It's More Than Do-Re-Mi

About the Book

For the non-musician, Do-Re-Mi are the first three notes of a major key. No matter what the key or the tonality is, the first three notes are always Do-Re-Mi. Nothing as complicated as half steps, mind you, but just the simple three whole steps.

Friends, associates and employers all told composer/conductor and arranger John Cacavas that the life of a musician was more that Do-Re-Mi. Simply put, it meant that you had to deal with politics and all the other complexities that come from trying to make a living in the music business and not just the create the music. This advice was well given, and Cacavas tells us the stories that led to understanding Do-Re-Mi.

Cacavas started off as a teen-age bandleader in his home town of Aberdeen, South Dakota, and this led to a career which took him to Washington, D.C, and the United States Army Band. With his wife, Bonnie, also from Aberdeen, and their three children, their life spanned the years from New York, London and finally to Hollywood. He experienced intrigue, rejections, humor, confusion, a modicum of success and a lot of happiness.

Luck or being at the right place at the right time was an important part of his career. A chance meeting with an old classmate led him to the United States Army Band in Washington, another chance encounter lead to his working with Morton Gould as an orchestrator and finally an unlikely encounter with Telly Savalas led to his career as a film composer.

Cacavas writes with a wry sense of humor and observation of the foibles in all of us—his orchestra when he was fourteen, shenanigans with the U. S. Army Band, chastising novelist Howard Fast for being a communist, supporting his family by playing roulette in London and travelling to exotic locates with Telly Savalas while pursing his new career as a film composer.

This book details his experiences with some of the most famous names in the music and entertainment business, both professionally and socially. His stories run from the hilarious, to the sad, and somewhere in between. People like Ira Gershwin, Red Buttons, Burt Lancaster, Morton Gould, Lotte Lenya, Vernon Duke, Jose Ferrer, Richard Rodgers, Jule Styne, Harold Rome, Charles Osgood, Howard Fast and countless others find their way into the Cacavas memoirs.

Cacavas brings to life his early days as a child with a dream. Against all odds in a small South Dakota town where the local bandmaster is his tormentor and enemy, he is encouraged by his father to walk to a different drummer and leave the school band. He leaves his job as waiter in his father’s restaurant and pursues his dream. He becomes a budding young saxophone player and forms his own band. His poignant remembrances of playing with an all-black orchestra shed a clear light on the difficulties faced by a black band in the Midwest in the forties. It was in many ways an enlightening and sad experience that taught young Cacavas a great deal about the unhappy plight of social restrictions in those days. All come alive in these stories.

The book details many personal and behind the scenes experiences with some of the most prominent personalities in the entertainment business, seen through these entertaining reflections by Cacavas.

Learn why Ira Gershwin had to hide away in Cacavas’ office, or why Telly Savalas went to a jail in Amsterdam, songwriter Vernon Duke’s response to the Cacavas martinis, an embarrassing adventure of Richard Rodgers and the surprised response of a singer when recording with Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen.

Read about Lotte Lenya, the great cabaret singer and her husband, composer Kurt Weill, having tea with Adolf Hitler and Hitler’s suggestion to them.

Hear the after dinner stories of such stars as Red Buttons, Jose Ferrer and Rosemary Clooney, and negotiating for an album with General Moshe Dayan during the Israelis-Egyptian six-day war. Cacavas describes these and

About the Author