doing it. Tony Bennet started doing it with Lady Gaga, so 4-5 years ago it hit me, that if I’m ever going to do this music, this is the time. So I made the decision. I started talking to people, a music director, getting musicians together, got a music manager to get me booked in clubs in LA, and the response was so great that it encouraged me to keep doing it. I did a CD called: "D Most Mostly Swinging" with all the great jazz standards. I’m just having a blast doing it
What do you love about music? What does music mean to you?
It’s hard, because it’s a feeling more than anything. It taps into
a different part of the brain and
your soul. That’s why I think its
even used as therapy. Music
therapy can have such an effect
on your emotions, even your
physical being.
When I'm on stage, and the band starts to play, it just hits me.. and I just want to get on for the ride. With music you just get lost in
the feeling.
You are spot on Don, My mom loved classical music, and from a young age I got involved in music and to this day, when I hear someone talented sing, I get chills. It is a feeling that sometimes you cannot put into words.
Now let’s talk about music! The language of love, inspiration & passion. You have a band that
fuses the swing era with the
50’s cool. Please! Tell us how
your journey landed you back in
the music field.
I started pursuing singing when
I was very young. I started at a
school when I was 13,14,15, and
then I got picked to be on a professional night club review
in a resort area upstate NY - The
Catskill Mountains. So for a
whole summer I played at the
clubs in all the hotels up there.
I loved all the jazz, swing and
blues from a young age - Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, Ella
Fitzgerald, and Dean Martin and
many others. I saw Bobby Darin
at the Copacabana when I was
18 and he had a big influence on
me.
It was hard for me to do that
music during Happy Days,
because there was a renaissance
in music then. The new wave of
rock and roll was coming on. The music was changing
dramatically, and the music that
I loved was being looked at as
being old fashioned. So it was
very hard to do that kind of
music unless you were one of
the established greats. So I
focused on acting instead.
Fortunately, this music started coming back in the 90’s and
more and more people were
You recently did another
performance with one of your
Happy Days Co-stars Linda Purl.
How was it?… what is it like to
be on stage together again ?
It was great. We had great shows
in New York and LA. I actually
knew Linda before Happy Days.
We worked together in a
commercial. It was right after I
shot the pilot to Happy Days. A
few months later I introduced
Linda to the producers and she
ended up getting cast in that
first season as Richie’s
girlfriend.
I left the show in 1980 and then
she was re cast as Fonzie's
girlfriend, so she was in the
show again after I left. Linda and
I had also done a couple of
movies together, in the 70’s.
Crazy Mama was the first one. It
was directed by Jonathan
Demme, who directed Silence of
the Lambs, Philadelphia and
many others. That was a great
experience.
Doing the music together was
great because we had this
history of working together in
TV and movies, and then here
were are together after all these
years. Linda is a wonderful
singer and when she saw that I
was singing , we decided to put
something together and it fell
together beautifully. We had all
these stories of how we met and
other great experiences, and it
just all worked.