Marty Napoleon, featured jazz pianist and resident of the Regency at Glen Cove, recently performed a series of jazz classics with bassist Bill Crow and drummer Ray Mosca for friends, family and invited guests at the Regency. The trio’s performance, titled Music from the Heart, included the classics Baby Won’t You Please Come Home, The Girl from Ipanema and Prelude to a Kiss, and was met with a standing ovation by the more than 150 guests in attendance.
The trio of musicians, Ray Mosca, drummer, Marty Napoleon, pianist and Bill Crow, bassist, after their performance of Music from the Heart at the Regency at Glen Cove.
As the nephew of trumpeter and former jazz band leader, Phil Napoleon, and brother of fellow pianist Teddy Napoleon, he joined a band at age 17 and without any professional training, Napoleon taught himself to read and play music, rediscovering his passion and enormous talent which he developed as a boy, and led to a career that has spanned more than seven decades.
“Music is my life,” Napoleon said. “Does that sum it up? I’ve lived a very charmed life. I had the most beautiful girl, beautiful kids and family, and talent for the piano. I only had two passions in my whole life – I lost one of them [his wife of 66 years, Bebe, who passed away in 2008], and the other is music. That one I still have.”
Napoleon is best known for his performances with Louis Armstrong and the All Stars, the group that he reluctantly joined in 1952 after promising his wife that he would not go on the road again. After a few more calls from Armstrong’s manager and an offer too good to refuse, Napoleon joined the group but the same situation followed each of the three times he left the group to be with his wife and children. “God made two things that are perfect – women and music,” Napoleon said. “Lucky for me, my wife understood my love for music.”
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