From the November 21, 1999 issue of The Star-Ledger
Ol’ Blue Eyes back in Joe Piscopo’s voice
By Charles Einstein
It has been nearly 40 years since the epic motion picture “Spartacus” was released, but time has not dimmed the memory of Tony Curtis in a toga, playing the part of an ancient Roman slave complete with Bronx accent. “Speak, Thracian dog!” one of his captors cried. “Where is thy master?” “Oy have no idear,” Curtis replied.
Comes now a reversal. Joe Piscopo and his 17-piece Big Band are headed for Resorts, where next Friday they open a solid run of more than three weeks. And Piscopo knows a thing or three about localized accents. “For years people told me I talked like Sinatra,” he says. “But why wouldn’t I talk like him? He was born and raised in North Jersey. I was born in Passaic and raised in Bloomfield and Caldwell. Even today, I live in Bernardsville. You talk North Jersey accent, you’re listening to one.”
The supreme test for impersonating the late Frank Sinatra, says this versatile 48-year-deciple, had to emerge not just from the voice but from the intonation that came with it. “The phrasing is everything,” Piscopo says, “and the only way to learn to copy it is if you don’t. I didn’t have to. I already had it. It was built in.”
Thus the centerpiece of Piscopo’s appearance in Atlantic City will be something of a Sinatra retrospective. “Can you demonstrate what you say about phrasing?” someone asked. “Do you remember Frank Sinatra singing ‘Ol’ Man River’ a capella?”
“Sure I do,” Piscopo said. Music came into his voice. “Lift dat barge,” he sang, “Tote dat bale./Get a little drunk and you land in Jail…”
It was almost an epiphany. Piscopo’s phrasing had done what no other Sinatra impersonator, Frank’s son Frank Jr. included, could, “Land” had an ambient, fig-tree gentleness to it. But so did the word that rhymed with it, the little word “and,.” Which other singers simply ignore.
Joe Piscopo couldn’t ignore it if he tried.
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