Frank's Art of Music

In addition to his art and his commercial illustration efforts, Frank had another vocation that almost drew him away from the art business. It turned out that growing up, Frank developed an interest in music. Frank possessed a special talent for singing in the crooner style of Crosby, Como, and Sinatra.

Frank got started singing in the late 1950s, when to supplement his inconsistent freelance artwork income, he would moonlight playing the bass fiddle and singing with local jazz bands at various social events like weddings, parties, and other venues that required live entertainment.

Frank had connections and contacts in the music business through his family, who also possessed the art of music. His uncle in Philly, Jimmy Pupa was a jazz trumpet player and his other uncle, Nick DeLuca, in Atlantic City was a jazz saxophone player. Both uncles were very talented and had been recruited as performers by the big bands that passed through Pittsburgh in the 30s, such as Charlie Barnett, Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller Tommy Dorsey, and Benny Goodman.

Frank sang so well that he was invited to perform at Pittsburgh’s famous Variety Club and was filmed on television appearing on KDKA, Channel 2, the first commercial, national TV broadcasting station. Based on that performance, Frank was offered a record contract by a company in Philadelphia, who recognized his art of music talents. After much agonizing, Frank turned their offer down as being too risky at a time when money was scarce. He couldn’t afford to let go of the art business. The company ended up signing another young singer to replace Frank, who went on to great success. The other singer’s name was Elvis Presley.

Working Downtown

Meanwhile, in downtown Pittsburgh, Marcello Studios was struggling, and the going was rough. One day, Frank ran into his old friend, Jack, who had just been promoted at McCann Ericsson and put in charge of the Westinghouse advertising account A chance meeting as they say in “Middle Earth”!

For the next ten years, Frank serviced virtually all the major Corporations in Pittsburgh, with McCann always at the front of the line. The mind-numbing tedium of commercial art world almost burned Frank out, but he never abandoned fine art and continued to produce oil paintings at home. He made no attempts to sell them, so those paintings, along with the paintings of his wife, Irene, piled up and accumulated. There are hundreds of paintings in all.

New Interests and Investments

Both Frank & Irene were members of the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh, and they entered a few shows now and again, but they really weren’t heavily involved because they weren’t interested in the politics involved. They won awards here and there, but their work just accumulated.

Eventually Frank’s friend Jack moved on from McCann and McCann moved on from Pittsburgh as did most of the big accounts.

Westinghouse, a company that Marcello Studios did a great deal of business for, went out of business as did many of the great industrial concerns in Pittsburgh. In the mid-70s Frank closed Marcello Studios and moved back to the farm, where he continued to service what remained of his old clients such as the Holy Childhood of Pittsburgh and the Christian Publisher Whitaker House, doing book covers for them. But the business was never the same.

With the demise of the art business, Frank invested wisely in real estate and converted big Victorian Houses in the old city into duplex rentals. Sweat equity sustained the family and both Frank and Irene kept painting.