Brush with fame
Going to this singing dentist, who counts Billy Joel as a fan, doesn’t feel like pulling teeth
LAUGHING gas has its place — but don’t count out a Tony Bennett or Frank Sinatra song, sung live, to dull the pain.
So says Billy Joel and others who’ve opened their mouths and ears to Dr. Gerald Curatola, aka Dr. Gerry, who croons to his patients as he works. “Dentistry isn’t just about ‘drill ’em, fill ’em and bill ’em,’” says the 58-year-old, a “Dr. Oz” regular whose Park Avenue office has a soothing Zen vibe.
“I’m an integrative dentist, treating the mind, body, spirit . . . Fear of dentistry is a real thing. Singing takes a patient’s mind off it, and it helps me do my job better.”
The Long Island native says he decided teeth was his thing at age 6, raising the inevitable question: Why?
“I had a lot of cavities and I liked to work with my hands,” he explains. When his mother’s porcelain elephant statue broke, it was little Gerry who pieced it back together, thus paving the way for a career in veneers and crowns. He even made himself a business card from one of his dad’s, who owned a trucking business: Cutting and pasting his own name onto it, he added “good dentist” underneath, with his phone number. “I gave it to my dentist, who was hysterical [and] gave it to my mother, who gave it back to me,” he says, laughing. And yes, it’s in his office.
“He’s always smiling, always laughing,” says patient Richard Grecco, 48, who lives in New Jersey but heads to Manhattan for his financialservices job and his teeth. “I told him I was in Dean Martin’s hometown, and he broke into a Dean Martin song. He also does an excellent Rodney Dangerfield! Even if you leave with your mouth numb, you think there’s a smile on your face.”
Arlene Reckson, 69, a former recording-
studio exec and Dr. Curatola’s patient since the 1990s, says he hums when he’s around her, often to whatever Bennett or Sinatra song is playing on the office Pandora. Music professional that she was, she falls short of calling him another Sinatra.
“He’s a passionate singer,” she says. “You can see he loves it. If someone has that much joy about something, it’s contagious!”
It must have infected Billy Joel. Fourteen years ago, Curatola says, the Piano Man was in the chair when “Just the Way You Are” came on the radio. “I started singing [along], ‘Don’t go changing.’ He couldn’t say anything because I had my hands in his mouth!”
But when Curatola switched to a Sinatra song, he says, Joel told him he had a good voice. The dentist asked if Joel would ever let him sing with him, maybe in the background. “And he said, ‘No, you’ll do a solo.’ ”
And so, in March 2003, at Las Vegas’ MGM Grand, Joel introduced his “special guest” by saying, “He’s my dentist . . . and once in a while, he gets me to agree to all kinds of crazy stuff.” Enter Dr. Curatola, in a tux, singing “The Lady Is a Tramp.” He ended with a flourish, and a joke: “Billy will be doing root canals on Monday.” (Joel, for reasons unspecified, is no longer a patient.)
Curatola has yet to sing with his idol — and neighbor — Tony Bennett. They live in the same building on Central Park South, where, the dentist said, they recently waited in front of a mirrored elevator. “I said, ‘We look alike, don’t we?’” the dentist recalls, “and he said, ‘Yes, we do.’ ” That’s as far as it went. For now, he’s singing at weddings. “Since I sang at my daughter’s,” he says, “all her friends are asking me!” And, of course, he has all those patients to entertain — except the ones under anesthesia.
“When they’re asleep,” Curatola says, “you lose your audience.”