A drumming dynasty
Porcaro family leaves musical mark from Hartford to LA and back
by Doug Maine

When Joe Porcaro moved his 
family to California in 1966, the Connecticut native had friends working in Los Angeles recording studios and hoped to make a 
living playing music out there.

He became one of the most respected and prolific studio musicians of all time and a renowned drum teacher, although he was too poor growing up to have a drum kit or 
formally attend music school.

The list of musicians and groups he performed or recorded with includes Stan Getz, Gerry Mulligan, Frank Sinatra, Natalie Cole, Toto, Madonna, Luciano Pavarotti, Andre Kostelanitz, Pierre Boulez and the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Porcaro also played on numerous TV and film scores, working under composers such as James Newton Howard, John Williams, Henry Mancini, Lalo Schifrin, Danny Elfman, his son Steve Porcaro, and West Hartford native Jack Elliott. And for 17 years before moving to Los Angeles, he was a member of his hometown Hartford Symphony Orchestra.

His skills are still in demand, but now, at 79, he is adamant about being retired from studio work.

“He was called by Clint Eastwood to do the soundtrack for Letters from Iwo Jima. He refused and said he’s retired,” said Art Benson, the owner of Dynamic Percussion in Manchester and a friend since 1958.

Porcaro continues to teach at the Los Angeles Music Academy in Pasadena, where he is co-director of drum studies. 
“I helped write the reading and jazz curriculum there,” and he teaches sight-reading of jazz scores.

He also co-leads a jazz quartet with vibraphonist Emil Richards, whom he’s known since growing up in Hartford.

In Southern California, Porcaro’s three sons would hone their talents as in-demand studio rock musicians and, later, form the core of the band Toto.

Jeff Porcaro, Joe and Eileen’s oldest boy, went on the road with Sonny and Cher when he was 17 and became one of the most recorded drummers in history.

He played drums on Michael Jackson’s landmark “Beat It,” three other songs on the Thriller album, and Steely Dan’s album Katy Lied. He took part in sessions with Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Lionel Richie, Seals & Crofts, Eric Clapton, Don Henley, Michael McDonald, Barbra Streisand, Diana Ross, Sergio Mendes, the Four Tops and Warren Zevon, among others.

Tragically, Jeff died of a heart attack in 1992. He was just 38.

Joe and Eileen Porcaro regularly return to visit family and friends in the Hartford area. Usually, there are more old friends, fellow musicians and former students who want to catch up with him than he has time to see, said his nephew, Mark Porcaro, a drummer and drum teacher who lives in West Hartford.

A quick study
Joe Porcaro was born in Hartford, but spent his earliest years in New Britain. His father, also Joseph, a carpenter, had been a trumpeter in Italy but lost his teeth in World War I. He took to the drums, teaching and leading the marching band of the local Italian American Veterans Club.

The senior Porcaro would bring his son to drum classes and band practices. “Before you knew it, there I was marching in the Memorial Day parade in New Britain, and I was seven or eight.”

His father also led the band Stella d’Italia – the Italian Stars. “We used to play all these festivals in the summer,” Porcaro said, and they played Italian symphonic music, not easy to perform.

While living in New Britain, a friend of his father who had a Saturday night gig in a bar around the corner would leave his equipment – a bass drum, a snare drum, a foot pedal and crash cymbal and a couple of wood blocks – at the Porcaro house.

Young Joe was asthmatic and was frequently home from school, so he would set up the drums. “It was pretty natural for me to keep time with my foot and play some street beats from the drum corps,” he said during a videotaped interview that can be accessed through vicfirth.com, the web site of Vic Firth Inc., whose products include Joe Porcaro’s Signature Diamond Tip Drumstick.

When he was about 10, the family moved to a three-room coldwater flat on Charles Street on Hartford’s “East Side,” a mostly Italian neighborhood that would later be bulldozed to make room for Constitution Plaza.

In the videotape interview, Porcaro said, “that’s where I met Emil Richards. We used to go to catechism at St. Anthony’s Church. One time, our priest asked us if there were any musicians because he wanted to form a band for CYO dances on Friday, and we raised our hands, but I told him, ‘Father, I don’t own a drum set.’

“He says, ‘we’ve got a drum and bugle corps, we’ve got bass drums and snare drums. Can we use any of that to help you get a set together?’ So check this out: I used a field drum for a snare drum and for a tom-tom I used another field drum. And we got a long screwdriver and put it through the rods of the bass drum … that was my drum set.”

