Pittsburgh Banjo Club founder promoted ‘happy atmosphere’
Frank Rossi, the friendly founder of what has become the very popular Pittsburgh Banjo Club and a member of the national banjo hall of fame, died Tuesday.
He was 83 and had been suffering from Parkinson’s disease-like symptoms.
He founded the club on Dec. 15, 1988, after retiring to Ross from a career as a New York air traffic controller. While living and raising his family on Long Island, he had taken up a four-string banjo for fun and in 1976 had joined and become active in the Long Island Banjo Society. He wondered if anyone in Pittsburgh shared the pursuit.
So he placed classified ads and sent out press releases for the first Wednesday meeting of the club. Seven people came.
But it took off, and within a year, the group of 15 banjo players was rehearsing and performing at the Penn Cafe in Bloomfield. The PBC became an almost-famous fixture at the North Side’s James Street Tavern until it closed in 2004 and they moved a few blocks to the Allegheny Elks Lodge No. 339.
And 30 years later, the club of more than 100 men and women still gathers on Wednesday nights at the Elks, where from 8 to 11 p.m., they knock regulars’ and newcomers’ socks off with their “rehearsals” of music from the banjo’s golden age of 1920 to 1930. You need reservations.
“It’s a happy atmosphere. It’s happy music,” Mr. Rossi told the Post-Gazette in 2006. “It lets people enjoy themselves and forget about the stress of everyday life.”
Mr. Rossi made people feel good with more than just the music from his beloved instrument, though for his promotion of the four-string banjo, he was inducted in 2001 into what’s now the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame in Oklahoma City.
He also won a 2009 Jefferson Award, a national recognition for volunteers, for his work with the nonprofit club, which has always donated proceeds from its performances to charity — a running total of more than $140,000.
In presenting him with its Lifetime Achievement Award in 2017, the Northside Leadership Conference cited a biography by PBC secretary Kelly Chiodi that notes “it’s always been important to Frank to donate proceeds from sales and performances to charity, but not just any … he wants to know that those dollars will have a big impact on small organizations and the more local the better.”
“Frank was a showman, and everybody loved the show,” said Mark Fatla, the Leadership Conference’s executive director, who lauded his friend for helping not only small local groups, but also helping to lift the reputation of the North Side. At an early open rehearsal at the Elks, “I sat there and thought, ‘This is the image we want. It’s authentic, it’s not putting on airs, it’s open to everyone and it’s quirky and fun.’” And now “Banjo Night” is frequently cited as a top thing to do in Pittsburgh.
According to his biography — that also is posted on the Hall of Fame’s site and that the Northside Chronicle republished in tribute Tuesday — Francis E. Rossi was born in Ambridge, Beaver County, in 1935 and grew up there until he was in high school and the family moved to Greenfield.
In 1953, he joined the U.S. Air Force and served in Saudi Arabia as a radio navigator. After his four years, he started working for the Federal Aviation Administration as an air traffic controller at what would become John F. Kennedy International Airport. He and the Polish Hill girl he married in 1959, Rita Besavitch, raised three daughters in Port Jefferson Station, N.Y.
The natural showman and emcee later traveled around the country with his tenor banjo and became a well-known and well-liked figure. American Banjo Museum director Johnny Baier said, he “was the rare combination of a banjo promoter who was equally admired and respected by banjo purists as well as an audience of the general public.”
New York City jazz banjoist and recording artist Cynthia Sayer lauded him as “down-to-earth, nononsense, smart, funny and one of those people who truly made a difference” by connecting artists and others and creating community.
Mr. Rossi’s original Long Island club gave him its Charlie Gardella Lifetime Achievement Award in 2013 -— when he also was Elk of the Year — and Banjos Unlimited, a group for which he was everything from president to publication editor, gave him its 25 Years of Dedicated Service Award. He served on the board of directors for the Fretted Instrument Guild of America (now ALL FRETS).
“My father is a rock star in the banjo world,” summed up his daughter Elaine Rossi of New Brookville, N.Y. He also is survived by daughters Marilyn R. Rossi of Los Angeles and Charlotte Ochoa, who, with her husband, lived with him at his home in Ross, plus three grandchildren and one great-grandchild.
For the last couple of years after his wife died in 2017, due to his fragile health, he was unable to lead banjo shows or even talk. But he did make it to the club’s recent 30th-anniversary party. The show went on this past Wednesday night, when the club played his favorite song, “Blueberry Hill.”
PCB secretary Kelly Chiodi said that Banjo Night was emotional, but they kept it upbeat, as they always do. “His hope was always that the Pittsburgh Banjo Club would outlast him,” so she believes he would be delighted “that it continues with him always in our hearts.”
Visitation will be from 5 to 8 p.m. Sunday and from 2 to 4 and 7 to 9 p.m. Monday at Schellhaas Funeral Home & Cremation Services, Inc. at 388 Center Ave. in West View. A Mass of Christian burial will be celebrated at 10 a.m. Tuesday, Feb. 19, at St. Teresa of Avila Parish in Ross.
The family suggests memorial donations be made to Northside Leadership Conference College Music Scholarship Fund (Floor 2, 1319 Allegheny Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15233) or the American Banjo Museum Hall of Fame, 9 E. Sheridan Ave., Oklahoma City, OK 73104.