Joe Negri | |
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Background information | |
Birth name | Joseph Harold Negri |
Born | Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, U.S. | June 10, 1926
Genres | Jazz |
Occupations |
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Instrument | Guitar |
Years active | 1929–present |
Joseph Harold Negri (born June 10, 1926) is an American jazz guitarist and educator. [1] He appeared as himself and as "Handyman Negri" in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe segments on Mister Rogers' Neighborhood . [1] He appeared on the 1959 children's television program Adventure Time and with Johnny Costa on the 1954 TV series 67 Melody Lane hosted by Ken Griffin.
Negri taught jazz guitar for 49 years at the University of Pittsburgh, [2] where jazz guitar was first offered as a discipline in higher education. [3] [4] He taught for 46 years at Duquesne University, [1] [3] as well as at Carnegie Mellon University.
Joe Negri began performing on radio at age three, playing the ukulele and singing. He joined the local musicians' union and began playing professional engagements. In the 1940s, he toured nationally and was a member of the Shep Fields Orchestra from 1943 until 1944, when he entered the Army for two years.
After returning home, he performed in Pittsburgh with his brother, pianist Bobby Negri. He enrolled at Carnegie Mellon University, concentrated on music composition, and spent the 50's playing locally around the Pittsburgh area and often worked with pianist Johnny Costa on KDKA television. His trio, with accordionlist Dom Trimarkie and bassist Lou Mauro, were the regular band on the live KDKA variety show Buzz and Bill, hosted by the team of Buzz Aston and Bill Hinds. Around 1960, WTAE, Pittsburgh's ABC television outlet, hired him as its music director. Negri played on various live programs and composed theme music as well. He spent the next twenty-two years working at WTAE as music director. He met Fred Rogers at WTAE, when Rogers hosted a short-lived children's show. In 1968, Negri began appearing as Handyman Negri in the children's program Mister Rogers' Neighborhood for nearly 40 years until Rogers stopped producing new episodes in 2000. Though many assume Negri was part of the musical ensemble on the show, in fact he only occasionally joined the show's band on special occasions. Most of his work on the program involved his Handyman Negri character or portraying himself as owner of "Negri's Music Shop" when Rogers presented musical guests.
Negri taught guitar and later helped Duquesne University establish a jazz guitar program. Over the years he taught many students including Ralph Patt, [5] the inventor of major-thirds tuning. [6] [7] Negri and Patt recorded in 1989. [8]
In 2010 he recorded the album Fly Me to the Moon with Michael Feinstein [1] and performed with him during the next year at the Newport Jazz Festival. Negri was the subject of a profile in the September 2010 issue of Vintage Guitar magazine written by Rich Kienzle.
The Joe Negri archives consist of the collection of manuscripts, recordings, memorabilia, and original hand-written scores that document his life, work and influence. The collection was donated by Negri in 1999 to the Center for American Music within the University Library System (ULS) at the University of Pittsburgh. The donation became the 1,000th collection at the ULS to have an electronically accessible finding aid (i.e., a guide that describes the contents of an archival collection and creator). [9] [10] [11] The archives contains correspondence, commissioned commercial musical compositions, scores, recordings and television archival footage. His donation also included his college coursework, compositions written for the River City Brass Band, television scores, commercial jingles, and film work. [10] [12] Companies that commissioned work from Negri included McDonald's, Alcoa, Kaufmann's, and Westinghouse.
Mister Rogers' Neighborhood is an American half-hour educational children's television series that ran from 1968 to 2001. It was created and hosted by Fred Rogers. Its original incarnation, the series Misterogers debuted in Canada on October 15, 1962, on CBC Television. In 1966, Rogers moved back to the United States creating Misterogers' Neighborhood, later called Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, on the regional Eastern Educational Television Network. The U.S. national debut of the show occurred on February 19, 1968. It aired on NET and its successor, PBS, until August 31, 2001.
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In music, a guitar chord is a set of notes played on a guitar. A chord's notes are often played simultaneously, but they can be played sequentially in an arpeggio. The implementation of guitar chords depends on the guitar tuning. Most guitars used in popular music have six strings with the "standard" tuning of the Spanish classical guitar, namely E–A–D–G–B–E' ; in standard tuning, the intervals present among adjacent strings are perfect fourths except for the major third (G,B). Standard tuning requires four chord-shapes for the major triads.
Guitar tunings are the assignment of pitches to the open strings of guitars, including classical guitars, acoustic guitars, and electric guitars. Tunings are described by the particular pitches that are made by notes in Western music. By convention, the notes are ordered and arranged from the lowest-pitched string to the highest-pitched string, or the thickest string to thinnest, or the lowest frequency to the highest. This sometimes confuses beginner guitarists, since the highest-pitched string is referred to as the 1st string, and the lowest-pitched is the 6th string.
Johnny Costa was an American jazz pianist. Given the title "The White Art Tatum" by fellow jazz pianist Art Tatum, Costa is best known for his work as musical director of the children's television series Mister Rogers' Neighborhood.
Adventure Time was a local children's television show on WTAE-TV 4 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, from 1958 to 1979. It was hosted by Paul Shannon from 1958 until his retirement in 1975, accompanied by guitarist Joe Negri and puppeteer Jim Martin. Negri took over as the show's host from 1975 until 1979.
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The Mary Pappert School of Music is one of the ten degree-granting divisions that comprise Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
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Among alternative guitar-tunings, regular tunings have equal musical intervals between the paired notes of their successive open strings.
Ralph Oliver Patt was an American jazz guitarist who introduced major-thirds tuning. Patt's tuning simplified the learning of the fretboard and chords by beginners and improvisation by advanced guitarists. He invented major-thirds tuning under the inspiration of first the atonal music of Arnold Schoenberg and second the jazz of John Coltrane and Ornette Coleman.
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Marty Ashby is a music producer, concert organizer, and jazz guitarist. Since 1987 he has been the executive producer of MCG Jazz, a program of the Manchester Craftsmen's Guild, where he has produced more than 2,000 concerts and 40 recordings on the MCG Jazz label, including five Grammy Award winners. He has also performed with a number of jazz groups and is an adjunct professor at Oberlin College.
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