Before Goodfellas: Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent Were in a Band Together

Most people know Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent as two of Martin Scorsese's go-to guys for on-screen violence. They beat each other up in Raging Bull, Goodfellas, and Casino, usually with Pesci coming off worse for wear in one film and Vincent getting the short end of it in another. But long before any of that, the two men were something else entirely: bandmates in a lounge act grinding through the New Jersey nightclub circuit, six hours a night, night after night, for years.

It's one of those backstories that sounds made up. Two future movie mobsters, playing jazz standards in tuxedos for half-drunk crowds in Times Square bars. But it's absolutely true, and the story of how it happened, and what came next, is a genuinely fascinating bit of entertainment history that most Scorsese fans have never heard.

Frank Vincent Needed a Guitar Player

Frank Vincent, whose real name was Frank Vincent Gattuso, was born in North Adams, Massachusetts in 1937 and grew up in the Greenville section of Jersey City, New Jersey. His father encouraged him to take music lessons, and by the time he left school at 16, Vincent had already developed real skills on both drums and trumpet. He spent the 1950s working his way into the New York metropolitan music scene, eventually becoming a session drummer backing some notable names, including Paul Anka, Del Shannon, Trini Lopez, and The Belmonts.

By the late 1960s, Vincent had formed his own band, initially called Frank Vincent and the Aristocats (later the Aristocrats). They played jazz and lounge standards, dressed in coordinated tuxedos, and worked the honky-tonk clubs of Times Square and the surrounding area. The band was professional, tight, and capable. There was just one problem: the world had moved on. Big band and jazz lounge acts were increasingly out of step with what audiences wanted. Bookings were getting harder to come by.

In 1969, Vincent put out an ad for a guitar player. A younger guy from Newark named Joe Pesci answered it.

Joe Pesci Was Already a Showbiz Veteran

Pesci, born in 1943, had been performing since he was a child. His mother was a part-time barber, and he learned the trade from her, but music and performance were always the real draw. By the age of ten, he'd already appeared on the television talent show Star Time Kids, the same show that helped launch Connie Francis. As a teenager, he fell in with the group of musicians who'd eventually form Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. According to most accounts, Pesci played a role in introducing the members to each other, including keyboardist Bob Gaudio, whose songwriting would define the band's sound.

Before joining Vincent's outfit, Pesci had also played guitar with Joey Dee and the Starliters, the house band at the Peppermint Lounge in New York City. In 1968, he released a debut album called Little Joe Sure Can Sing!, credited under the name Joe Ritchie, on Brunswick Records. It was covers of contemporary pop hits, and it didn't exactly set the world on fire. When Vincent's ad appeared, Pesci was a capable, experienced musician who hadn't yet found his moment.

He joined Frank Vincent and the Aristocrats, and the two men clicked almost immediately, though not necessarily in the way either of them had planned.

From Band to Comedy Act

The music was decent, but it was increasingly passe. As the lounge bookings dried up through the early 1970s, Pesci and Vincent found that the funniest parts of their shows were getting the best reactions. Vincent had a background in insult comedy and had already developed a sharp, confrontational stage personality. Pesci, naturally quick-witted, could hold his own and then some. Their onstage chemistry was hard to manufacture but impossible to miss.

By around 1970, the two had shifted their act away from pure music and toward comedy. They billed themselves as Vincent and Pesci, and the act was described by those who saw it as something between Abbott and Costello and Don Rickles. Some nights it'd be Vincent roasting the audience while Pesci played straight man. Other nights they'd flip it entirely, with Pesci taking shots at Vincent. They did sketches, accents, and physical comedy, working the same New Jersey club circuit they'd been playing as musicians.

Vincent later described the partnership as being like a marriage, saying the two of them were like "a husband and wife" who broke up many times over the course of those six years. But they always came back together, because the act worked. According to sources from the time, they toured nightclubs across the United States and in 1975 were even part of Roy Radin's new vaudeville revue, which was then enjoying a modest revival on the American entertainment circuit.