The young drummer and his pals hung out behind the State Theater, where popular big bands and singers like Frank Sinatra would perform.

One day, Porcaro’s friend Tony, who sang at the CYO dances – he’s now known as “Tony Allen, the Front Street guy,” and still performs in the area – met Louie Bellson, a drummer with Tommy Dorsey’s band who would later help revive Duke Ellington’s band. “He asked Louie if he’d come to our band room at the church, where we used to rehearse.”

Tony alerted Porcaro. “Louie comes through that door and looks at that drum set. I can imagine what was going through his mind. You know that son of a gun sat down and played an incredible solo you would not believe. What an inspiration,” Porcaro said.

Porcaro attended Hartford Public High School for a couple of years before he, like his older brothers, left to support his family.

As luck would have it, he became a student of music teacher Al Lepak who, in 1946, was brought in to run the percussion program at the Hartt School at the University of Hartford.

Although Porcaro was not formally enrolled at Hartt, because “some of the percussion students were kind of green,” Lepak and the school’s dean, Moshe Paranov, let him sit in with the orchestra. “Then, one of the students was going to conduct Stravinsky’s L’histoire du Soldat and all the percussion players were busy.”

At around that time, the Hartford Symphony Orchestra was being re-formed and Bob Schultz, one of his teachers who had been the pit drummer at the State Theater, was given the first percussion chair.

“I went in and auditioned and I got the second percussion chair.” After a couple of years, Schultz stepped down and Porcaro, not yet 20, became first chair.

Initially, musicians donated their services to help get the HSO back on its feet. “We played for a couple of years for nothing. While I was doing that, I was playing with Paul Landerman in his society orchestra to make a living,” he said. The orchestra played nightly in the ballroom of the Bond Hotel, and afterward, Porcaro would play jazz at the Heublein Hotel (near Bushnell Park), the Elks Club or the Subway, a club located on North Main Street.

He also performed with the New Haven and Bridgeport symphonies and, in summer, pops concerts with Arthur Fiedler and Lily Pons, among others. He continued studying with Lepak and studied the piano, trying to become a better all-round musician.

Meanwhile, he had full-time day jobs. “I worked at the Royal Typewriter and I was a stock boy at G. Fox.”

G. Fox owner Beatrice Fox Auerbach “had a big fashion show and they needed a drummer just to play a street beat, and then she found out I was in the Hartford Symphony. From then on, I could do no wrong.”

Later, Porcaro worked at a downtown dress shop whose owner was also a musician in the symphony. “From there, I went to work for Gilbert King in the London Lancashire Insurance Co., sort of as a chauffeur.”

King’s wife was on the board of the Hartford Symphony. “I would take his wife shopping and on the way back would stop at the Hartt School, sit in, bring Al Lepak coffee.”

One day at Hartt, “I saw this cute lady and I was introduced to her and ended up marrying her a year later.”

The Porcaros had three sons and a daughter. Though he didn’t push his children into music, they were constantly exposed to it.

“There was always music in the house. Jeff, I can remember him sitting on the floor tapping to ‘Bag’s Groove,’” 
a well-known jazz tune most famously recorded by Miles Davis.

Porcaro would bring his sons to rehearsals wherever he was playing, and take them to the Heublein when drum 
legends like Gene Krupa were in town. When he was teaching students, Jeff would come and sit in.

All three boys started on the drums, but after seeing The Beatles, Mike wanted to play the bass and Steve was interested in the piano.

When Joe Porcaro was playing at the Hearth-stone Restaurant on Maple Avenue, drummer Artie Paretta or Lepak would give Jeff a lesson.

Another place for jazz in Hartford was a club on Wethersfield Avenue, where owner Pete DeLisa would bring in top musicians like vibraphonist Emil Richards, Porcaro’s childhood friend, who by then had spent several years in pianist George Shearing’s group and had moved to Los Angeles.

“He says, ‘why don’t you come and visit me?’ ” Porcaro recalled.

Richards took him to all the LA studios. Composers at the time were writing music with different meters, and Porcaro knew he could handle the music, given his range of experience, and decided to move to California. “I told my wife and four kids, packed the station wagon and just went for it,” he said.

“I started working casual gigs, sitting in at rehearsals.” He met Shelly Manne, a jazz drummer who worked on movie soundtracks and TV and also had a nightclub. Along with Dave Mackay, a pianist from Hartford, Porcaro was hired for a week to back up trumpeter and singer Chet Baker at Shelly’s Manne-Hole.

