This is a story of the power of memory, music, and love. My column last month on Connecticut’s restaurant Bill’s Seafood, its longtime owner the late Butch Claffey, and the legacy of live music and good times that continue there prompted correspondence asking to hear more about banjoist Dan Vece, who I’ve referenced several times on this page (most recently in November 2024) and with whom I played for years at Bill’s. It’s time to tell his story.
But first, I need to remind you of piano player Jan Fitzgerald, who first encouraged me when I was thirteen to sit-in and play between her sets at the Ground Round (TST April 2022) and then invited me to keep her place at the piano at the Yankee Silversmith Inn while she underwent treatment for lung cancer (TST June 2022). She came through that round of treatment and began to play again at the same time I embarked for college in 1985. However, by 1987, it was evident Jan would have to undergo another round of chemo and she contacted me to see if I’d be able to “sub” for her in the longterm at one of her other gigs. That gig was a Sunday afternoon sing-along session in Westbrook CT at the seafood shack Bill’s Seafood.
“All you have to do is play tunes called by the leader, who is an old banjo player with a real strong following,” she assured me.
“Well, I learned so much from your other banjo partner, Bob Price, that I can’t say no,” I responded. “When you’re ready to return, just say the word.”
Sadly, the word never came: Jan didn’t survive that bout with lung cancer. Thus began a fifteen-year stint at Bill’s Seafood that wasn’t supposed to continue beyond six months.
I showed up the first Sunday afternoon, nineteen years old and ready to kick some ass. I asked one of the waitresses, who I was later introduced to as Pam, who’d herself already been at Bill’s for 10 years and would continue for another 20+, where I could find the bandleader to introduce myself.
She said, “Oh, you mean Dan! Well, kid, he’s much more than a bandleader. He’s the heartbeat of this place every Sunday. You treat him nice!!”
Dan turned out to be 92 years old with a mischievous smile and quick wit. The first thing he said was, “You’re really young…sure you know all these old tunes?”
I replied, “I’ve got a good ear and I’m ready to learn. If I don’t know something, I’ll play lightly until I get it.”
Dan said, “Well, that’s fine, but do you sing?”
Taken aback, I blurted, “JAN doesn’t sing, and she didn’t mention that to me…”
Dan shrugged his shoulders. “Well when she said she needed to take some time off, I asked her to get someone who could lead the singalong…I’m getting too tired to do it. My second banjo player, Ken, can sing a dozen or so songs, but that’s it…”
Just as I was backing towards the door, banjoist Ken Canfield (until I showed up that day the youngest member of the band at 65 years old) thrust a huge 3” three-ringed binder at me and said, “This is all you’ll need. Glad you’re joining us.”
In that binder were the words to a couple thousand songs from the 1890s-1960s, and that afternoon I became a singer, mirroring the experience Nat King Cole had but without the mafia threat, the fame, the money (or frankly, the talent).
I learned a great deal over the next few months about my strengths and weaknesses. Weaknesses included playing tunes too fast and singing too loud. (“Kid,” Dan would advise during breaks, “these people are here to sing and have fun, not to watch you show off!”) Strengths included a brave heart, a quick ear listening to the two banjos and bass play through a tune I’d never heard of, and after that initial chorus doing a passable job leading everyone’s singing of it in the ensuing one.
Every Sunday was like a family reunion (if your family was about 250 members strong) and the festivities were led by Dan Vece. During the breaks and after the four-hour session, I’d sit and absorb some of Dan’s stories. He was born in 1896 and raised in New Haven, CT. As a youngster he’d walk its cobblestone streets and hear live music (ragtime and later jazz) coming out of the open windows of, let’s simply say “venues offering live music and other establishmentarian blandishments,” and wanted to join in. He gravitated to the banjo because, well, at the time it was one of the most popular instruments and “got the girls.” Dan mentioned he was self-taught, starting on piano and had also played the drums during the 1930s-’40s leading his locally renowned dance band, but found the banjo easier to cart around as he aged—every drummer from (in our TST world) Hal Smith to Kevin Dorn to Josh Duffee and (in alternate worlds) Phil Collins to Thomas Pridgen to Kristina Rybalchenko should take note: stop working so hard and strum along—replace “thunka-thunka” with “plunka-plunka!”
Dan Vece came from a family of decent means. As an example, they were one of the first families to have a phone in the home. Their number was “16.” The Vece family demanded young Dan establish himself in a profession that could support his music habit, and he became a successful plumber by day, dance band leader by night. He married and had some great children—one of them, Dan Vece, Jr. used to come to Bill’s on Sundays and sit in on his trumpet, Dad beaming with pride at his 78-year-old “kid.”
One amazing story he shared with me (and by this time I knew him well enough to tell when he was elaborating or just simply stating the facts: on this occasion I knew it was “the facts”) was his time training for WWI in bootcamp at Camp Yaphank on Long Island. He told me that he escaped being sent to the front because he was a musician, playing drums, banjo and…bugle. It was decided he was needed in the camp vs. abroad. He asked. “Jeff, do you know the Irving Berlin song ‘Oh, How I Hate up in the Morning?’”
I was proud to allow I’d learned it the previous week to do as part of our Patriotic medley. Berlin had penned it to be part of his revue “Yip, Yip Yaphank” from 1918.
“Good!” Dan exclaimed. “So you know the line ‘Someday I’m going to murder the bugler,’ don’t you?”
“You bet, I do!” I enthused.
“Well,” Dan proclaimed, chest thrust out in pride, “I was the bugler Irving Berlin planned to murder!”
I learned an indescribable amount from Dan Vece over the years. I gained perspective: once a week he and I would go to one of the area retirement homes or assisted living facilities, Dan reminding me, “Jeff, these old, lonely people need some joy and we’re here to provide it,” as he walked in—10-15 years older than any resident there—carrying his banjo like it was a feather. I learned flexibility: by the time I’d joined in the sing-along fun at Bill’s, Dan was really unable to play more than three or four songs in a row, so he’d put down his banjo and proceed to dance with all the young ladies in the joint, putting Fred Astaire to shame and winking at me all the time. I learned humility: Dan would say, “Everyone who comes through these doors matters. Play anything they want to hear. Don’t think you know more than they do and don’t look down on their choices. Their showing up pays your fee.”
The first time I played a jazz festival was the Great Connecticut Traditional Jazz Festival in 1992 as part of Bill’s Seafood “94” Band, so named because the group was our Sunday sing-along band led by Dan Vece, who was 94 that year. Each year the number would go up. We reached Bill’s Seafood “99.”
When he hit 100, Dan announced he might take a break from making music (“I want to keep my options open and see where life takes me next,” he’d tell people.) Even though he was still driving himself everywhere he wanted to go, and still living in the home he and his wife shared until she passed in 1988 at the age of 93, his family decided it was time for him to move to assisted living. At age 100 they placed him in a very nice facility, but the choice to stop making music was foisted on him rather than made by him and he passed a bit over a year later at age 101—reaching the same age as the much-better-known fellow who wanted to murder him for his bugle capacities!
Memory, music, and love: in our honest moments, perhaps we can accept that the rest is unfocused noise.
Jeff Barnhart is an internationally renowned pianist, vocalist, arranger, bandleader, recording artist, ASCAP composer, educator and entertainer. Visit him online atwww.jeffbarnhart.com. Email: Mysticrag@aol.com
