The Exceptions!

I began singing when I was in grade school. Randy Mankowski, my best buddy at school, and I were playground safety boys in charge of monitoring the playground before school and during lunch recess. On cold days we were assigned to open the school entrance doors for the students. The vestibule served as a great echo chamber for belting out the latest songs on the charts. In our fifth hour was Auditorium. We watched movies, rehearsed for the school plays (I played one of the shepherds for the birth of Christ drama- see if you could pull that off today?), read poetry, and had the opportunity to perform for the class. Randy coaxed me to sing with him one of the songs we had recently learned. The song as I remember was titled “Walking Along.” It happened so many years ago, I wondered if there even was a song with that title or maybe it was my imagination all the while. Well, many years later my wife surprised me by purchasing a CD by the Diamonds, of the late 1950’s, from Amazon.com. I was working on a painting in my studio and all of a sudden I hear that song playing from upstairs. My wife wanted to surprise me- so cool daddy-o! Wouldn’t you know it? I was correct all along! The song exists!

It wasn’t until high school that I sang in public again. Milan Cronovich invited me over his house to hang out. With his guitar, he began to play and sing. I sang along with him. He wondered if I would be interested in singing with him at the school’s annual talent show. Two other buddies, Jim Edmunds and Bill Bisnack joined the group. We decided to perform one of the Beatles’ recordings, “All my lovin,” A guy from Warren High School, our rivals, named Billy Levise was our stiffest competition. He had an actual band and sang like a rock star. You know him as Mitch Rider. Yeah, the “Jenny, Jenny, Jenny won’t you come home with me” guy. God, was he good! But, that night we had the home school advantage, and if my ears heard correctly… I think we received the loudest applause.

I was now in a singing group. Well, actually, a pantomime group. We actually sang along with the record. We knew eventually we had to learn to sing in order to perform again. For our next performance we sang the Everley Brothers’ “All I have to do is Dream,” but this time Milan played the guitar, sang harmony, while Jim and I sang co-lead. We were frats and not greasers. So, folk songs were our thing.

Mario joins the group

Milan introduced me to a friend of his that he thought had a good voice. I was blown away by this guy’s mellow baritone voice. His name was Mario Iatonna. He would become one of my closest friends. To make room for Mario it meant that Jimmy had to leave- he was getting married and that would spoil our image. You know, image is everything. Mario’s voice was what was needed. We now had a real lead singer. I needed to learn harmony or I would be out. I knew my looks could get me just so far. Milan also introduced us to the “girls” as we called them. They were a four-part harmony acapella group. Wow! They were not only beautiful they could really sing. Their voices blended so well. They once performed at our high school and the crowd loved them- mostly Motown tunes. I had a crush on all of them. Motown was working with them, and they had an opportunity to sing at the Motown studio with Edwin Star and meet some big names in the industry. Norma Jean and her sister Nancy were the lead singers. Her powerful alto voice carried the song while Ruth and Tina provided background vocals. Nancy sang lead for “Lonely Boy” which was one of my favorites. Her version, in perfect pitch, conveyed a sweetness that made it sound like it was directed to just me. The girls would sing anywhere and at any time. Their sound inspired me. I knew our group wasn't even in the same league. I think the girls liked my falsetto. I could do an amazing Frankie Valli.

We discovered early on that it was hard to rehearse (euphemism for hanging out) as we were all involved with so many other distractions. There was no official breakup, because like so many street-corner groups of that day, what would be the point?

Mario, Me and Jim

Mario and I did continue to sing, and we teamed up with Jim Castiglione. The three of us became best friends; we liked hanging out. Our high school graduation trip to Florida really bonded us as a group. Jim and I convinced Mario to try some chewing tobacco- the craze at the time. However, we told him that in order to really get used to it in his mouth, he needed to swallow the first chew. He about died. The 20+ hour drive was divided into shifts; I got midnight. Till this day I wonder how we ended up on a dead end road in the top of a Tennessee mountain? We enjoyed ourselves in Florida. We came back home burnt to a crisp. A seagull crapped on Jim’s forehead. We walked the strip with our sunburned bodies, and profiled for the ladies. We rented motorbikes and tooled around Fort Lauderdale. I managed to get us lost again on our way home, ending up in Indiana for some reason.

