he didn’t have much time for you. But if you were cutting the part and could fit into his scene, he just loved you like a son. He was a great guy."

Frank Potenza: “I had that record shortly after it came out thirty years ago. I was living in New England at the time and although I knew the reputations of some of the guys who played on the record, I’d never met or heard of most of them.

“When I first came to town I was rehearsing my band at the union on a Friday morning. After I was done with my rehearsal, the drummer that I was using was going over to play with Tony’s group. The fourth guitar player didn’t show up and he (Tony) said, do you want to come read the fourth book? So I did. Well I did, you know, I sat in front of it and watched a lot of it go by. (LOL) That was in 1981 or something and then I used to see Tony play. He would play with George Van Eps just as a quartet with a drummer and a bass player around town - Huntington Beach and different places around Los Angeles. So I met him but I didn’t really ever get to know Tony very well."

Joe Jewell: "The Friday morning rehearsals - everybody in town, everybody went to those rehearsals. That’s how you would meet a lot of players and, of course, get your sight-reading together. Every heavyweight guitar player in LA went to those rehearsals, that’s what you did. When I moved to LA, that was the thing. You sort of went down to the union and introduced yourself and said that you were available to sub.

"That group was legendary. I worked in as a sub and then somebody parted from the band and then I ended up being a permanent member. For a real short time, after Tony passed away, we tried to keep the group together and those guys sort of said, “Well, you be the first guitar.” ‘And so I think I was the only guy besides Tony that ever played the first book for the year that we tried to keep it together.

"By the time I joined the group he was sort of in semi-retirement. To my recollection, the time that I spent with him, which was about five years, the last five years, I don’t think he was really working in the studio too much. I think he had his place down in Huntington Beach and was just sorta hanging out. We used to play two or three gigs a year I’d say by the time I had gotten involved, so I missed the whole Donte’s years and all that stuff."

Frank Potenza: It basically is a four guitar plus rhythm ensemble, but they mostly focus on contemporary kind of stuff - Scott Henderson, Mike Stern and John Scofield. So they’re playing solid body guitars like Stratocasters, Telecasters and Les Pauls, as opposed to, five guys with fat archtops. Joe had done Tony’s rehearsal thing for a while and we were looking for something else to do in terms of expanding the ensemble program.

"Tony had passed away not too long back and we talked a little bit about trying to locate the book and see if Laurel, his wife, would be willing to; either let us use it or donate it to the department or whatever. Joe was really instrumental in locating her. She had sent the stuff to somebody in New York and there was some confusion about what they were doing with it. So, over a period of many months, Joe kept in touch with Laurel and eventually got the book sent back to Los Angeles. He was really just a big part of getting the whole thing hooked up. I can’t give him enough credit for all of that.

"These basically are band folios that say; Tony Rizzi. I have all of them, but that was the parts - the first through fifth guitar parts, all the piano parts and saxophone parts and all that stuff. All those books came in two fiber board cases that I used to watch Tony lug in and out to the rehearsals The scores, unfortunately, are gone. Nobody has any idea really what happened to the scores, but we assume that they were sort of inadvertently thrown away or discarded."

FP: "Basically what we had were the books, the parts and all that stuff. So what I would do was, each semester, take each of the five guitar players and give them one of the arrangements. Then, they would have to take the parts and enter all that stuff in Finale or Encore, or Sibelius or something. Then, extrapolate new parts for us to play and then we could kind of archive the original parts. We didn’t get all of them done but we got plenty of them done. There were four or five published ones that we had that we could use right from the word go that did have, at least, condensed scores.

"We started rehearsing and that kind of added a whole other dimension to the ensemble program. Mostly the graduate students, that were in the first couple of incarnations of that, were capable of playing the really difficult reading. So now, as opposed to the contemporary group, we had more of a swing or bebop group as well. It sort of expanded the ensemble program by fifty percent."

FP: "A lot of people had speculated as to whatever happened to those arrangements because that library itself is very well known in the guitar community as an “entity” and it’s nice that we have it. I feel pretty lucky to have the music there and have the students to be able to have the opportunity to spend some time trying to make that stuff sound good.