Manne then provided another opportunity. He was writing music for the TV show Daktari and asked if Porcaro would be interested in working on some recording sessions. Richards helped make connections, but Porcaro knew that once he got a chance, “you have to play. If you falter, there’s no second time around out here.”

Next generation
As rock music grew, traditional studio musicians were becoming less important. “The rock musicians were getting better and better, and they were recording their own music,” Porcaro said. As a drummer who could play an array of percussion instruments, his services were still needed.

A new breed of 
studio musicians grounded in rock was on its way; it would include Porcaro’s three sons.

Jeff Porcaro attended Grant High School, well known for its music program. While there he met guitarist Steve Lukather and they formed a band called Rural Still Life.

Joe Porcaro, meanwhile, got called by composer-arranger-bandleader Marty Paich to play in the studio orchestra for the Glen Campbell Good-time Hour on CBS.

Paich would often bring a his son David, a budding pianist, to rehearsals, and Porcaro was accompanied by Jeff. The two teens hit it off.

David Paich knew the bassist in Sonny and Cher’s band and told Jeff they needed a drummer. After auditioning, Jeff was offered the gig. “The only trouble with that was Jeff was still in school, and I wasn’t going to let him quit,” Joe Porcaro said.

Arrangements were made so that the 17-year-old could accept the offer.

When Sonny and Cher were preparing to do their own TV variety show, the conductor hired to direct the studio band didn’t have high expectations of rock drummers’ skills in areas such as the sight-reading of music. But Jeff had an influential ally, Joe Porcaro said. “Sonny went up to him and said, ‘I want to give my drummer a shot at this.’”

Back in West Hartford, Mark Porcaro was in awe. “Jeff was on The Sonny and Cher Show, and every Friday night, I would watch.”

Although the show ended after Sonny and Cher divorced, Jeff Porcaro’s star was on the rise and he would become one of the most revered drummers of his generation. Among the projects he worked on were Boz Scaggs’ Silk Degrees, three Barbra Streisand albums, Rickie Lee Jones’ debut album, Pink Floyd’s The Wall, Crosby, Stills & Nash’s Daylight Again, Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down, Paul Simon’s Hearts and Bones, Madonna’s Like a Prayer, Don Henley’s End of the Innocence and Eric Clapton’s Behind the Sun.

In 1977, Jeff Porcaro, David Paich, Steve Lukather, David Hungate and Steve Porcaro, who had been working as Boz Scaggs’ backing band along with singer Bobby Kimball, formed Toto. The group’s 1978 debut album went double-platinum 
and featured the Top-10 
single “Hold the Line.”

Their 1982 album, Toto IV, was awarded six Grammy awards, including album of the year and record of the year for the song “Rosanna,” written by David Paich and inspired by Steve Porcaro’s former girlfriend, actress Rosanna Arquette. Two other songs from the album, “Africa” and “I Won’t Hold You Back,” were also major hits.

Steve Porcaro left Toto in 1986 to pursue his own composing and recording projects, though he continued working with the band in the studio. Steve wrote “Human Nature,” which Michael Jackson recorded on his Thriller album.

Mike Porcaro joined Toto in 1982 and remained until the band called it quits in 2008.

Jeff Porcaro’s high-profile session work continued into the 90s, when he played on Springsteen’s album Human Touch. The Boss reportedly offered the drummer $1 million to join his 1992 tour. If true, the Hartford native turned him down.

In the All Music Guide, William Ruhlmann wrote: “It is no exaggeration to say that the sound of mainstream pop/rock drumming in the 1980s was, to a large extent, the sound of Jeff Porcaro.”

Today, there are new generations of musicians in the extended Porcaro family. Chase Duddy, son of Joe and Eileen’s daughter Joleen, is “a good, groovy little drummer,” and has been touring and doing session work.

Chase’s son Nico, who lives in Florida and attended Loomis Chaffee School in Windsor, also plays percussion.

Mike Porcaro’s son Sam is an up-and-coming drummer. Jeff Porcaro’s son Miles plays bass and guitar and is a good drummer, his grandfather said.

Though studio musicians’ work is relatively anonymous, they honor one another with annual awards. “I got the outstanding percussionist one year, so that was a great honor for me,” Joe Porcaro said.

Jeff Porcaro won that award three times. HM

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