For the shy Jim, singing in public was more than he could endure. But I felt he could overcome this, and with Jim’s high register we now had a true tenor. We needed him. Our voices blended pretty well together. We liked hanging out at Kelly’s Drive-in hamburger joint. The parking lot was where we performed those great hits: “In the Still of the Night”, “Lonely Girl”, “Long Gone Lover”, “Dream” by the Everly Brothers“, ”Greenfields”, “Under the Boardwalk”, “What’s Your Name”, “I Believe”, “Save the Last Dance for Me”, “Goodnight Sweetheart”, and our signature song- “See You In September” by the Happenings.

Jim telephoned Mario and I to tell us he had something urgent to discuss, and that we should come over to his house immediately. “What do you say we cut a record?” Jim asked. For fifty bucks each we could cut a record dub. With that record we could then approach record labels. That sounded exciting. Jim heard the ad spot on the radio. “Be A Star” studio was located above a party store at the corner of Dexter and Davison in Detroit. Jim called and set an appointment. He discovered a spray that was terrific for the throat. It seemed to round out your sound. Great! I sprayed a lot of that green stuff in my mouth, and by the time I arrived at the studio I barely had a voice. However, we sang for Mr. Green- a cool African-American guy who took a liking to us immediately. He said we needed an original song and instrumentation, and that the studio could provide this at no charge too!! The next week we had a song. It was a song that Mister Green wrote. I brought along a reel-to-reel tape recorder (more trouble than it was worth- but the technology was not there yet) to record our session so we could practice our harmony during the week. Once a week we drove to the studio to continue with Mr. Green’s instruction. Well… it took us six months to get it down. We were not trained singers.

Recording in a studio was an amazing and scary experience. Take after take, after take, after take… we finally completed the vocals. It was mixed and sent to be mastered and cut on a vinyl coated metal 45 rpm record. We took on the name: “The Exceptions.” We appreciated all the work that Mr. Green devoted toward this project, and bought him a silver bracelet with “The Exceptions” engraved on it. The Exceptions rocked the music world with harmonies and a style compared to the Letterman.

Jim Castiglione * Mario Iatonna * Denny Guastella

Mr. Green thought we had something special. He introduced us to another producer who gave us another tune to work on…”Let me tell you bout a guy…”. We never did get the arrangement. Green wanted to sign us to a contract and manage our careers. Being too young we would need to take the contract to probate court, so we took the document to a lawyer for his advice. “Don’t sign this- too restrictive” He said. We were very discouraged. Mario then told us of his plans to enter the Marines; Jim said it was better we didn't because he had no intention of singing in public and I… well, it took me years to accept the letdown. The war in Vietnam was escalating and a lottery was used for the draft. Jim called me with the news that my number was 13. Even though I was in college, I would be called for service. My cousin Johnny pulled strings and got me in the Army Reserves. Our singing days were over.

A couple of years later, Mario and I wanted to give it another try. Ruth from the “Girls” group wanted to form a singing group again too. She asked her once lead singer, Norma Jean, to consider joining us and she agreed. We were back in business baby! Again, the difficulty for us was in the fact that we did not have any original songs. So, we formed acapella arrangements of songs like: the Temptations “Just My Imagination”, the Carpenters’ “We’ve Only Just Begun”, “Celebrate” by the Three Dog Night, “So much in love” by the Tymes, and other songs of the period. One afternoon we met at Norma Jean’s house. Her husband was outside with a buddy working on his car. After an hour or so, the husband and his buddy stormed into the house demanding that Mario and I leave. What a jealous idiot. Thanks! That ended that. (Oh, by the way- she divorced the jerk).

Ruth, Mario and I sang a couple of weddings. One engagement we invited my girlfriend to sing with us. Rosie and I were pretty serious with our relationship at the time, and I thought it would be pretty neat to have her join our group. I thought she sang off pitch, but what the hell- she was beautiful and I was nuts about her. Funny thing about it is that Rosie has had an opera career for twenty plus years, singing with Pavoratti, Bocelli, and other big names in Opera and the rest of us… well...

Oh, the story doesn’t have to end. No. No. I keep pestering Mario and Jim to, for posterity's sake, record some of our old songs. And, eventually, if we live long enough, we will have an entire CD to give to our families. We’ll see?

Check out our song!