Joseph J. Siracusa, who played drums in bandleader Spike Jones’ City Slickers in the ’40s and ’50s before embarking on a long career in Hollywood animation studios, died on Saturday, according to his son Steve Siracusa.
He was 99 when he died at the Tarzana home in the San Fernando Valley where he’d resided since 1960. Having lived nearly a century, Siracusa, whom everyone knew as Joe, truly had a wonderful life.
Siracusa loved to share his experiences – and when you’d had as much fun as he’d had, who wouldn’t?
A native of Cleveland, he loved making music from a very early age, playing in orchestras throughout high school and after until he was drafted into the Army during World War II.
His musical talents landed him in a military dance band just before he was to ship overseas. “My drums saved my life!” Siracusa said during a 2020 interview. He also became an all-around performer in that band, he recalled.
“I took the mop, and I put it on my head like a wig,” he said. “And when the singer started singing, I said, ‘Oh Frankie, sing “Keep Me, Baby!”’ — that was when Frank Sinatra was popular and all the ladies would holler for him.”
After the war, he landed a job with Spike Jones and the City Slickers, which required not only tight musicianship but the ability to go with Jones’ comedic flow in shows across the country. They even played the White House, where Siracusa shook hands with President Harry S. Truman.
Siracusa was a natural not only behind the drum kit, but also at creating gags such as a facsimile of his own head, which he’d wear on his shoulder at times, or a pair of eyeglasses one of the singers would wear that squirted fake tears on Jones as the singer performed the standard “I Cried For You.”
In the early ’50s, Siracusa left the City Slickers and the road to settle in Los Angeles with his wife Eleanor and a family that eventually included four children. He found work as an executive in different animation studios, working on such well-known cartoon characters as Mr. Magoo, the Pink Panther, and Spider-Man.
In that chapter of his life, he met and befriended such luminaries as Theodore Geisel, better known as Dr. Seuss, and Marvel maestro Stan Lee. He became a member of the Motion Picture Academy of Arts & Sciences, voting for the Oscars each year, too.
After his wife died in 1997, Siracusa stayed active and entertaining. On Veteran’s Day, he’d sometimes go to the local supermarket where the managers would let him play patriotic tunes over the PA.
And he loved to dance, almost to the very end of his life, seldom missing a class at the local senior center where he’d dance, and help the instructor, too.
“I’ve had such a blessed, wonderful life,” Siracusa said at the end of the 2020 interview.
Siracusa is survived by two of his four children, Geraldine “Gerry” Gomara and Steve Siracusa, and an extended family that includes 47 grandchildren, great-grandchildren and great-great-grandchildren.
A celebration of life will eventually be held at Christ Community Church in Canoga Park, where Siracusa attended for many years, Steve Siracusa said.
It is tentatively set for Feb. 5, 2022, two days after Siracusa would have turned 100.