"Basically, what they get a chance to do now is to experience what, first of all, that whole tradition is, in terms of playing swing music. The reading is just really, really difficult and very demanding. Just to play as ensemble, cause guitar players aren’t that used to having to blend and phrase together and all that stuff, so it’s a whole other element of discipline for them to experience.

"I had a group of all freshman and sophomores this past year play it and they did a really good job. I mean, for what they lack in reading experience, they made up for, in terms of, just tenacity. They took the stuff home and worked on it. They had sectionals apart from my rehearsal that I was with them. They played with a lot of nuance and a lot of dynamics and a lot of sensitivity that some of the other groups that I had, didn’t. They were really committed to it and they really got into it."

JJ: "Tony used to go to Hawaii quite often. I was gonna go on vacation and we started talking about how I was gonna fly with my guitar. Tony asked me, “What are you gonna do? Are you gonna check your guitar? Are you gonna try to get the guitar on board?” ‘I said, “Well, you know Tony, I’m not gonna take a guitar on this vacation." 'He got such a sad look on his face and he said, “Well, how are you gonna practice every day then?” ‘At that time he was in his ‘60s. He started to tell me that regardless of when they go to Hawaii or when he and his wife would go anyplace, he would still practice three hours a day, no matter what. And so when I said I don’t think I was gonna take a guitar on this vacation, he really, he really was sad. He sorta gave me the feeling that, you know, if you’re serious, you’re still gonna take your guitar and you’re still gonna practice or else you’re not one of the guys like he was, you know. It really, really struck me how serious he was about the guitar."

JJ: "He always drove a big car. I think at the end he had like a Lincoln Towne car or something like that. We were talking about gas or something and I said. “Tony, how come you always drive such a big, gigantic car?” 'He said, “Well, you know, I got used to it when I was doing the studio work because then, on breaks, I could go sit in the back seat and do my arrangements." 'This guy was so dedicated to the guitar"

JJ: "When he passed away, I went down to see his wife and I just said, “I gotta have something of Tony’s." ‘So, I actually purchased his balalaika and his bouzouki and I’ve never actually even played them. I just wanted to have something of Tony’s. I’ve got those two instruments in my collection just to remind me of Tony."

JJ: "I have an ensemble at Fullerton, of course it’s undergrads, and I have to find easier material for them, but every once in a while, we try to take a shot at the Tony stuff. “I’ll just say, “You know, you guys don’t even know what this group was like.” ‘Then I’ll bring in a tape of the album and listen to it. It’s gotta be thirty years old by now, and it's still burning."

“The first time I heard Tony was on the Paul Smith album; Cascades - I still have the vinyl. I was 15 or 16 years old, just a kid in high school and just interested in all of that - after discovering Les Paul, Johnny Smith, etc., Barney. The second Paul Smith album I bought was Delicate Jazz and Tony Rizzi was on that and that’s how I discovered Tony Rizzi.

“I heard that Tony Rizzi was on staff at NBC. My teacher at the time, Roc Hilman, took me to a recording session that Tony Rizzi was on and I got to meet him there - this is in my senior year around ‘57-58. I was totally inspired to think that those guys were getting up in the morning and driving off to NBC and then doing studios all day and supporting their families being musicians. That was all formulating my desire to become a studio player."

"He was always studying the guitar. When we’d get on a gig together, he and I would talk about technique. He’s another guy that was like Howard (Roberts). That was the thing I loved about him. He was another guy that was a continual guitar student. He had his pipe, smoked a pipe. We would talk about chops. How you would pick this? The right hand technique - how would you approach that? That kind of thing. We were into various things. There were times after we’d had talks like that - he’d hear me do something and say, “I hear you doing that Mike.” (LOL)

"He and I spoke once when we ran into each other at Donte’s. He was in his ‘50s and wasn’t doing hardly any work at that point. He told me that, “He was committed to being a musician and guitarist whether he made a lot of money or a little money.” 'That was his statement to me. He was still a guitar player and he wasn’t going to be anything else."