Mike Pedicin

In a fairer reality, Mike Pedicin would be as well-known as Bill Haley, or, at least, thought of as highly as, say, Johnny Otis -- his name should evoke smiles of delight from anyone old enough to remember rock & roll when it was dance music, before it was "art" or made a social statement. He doesn't evoke such smiles (except maybe from some perceptive Philadelphians), but he should, because Mike Pedicin was there playing rock & roll about as early as any white musician this side of Haley or Otis. Mike Pedicin might not have been the oldest man ever to play rock & roll -- a few black musicians with earlier birth dates, like William Perryman (aka Piano Red) and Big Joe Turner, were around in the 1950s -- but he was right up there, eight years older than Bill Haley and 19 years older than Elvis Presley. The saxman/bandleader was born in 1917 in West Philadelphia, and came of age just as the swing era was booming, played in that idiom for a decade, and by the early '50s had moved on to playing an edgy brand of R&B-flavored dance music, and was among the very first white musicians doing that kind of crossover music to be signed by RCA Victor. The son of a barber, Pedicin was one of four children, and he had taken up the alto saxophone by age ten, in 1927 -- a year later, he was playing as part of a children's band on radio, and in his teens was leading a band of his own, playing local dances. By the time Pedicin was in his mid-teens, swing music was starting to make itself felt, and musicians such as Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and (later) Glenn Miller were ascending to stardom. Pedicin absorbed what they had to say musically and by 1940 had organized his first band, the Four Sharps, with Maurice Belmont on vibes, Louis de Francesco playing bass, and Dave Appell on rhythm...