A Conversation with Boardwalk Empire’s Vince Giordano – HuffPost 9.23.11
Mike Ragogna: Hi there, Vince.
Vince Giordano: Good morning, Michael, so great to hear you again and talk about theBoardwalk Empire soundtrack.
MR: Same here. First off, let’s get into how you became associated with Boardwalk Empire.
VG: Well, I had a band playing this music since the late ’70s–The Nighthawks– so, I’ve always had a love for this period. Actually, I got bitten by the bug of the 1920s music when I was five years old from my grandmother’s old phonograph recordings, and, over the years, playing this music and collecting it, I was fortunate to work with Dick Hyman’s band with the Woody Allen soundtracks like Zelig and The Purple Rose Of Cairo. And I got to work with my little band on The Cotton Club. How the Boardwalk thing happened, I worked with the team of Randall Poster and Stewart Lerman for The Aviator, and they liked our work so much that when this period piece came up of Boardwalk Empire set in the late teens and now we’re in the 20s, they said, “Let’s get Vince!” He knows what he’s doing.
MR: What was the process…did they send you episodes that were not scored yet and then you put music to them?
VG: Well, not really. The folks who I worked for really would kind of check out what film scenes were developing and read the scripts, and then they would ask me about some music. “We need some jazz music here…we need some moody music.” I even used some of my silent picture movie cues for some of the vaudeville acts that we backed up, and then they got us to actually appear in the film. Many of the sequences are at the nightclub called Babette’s, which is the club where all of Nucky’s cronies hang out and have wild parties.
MR: How did they then fit your music into the scenes?
VG: Well, they talked with the producer, to the directors, Martin Scorsese, and the others who had been directing this film, and they knew that they needed an upbeat tune, or a jazzy tune. “Some Of These Days” they wanted to bring in Sophie Tucker–“She’s gonna sing “Some Of These Days!” so, of course, we recorded that. Then there are some other scenes where Steven DeRosa portrays Eddie Cantor, another great vaudeville recording artist. So, we knew exactly what they wanted there.
MR: They suggested Sophie Tucker, and Kathy Brier played the part.
VG: Yeah, she’s a wonderful actress and singer who does a whole bunch of different styles on Broadway and film. When they were putting that together, she came up and they said, “Yeah, let’s try,” and it worked out great.
MR: In addition to Kathy, you also got to be on camera. What was that like?
VG: Well, filming is interesting. Our first day of shooting with Mr. Scorsese, we got there about 12 noon and we were released at 5:30 the next day. It went on throughout the whole day and into the night. It was amazing, a long shoot. It’s very tedious sometimes. He goes to get different shots and takes, we’re up in the balcony, and we’re in these authentic 1919, 1920s tuxedos that are kinda warm after ten hours or so. Of course, we’re really not “playing” in those scenes, we’re playing back to the tracks we recorded in the studios. So, I like it. It’s all part of show biz, and I love being part of this and see how it all fits together, and the different camera angles and the different temperaments of people that are there.
MR: Yeah. Do you have relationships with some of the cast like Steve Buscemi or anyone else that you appear with?
VG: Not really. I mean, I worked on one of Steve Buscemi’s projects, Ghost World, a few years back where we did a bunch of soundtrack work. Generally, they’re so intense on getting this all together and the parts right, it’s just, “Hi, how you doing?” and “Great scene.” He’ll say, “Great music! Fun stuff, keep it up.” So, it’s kinda all small talk.
MR: You know, another character on that show who is one of my favorites is Michael Penn’s Jimmy Darmody.
VG: Oh, yeah!
MR: Let’s talk about some of your other works, like the music in the Woody Allen moviesZelig and The Purple Rose Of Cairo. Now, you have more of a connection with him than just those movies, right?
VG: Well, yes. I’ve played with his little jazz band when he used to be at Michael’s Pub and occasionally at his residency at The Carlyle. In those films, I was under the baton of Dick Hyman, he was a genius. He was a pianist and arranger and he wrote songs and I was just very thrilled to be doing these soundtracks.
MR: What’s Woody like?
VG: Woody’s kinda of in the back, you know, he’s very low key. When we worked on Sweet and Lowdown, that’s where I actually got on camera. I play the bass player that backs up Sean Penn, and when he’s swinging in that big moon, it almost took my nose off, which is another story. Woody is just like, “It’s okay, try that again,” you know, and “Put a little bit more into it,” or “No, you’re putting too much into it.” Very, very easy going, and much like his feel when you see him on TV. It’s just kind of rapid fire little conversation and then he just disappears into the dark.
MR: He’s an amazing talent. I also want to ask you about The Aviator. Got any stories?
VG: Well, we recorded the music for that here in New York City, and much of the filming of that was done up in Canada. So, I was flown up there with some of my instruments and joined a bunch of musicians and got to work with Loudon Wainwright, Rufus Wainwright, Martha Wainwright and Mr. DiCaprio, who came by and said that one of the amazing things that I always felt about this music. He said, “I didn’t know this music had all that energy and that fun to it.” Sometimes when you hear the old recordings, its kinda of subdued and you’re hearing the scratches, but if you’re playing this music live and with modern high fidelity, it brings on a new feel and people get it better.
MR: Yeah, it seems that live music has always excited generations of listeners in a different way than recorded music. Speaking of that, like you mentioned earlier a little, you play live pretty often.
VG: Yeah, and if I might get a little plug in here, we work every Monday and Tuesday at a club that’s right below the Hotel Edison on 46th Street called Sophia’s–221 W. 46th. If you’d like to hear and dance or just listen and dine to the music, we play music from the ’20s and ’30s every Monday and Tuesday right in midtown New York City.
