Longtime Pompano Beach resident Jimmy Cavallo, a rock ‘n’ roll pioneer and charismatic bandleader who entertained South Florida audiences past his 90th birthday, died Monday afternoon at Holy Cross Hospital in Fort Lauderdale. He was 92.
Cavallo died of congestive heart failure brought on by a recurring battle with pneumonia, a family spokesman said.
Cavallo moved to Pompano Beach more than 50 years ago and was a fixture on several stages in Broward County, including P.G. Doogie’s and City Pub in Deerfield Beach, and Blue Jean Blues and Nick’s Italian Restaurant in Fort Lauderdale, where he was on a first-name basis with fans on the dance floor.
A gregarious and impeccably tailored stage presence, Cavallo brought a stylish swagger to his performances as a vocalist and saxophonist, especially on signature songs such as “Miss Fanny Brown,” Louis Jordan’s jump-blues hit “Caldonia” and Louis Prima’s rollicking “Buona Sera.”
But Cavallo’s irrepressible energy and optimism may have been his most remarkable trait. Even into his 90s, he played multiple shows each week and hosted sold-out birthday performances at Nick’s. His final show was at Blue Jean Blues in March, days before a performance he planned to celebrate his 92nd birthday.
“He was a regular guy, very well liked, but an enormous talent. He had a tremendous life,” said longtime friend Val Colombo, his drummer since 1968. Colombo was among those with Cavallo when he died.
Sally Holderness, the entertainment director at Nick’s, called Cavallo “an absolute icon.”
“He was such a beautiful, wonderful entertainer, and everybody loved him. Everyone is devastated that he’s gone,” she said.
Holderness also was Cavallo’s neighbor before he and his wife, Mary, moved recently to an assisted-living residence in Fort Lauderdale. She said he was just as special off the stage.
“He had the biggest heart of anybody I know. Jimmy played a lot of these gigs for nearly no money. Some gigs he paid everything to the band. It was the music that was his whole life,” she said. “The world’s gonna miss that man.”
Born March 14, 1927, in Syracuse, N.Y., Cavallo was a teenager when he began experimenting with the music of his hero, African-American jazz and R&B pioneer Louis Jordan. It was a path that led to a friendship with Nat King Cole, a historic performance at Harlem’s Apollo Theater and a place at the forefront of a movement that became rock ‘n’ roll.
“I was ‘rock’ before rock ‘n’ roll was even invented,” Cavallo said in a 2012 Sun Sentinel interview.
A stint in the Navy in the 1940s took Cavallo to North Carolina, where he defied social taboos to get onstage at parties in remote tobacco warehouses and black nightclubs — doormen called him “the white boy with the horn” — where jazz, country and blues were mingling into something new.
Cavallo was a local legend in the late ’40s while filling dance floors on the beaches of North and South Carolina with a regional sound that became known as shag music, or beach music. His variation of the jitterbug appealed to white kids who were forbidden to enter black clubs, Cavallo said. In 2005, he was elected into the Carolina Beach Music Awards Hall of Fame.
Cavallo was on the brink of stardom in the mid-1950s when he and his band, the House Rockers, auditioned with Coral Records in New York. They drew the attention of Alan Freed, the influential DJ on New York’s powerful radio station WINS who popularized the term “rock ‘n’ roll.”
Looking to capitalize on the popularity of the 1956 rock ‘n’ roll movie “Rock Around the Clock,” Freed produced his own film later that year called “Rock, Rock, Rock!” Along with such early rock ‘n’ roll stars as Chuck Berry, LaVern Baker and Teddy Randazzo, the high-school musical starred a young Tuesday Weld (with vocals dubbed by South Florida icon Connie Francis) and featured high-energy performances by Cavallo and the House Rockers on the title track and in several pivotal scenes.
The film opened nationwide in December 1956, including in a Harlem cinema next door to the Apollo Theater, where Cavallo and the House Rockers were booked to publicize the film. Cavallo said the performance at the Apollo was the first by a white rock ‘n’ roll band, taking place seven months before Buddy Holly’s better-known debut.
Cavallo did not have a manager to take advantage of potential fame after the release of “Rock, Rock, Rock!,” and he returned to Syracuse, where he became a popular regional act, performing and developing relationships with the likes of Sammy Davis Jr., Bobby Darin and Nat King Cole.
A resident of Pompano Beach since 1968, Cavallo released a number of singles and albums over the years, including “The Houserocker!,” which was nominated for a W.C. Handy Blues Award for comeback album of the year in 2003.
Cavallo is survived by his wife, Mary; daughters Patti Bullock, of Syracuse, N.Y., Michelle Davison DeJoy, of Tampa, and Carolyn Picker, of San Francisco; granddaughters Nicole Van Buren, of Boca Raton, and Aria Davison, of Tampa; grandsons Michael Bullock, of Syracuse, and Noel Davison, of the Netherlands; as well as great grandchildren and a great-great grandchild.
A public celebration of Cavallo’s life is scheduled for 2 to 4 p.m. Sunday, Dec. 8, at North Creek Presbyterian Church, 4601 NW 71st Place, in Coconut Creek.