They also recorded together during this period, releasing a handful of music and comedy singles as Vincent and Pesci. One of them was a funky instrumental called "Little People Blues." Another was a comedy Christmas single called "Can You Change the Way I Talk for Christmas?" in which Vincent played Santa Claus and Pesci voiced Porky Pig.

The Act That Launched Two Careers

The comedy duo wound down by 1975, but neither man was done with showbiz. The following year, both Pesci and Vincent were cast in a low-budget crime film called The Death Collector, also known as Family Enforcer. It was rough around the edges, but the performances stood out, and the film eventually caught the attention of two people who would change both their lives: actor Robert De Niro and director Martin Scorsese.

The connection didn't pay off immediately. After The Death Collector, both men found themselves back at square one. Pesci famously went back to working in a restaurant, living in a small apartment above it in the Bronx, with no acting work on the horizon. Then, in 1979, he got a phone call from Scorsese about a boxing picture. That picture was Raging Bull.

Vincent's path back was similarly accidental. He happened to bump into Pesci again in 1978, and that chance meeting led to an audition with Scorsese. He ended up playing Salvy Batts in Raging Bull, the mob enforcer who has a brutal altercation with Jake La Motta's brother early in the film. It was a supporting role, but it was exactly the right kind of role for the right kind of director.

What happened next is the part everyone knows. Scorsese reunited them in Goodfellas in 1990 and in Casino in 1995. Their shared history gave their on-screen chemistry a weight that was almost impossible to fake. When Vincent's Billy Batts tells Pesci's Tommy DeVito to go get his shine box in Goodfellas, there's something electric in the exchange that goes beyond the script. These were two men who'd spent years performing together, reading each other's timing, knowing exactly how far to push before things snapped. You can find more on the real history behind that film's characters over on our true crime stories section.

A Footnote That Deserves to Be a Headline

There's something genuinely strange about the way this chapter of their lives has been largely forgotten. Joe Pesci is one of the most recognisable actors of the late 20th century. Frank Vincent became a fixture in prestige television through The Sopranos, where he played Phil Leotardo across more than 30 episodes before meeting one of the show's most memorable deaths. Their names are synonymous with a very particular strain of American cinema.

And yet, for about six years before any of that, they were just two guys from New Jersey playing jazz and doing insult comedy in clubs, putting in six-hour sets with a few breaks to catch their breath, releasing Christmas novelty singles, and slowly figuring out what they were actually good at.

Frank Vincent passed away on September 13, 2017, following complications from heart surgery. He was 80 years old. He'd been married to his wife Kathleen since 1970, and the couple had three children. Pesci, now in his 80s, has largely stepped back from public life but has continued to record music, releasing an album called Pesci... Still Singing in 2019. If you're interested in more stories about the surprising early lives of famous faces, take a look at our history articles at Utterly Interesting.

The Aristocrats never charted. Vincent and Pesci never cracked the big time as a comedy act. But without all of it, there's no Goodfellas. There's no shine box scene. There might not even be the same Martin Scorsese filmography we now take for granted. Sometimes the long way round is the only way that works.

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Sources

1. Travalanche (Travis Stewart's blog): "When Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent Had a Vaudeville Comedy Team" (2022) – travsd.wordpress.com

2. Rotten Tomatoes: Frank Vincent biography – rottentomatoes.com/celebrity/frank_vincent

3. TV Insider: Frank Vincent actor biography – tvinsider.com/people/frank-vincent/

4. Cheat Sheet: "Why Joe Pesci and Frank Vincent Worked So Well Together in Scorsese Movies" (2019) – cheatsheet.com

5. Grokipedia: Frank Vincent biography – grokipedia.com/page/Frank_Vincent

6. Encyclopedia.com: Joe Pesci biography – encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/film-and-television-biographies/joe-pesci

7. The Sunday Independent Ireland: Frank Vincent obituary (2017) – pressreader.com

8. TV Tropes: Frank Vincent creator page – tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Creator/FrankVincent