Bandleader remembers booming S. Phila. scene

The old bandleader spends most days in his basement now, alone among his memories, his black-and-white photographs.

The ones from Palumbo's, the legendary Italian Market restaurant and nightclub that burned down in 1994, and where the bandleader went from a teenage sax player to a man whose name was no longer singular. Where Carmen DiPipi of South Clarion Street became Carmen Dee and His Orchestra.

But now the photos are all that's left. The last member of the original lineup died last winter. And Carmen lost his wife, Tina, in February.

"There's not one guy alive," 88-year-old Carmen said the other afternoon, pointing to a framed photo of his band hanging on his wood-paneled wall.

Except, of course, for Carmen Dee.

Even now, in the quiet of the basement, he can almost hear the music again.

Here, again, are Carmen and his nine-piece orchestra, looking as sharp as razors, in front of the golden curtain on Palumbo's bandstand.

The bandleader, still spry and vibrant as ever, will gladly walk you through the photos on his wall, if you ask. And in his silky voice, practically in syncopated rhythm, he will rattle off a list of names as if he were counting off on a big band tune.

Tony Bennett - "A gem. A gem! A good singer. He loved everyone. And always, when he came to the club - hate to talk about it - he'd say, 'Take a walk with me.' He had to smoke a pot. For his nerves or whatever."

"Frank Sinatra. Sweetheart. Everybody hated him. Because he was nasty! But if he liked you, you were his friend."

Sergio Franchi, the Italian tenor with a voice from the heavens, who made the old-timers cry tears the size of oyster shells. And the time Sergio mistakenly got Carmen's $5,000 paycheck instead of his own, for $15,000.

"I said, 'Sergio, its Christmas time, you've given me a beautiful gift.' He says, 'Don't you fool arouuuund! I want-a my check!' So we were kidding.

"Soon after, I got a call. He don't feel well. Headaches. He had a brain tumor. Inside two months, he was gone."

And the time on the sixth hole of a San Francisco golf course, where the bandleader turned to his golfing partner for the day, unable to help himself.

"Marilyn Monroe was a beautiful girl, Joe," the bandleader said.

Joe DiMaggio - whom he'd met years before at Palumbo's - turned toward him.

"I loved her just as much as I loved baseball," he said.

"So that's Joe DiMaggio," the bandleader says, moving on to the next photo on the basement wall.

Here's Frank Palumbo, who promised Carmen he would play at his nightclub for the rest of his life. And what a life it was! For 35 years, Carmen Dee and His Orchestra were the soundtrack of South Philadelphia history.

And always there when the bandleader came home was his wife, Tina, whom he'd met one night stepping off a bandstand. "I love the way you play 'Body and Soul,' " she told him.

They were married four years later. They bought the house on 17th Street. They raised a son, Gregg, who now works as a restaurant general manager in Vegas.

Tina was there during the best years when the music was always playing and in the quiet years after Palumbo's burned down. "A good, good wife," Carmen says.

Without her, the bandleader waits for the phone to ring with word of a booking. He still plays, a few shows a month.

"But the way the business is, everything is rock-and-roll now."

He used to back Bobby Vinton - but then Bobby got shingles.

"If Bobby Vinton didn't have the shingles, man, I'd be working every other week," he says.

But the bookings and the memories and the photos, and even the people who still recognize the bandleader in the supermarket are not enough.

What does Carmen Dee do without His Orchestra?

"What do you do when you're by yourself?" he asks. "You look for someone to talk to."

So the bandleader talks to Bobbie. Bobbie Morley, the wife of Carmen's childhood friend, Cozy Morley, the legendary comic who died two years ago.

When Tina passed, Bobbie called to check in on Carmen. Now, the two keep each other company. Most nights, they go to dinner to talk about the old times. Somewhere nice, like Steak 38 in Cherry Hill. Sometimes, someone will recognize Carmen. That makes Bobbie and the bandleader smile.

With the tour of his basement complete, with the photo album shut, the bandleader decides he feels like talking some more. To someone who can bring the old photos to life. He dials Bobbie.

"See you at 6, Babe."

mnewall@phillynews.com

215-854-2759@MikeNewall