In 1991, Norcia did join Roomful - one of over 50 players that have joined that band’s brotherhood over almost 60 years. “I would occasionally sit in and sing with them, and I’d be on a ‘musical high’ imagining that someday I’d … front a great jumping, swinging band such as Roomful.” “I would witness amazing performances as Roomful backed up featured artists such as Eddy Cleanhead Vinson, Big Joe Turner, Roy Brown, Helen Humes, Red Prysock, Sil Austin and many more,” he said. Norcia, then a burgeoning performer, remembers going to the Sunday shows with religious fervor. By the early 70s, they began performing at the Knick, and the Sunday afternoon parties were by all accounts wild with nonstop dancing, lots of drinking, people crawling in windows to gain admission, and so on. In 1967, guitarist Duke Robillard and pianist Al Copley put together Roomful of Blues. “She lived close by on Oak Street in Westerly with her parents and they allowed her to play there as long as they tagged along as her chaperones.” She used to perform at The Knickerbocker in the 1940s with her two brothers Frank Genese on guitar and Tony Genese on bass,” remembered vocalist/harmonica virtuoso Sugar Ray Norcia - a veteran presence at the club with his own band, The Bluetones, as well as from his time as a former singer for Roomful. “My Mom Louise Norcia was a very fine singer with a sweet, sweet voice. The Vitterito brothers provided a strong dining and dancing atmosphere, and who knows how many wedding receptions were held in the club? There was also a tangible neighborhood vibe. It’s directly across from the railroad station, which meant that touring players, en route from Boston or New York or vice versa, had an incredibly convenient way to pick up an extra gig simply by getting off the train and walking across the street. Opened after the end of Prohibition, the Knickerbocker Café - as it was originally known - had an ideal location for attracting live music stars. The brothers did want a dancehall, and for that you needed to bring in musicians. But jump blues and swing were popular back in that era. “The original owners were brothers, Albert and Paul Vitterito, who weren’t necessarily blues fans. “All I knew when I signed on was that this was a famous club and tied to Roomful - but I had no idea it went back to the end of Prohibition,” Connolly said. Guest appearances will come from singer/harmonica player Brian Templeton and boogie woogie piano virtuoso Arthur Migliazza. You read that correctly - as in 10 years short of a century! The Knickerbocker All-Stars - a quasi-regular act with a revolving lineup of recognizable musical heroes from the club’s past - will headline the celebration. On Saturday, the Knick celebrates its 90th anniversary. These images almost shimmer with the weight of the ages. Too, over the years, the venue has hosted hundreds of legends including Gatemouth Brown, Roosevelt Sykes, Junior Wells, Big Joe Turner, Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, Eddie “Cleanhead” Vinson, Coleman Hawkins, Leon Russell, Eric Burdon, the Fabulous Thunderbirds, Stevie Ray Vaughan and on and on. The Knick is umbilically tied to Roomful of Blues, the ongoing jump blues act that held a years-long Sunday residency that was famous across the country. To peer at the memorabilia, as at a museum exhibit, is to absorb a lot. The larger area has a banquet-sized dining table, an antique but functioning organ for the keyboardists to entertain, and walls neatly crisscrossed with framed show posters and publicity photographs that chronicle the Knickerbocker’s storied history. One is a small space with mood lighting, a refrigerator, a tall-top table, club chairs and a few neon signs and a mirror. There are two green rooms for the artists. He starts in the basement under the club, where “the archives are.” It’s late afternoon on a Friday, a few hours before Westerly’s Knickerbocker Music Center opens for business, and Mark Connolly, longtime executive director at the Knick, is guiding a few guests around the property. Then there’s the structure at 35 Railroad Avenue in Westerly, which has been long renowned as the Knickerbocker - one of the most iconic blues and jump blues music rooms in the world. The papal enclave where Julius II and Michelangelo negotiated the Sistine ceiling commission. The “roundtable” literati waxing snarky in the Algonquin Hotel. Lee and Grant in the McClean House at Appomattox. It’s the default observation when visiting old structures where notable events have occurred.
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