A friend recently invited me to go to a place called Rini’s in Elmsford. It’s an Italian restaurant that on certain nights has entertainment. On this night the entertainment consisted of a trio: one guy singing; one guy on drums; and another on keyboards who was clearly the leader of the group. It seems that way back when there was a group in The Bronx called “The Earls” who sang doo wop. I gather that this was largely an African American genre, but that there were a few successful white groups, one of which was The Earls. They had a hit with a song called “Remember Then“, which I had actually heard of. One of the members of the group was “T.J. ‘Butch’ Barbella”. He was the guy on the Keyboards who led the group, which I discovered was called “The Streets of the Bronx Band“. He started out as a music director and composer and wrote the score for Robert De Niro’s film A Bronx Tale. He was the music director for The Duprees, the Earls and the singer Dion. He wrote the original music for The Dukes, a 2008 movie about a once-famous band struggling to cope with changing times. Yesterday was a special day for him: it was his 80th birthday. The audience drank, ate, watched the band and danced (not me). The band was OK if a little heavy on the bass, so much so that sometimes I couldn’t make out the words. Everybody seemed to have a great time.

Taken with a Sony A7IV and Rokinon/Samyang AF 75mm f1.8 FE