MR: Beautiful, and what a fine plug that was. (laughs) there you go. Okay, you’ve got a Garrison Keillor connection, having frequented A Prairie Home Companion.
VG: Oh, yeah, we’ve played on the show off and on for about twenty years, going back to the ’80s and flying out sometimes to his place out there in the Minnesota theater, doing a bunch of town hall concerts, backing up him, and some of the singers, or just doing our music of the ’20s and ’30s.
MR: What’s he like?
VG: Nice…wonderful man. He’s a modern day Mark Twain and I don’t know how he does it when he does that Lake Woebegone without a note or a card. He just goes to town! His amazing mind…he puts that all together every week. I get nervous, he’s cool as a cucumber. I’m sad to hear that he’s retiring in a year or so.
MR: Yeah, but look at all the shows that can be rebroadcast. We’ll be listening to tales from Lake Woebegone for the next century.
VG: I know, that’s good. We can still enjoy his work.
MR: Vince, you mentioned The Cotton Club, give us a story about working with that film.
VG: Well, The Cotton Club was an interesting film, it took a long time to shoot a lot of the scenes. There was a lot of background stuff that was going on that we found out later. There was just a lot of disagreements with the folks putting the money together, it was a long process. For this one little nightclub scene, I think we were on the set off and on almost two weeks, and I got a lot of work done on the time down. On the downtime I would bring little scores to work on. But, it was great working with Richard Gere and Diane Lane. They were really nice folks, and we even had lunch with Richard Gere. He was interested to hear about the music. He really did play the coronet in those tracks. He hadn’t played since high school and just started picking up the coronet oh, I don’t know…a good ten, fifteen years later. It was a real challenge for him, but he pulled it off!
MR: So, you’ve become the real “go to guy” when it comes to ’20s and ’30s jazz. How did word get out about you?
VG: Well, I think if you keep on doing something over and over and over again and doing it the best you can, the word gets out. I have this large collection of music–I have over 60,000 scores and over 30,000 pieces of sheet music, thousands of recordings. I have so much material that I had to buy the house next door to me. As Captain Kirk said, “Space is the final frontier.”
MR: (laughs) Vince, how does the creative process work for you? Where does it come from, does it just come to you or is it a studied thing?
VG: Well, I take a few options and will visit a few different songs and see which one fits better, and then you play with the tempo a little a bit and see if that’s running too fast if it’s really too jarring for what’s happening on the screen or the mood. Sometimes, you have to get the metronome and set it down a few clicks or either way until, “Yeah, I think this is gonna be right.” But you never know. You never know because when you have the director there and all the other folks who are looking at this and they have their opinions, which there are many, you sometimes have to go back in again and either re-cut another song or a slower tempo, or something like that.
MR: Vince, what is your advice for new artists?
VG: New artists, well… I’d say believe in what you’re doing. Get yourself organized. If you’re gonna be doing something with music that needs arrangements, make sure the arrangements are nice and clean and clear. Put them in little folders–I know this sounds like pretty basic stuff, but I gotta tell you how many new artists that I come across and half the music is back at the apartment or the copy work is so bad that you can’t distinguish what are the right notes or the right chords. So, try to be as professional as you can because it just makes everything run better. The people that are working with you will have more respect and you’ll have a better show. If you don’t put the work in, it’s gonna bite ya, and like I always say, “Cheap is expensive,” you know?
MR: (laughs) Cheap is expensive, nicely put! I also want to ask you…obviously, Boardwalk Empire is a hit and it’s been picked up, right?
VG: Yes, yes…
MR: …will Vince Giordano be in any more episodes?
VG: In this new season, we did a lot of recording for more background music, but not too much on the screen. I think we only had about three or four scenes in this new season where I play a drunken piano player, I play a strolling violinist, and I play the bandleader leading the band in some of the scenes. It was great working with a lot of new artists that I had never worked with before and artists that I had known for many, many years.
MR: Who were some of those artists?
VG: Leon Redbone, who I had worked with on Saturday Night Live. We got him to come in the studio and do a tune that was very apropos for the 1920s, “The Sheik Of Araby,” and Catherine Russell, who’s father was Lewis Russell, a wonderful big band leader who worked with Louis Armstrong, a real jazz pioneer. Katherine Russell just sings the heck out of “The Crazy Blues,” which was really the first blues record that was ever done, back in 1920, by Mamie Smith. So, there was a lot of great historical things, and then Nellie McKay, who’s an amazing singer, just channeled this tragic Broadway star of the1920s named Jane Green who just disappeared mysteriously. We never know what happened to her with these wild romantic blues. It sends shivers up my spine when I hear it, she just nails it.
MG: And of course you have a couple of Wainwright guesting.
VG: Yes, not Rufus this time, but we got Loudon to do an Irish song that was just very moving, very powerful dramatic song, and then Martha sings “All By Myself,” an Irving Berlin song. I worked with her in The Aviator. https://blogger.huffingtonpost.com/mt.cgi?__mode=view&_type=entry&blog_id=3#
MR: Any predictions for what’s going to happen to good ol’ Nucky in the next year or two?
VG: Well, I really haven’t seen the rushes or the scenes, as they used to say. So, I really don’t know. I’ve seen little clips of some dramatic things that we were asked to comment on for the scoring and stuff. But, no, it’s gonna be a big surprise for all of us.
MR: And it is no surprise that they chose you and your wonderful talents to do the music for Boardwalk Empire. All the best, and when I’m back in New York, I definitely want to stop by and check you and the band out again.
VG: Thank you, Michael, it’s so wonderful to hear from you again too. What a great surprise.
MR: Very nice, all the best, sir.
VG: Okay, thanks.
Transcribed by Shaunie Lee Miller