Tony Mottola born 18 April 1918

Tony Mottola (April 18, 1918 – August 9, 2004) was an Emmy –winning American composer and guitarist who released dozens of solo albums. He had a long and varied career, centered in New York, where he was a mainstay of the city's recording and TV scene, beginning in the 1940's. "Mr Big," was a mainstay of countless Command and Time recordings, and one of the most prolific and respected studio musicians of the post-World War Two era.

Anthony Charles Mottola was born April 18, 1918 in Kearny, NJ. Like many of his contemporaries he started out learning to play the banjo and then took up the guitar. Ironically, he only started learning to play the guitar by accident. He'd originally wanted to play the saxophone, but when he was told he was too young to take the bus by himself to the teacher's house in Newark, his father offered to teach him guitar at home instead.

He played guitar through high school, where he met a number of classmates with whom he would work professionally as a musician. He and Al Caiola became friends and played in a group modelled on Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli's Hot Club Quintet. Mottola and Al Viola also played together as teens on Jersey City radio station WAAT, where he also first became acquainted with a young singer named Frank Sinatra.

When his friend George Paxton got a job with George Hall's orchestra, he convinced Hall to hire Mottola, and together they played with a group of young talents that included Johnnie Guarneri on piano and Nick Fatool on drums. Mottola's first recorded performance was with Hall, backing singer Dolly Dawn on the single, "Shine."

In 1941, Mottola, who never cared much for touring, auditioned for and was hired into the CBS radio studio orchestra in New York. There he worked with Raymond Scott and performed again with Frank Sinatra, until Sinatra left and was replaced by Perry Como. 

Mottola continued to work closely with Como, becoming his arranger when Como got his own TV variety show in the 1950's.

Back in the late 1940's, when networks were desparate for material, he even hosted his own fifteen-minute show, a musical variety spot called "Face the Music." He also performed in the studio bands for the "Sid Caesar Comedy Hour" and "Sing Along with Mitch." Skitch Henderson hired him as one of the original members of the band for the "Tonight Show," and he remained with the show until the late 1960's.

One of his most notable accomplishments was the score for the early CBS suspense anthology series, "Danger." Director Yul Brynner (soon to switch roles and make his big splash as the lead in "The King and I") invited Mottola to devise an original score for the show. Brynner was impressed by the effectiveness of Anton Karas' zither score for The Third Man and wanted Mottola to come up with something similar.

The theme Mottola came up with was simple but effective: a single repeated note, interrupted by a dramatic chord when a dagger struck a fence on camera. According to John Burlingame's account in his book, TV's Biggest Hits, "Musicians began referring to it as 'the "Danger" chord,' or 'the Tony Mottola chord.'" Brynner, and his successor, Sidney Lumet, liked the music so much he insisted Mottola write and perform an original score for each episode.

                             

MGM's record division even hired him to record the theme and a half-dozen other numbers for a 10-inch LP. The album earned Mottola a spot in the record books as the first original soundtrack album from a television show. Mottola later reprised the theme on 
his earliest album for Enoch Light's Command label. Many of his
 later recordings like Heart and Soul, Mr. Big and Two Guitars for Two In Love have held special interest for the guitar enthusiasts. Mottola's only charted single under his own name was "This Guy's In Love With You" which reached #22 on Billboard's "Easy Listening Top 40" in the summer of 1968.

Mottola went on to record over 30 albums on Command and Project 3, more than even the prolific Dick Hyman. Although Light died in 1978, Mottola remained with Project 3 until 1983, concurrently backing Sinatra in the studio and on tour. His working relationship with Sinatra continued until a performance at Carnegie Hall in 1988 and then, for the last time together, at the White House for President Reagan.

He retired from the music business in 1988 but kept playing at home almost every day. "He felt music kept his mind sharp," said his son, Tony (Jr.). He died in Denville, Morris County, New Jersey, August 9, 2004 from complications due to a stroke and double pneumonia and is interred in Gate of Heaven Cemetery in East Hanover, New Jersey. Mottola and his wife Grace, known as Mitzi, were married for 62 years.

(Info edited mainly from Space Age Pop & Wikipedia)