There was no more avid contributor to Per Niente than Joe Giambra. A former cop, a one-time candidate for mayor, a leading jazz trumpeter and as a poet, playwright and novelist, an inveterate, tireless chronicler of Buffalo’s Sicilian American story, Joey came into my life in the early 1990s and stayed there until his untimely death in the Spring of 2020 from complications related to Covid-19. Following his death I was asked to write a tribute to Joey which, at the suggestion of Elena Cala, I  called “Cheap trumpet, lottsa brass:  A day in the life of Joey Giambra.” Mine is just one of the many lives touched by Joey Giambra and I am proud that he and I worked as colleagues on more than one project. I have reprinted the tribute below: 

Sometime in early winter  1996 I got a call from Joey Giambra. I’d seen Joey perform many times, most memorably and powerfully in local productions of Mamet’s American Buffalo and Miller’s View from the Bridge.  I’d heard him play his music too, in fabulous ensembles that often included “Red” Menza, Lou Merino, Richie Merla and Sam Noto. Years before, when I was teaching at UB’s College of Urban Studies, people were talking about an instructor there, an ex-cop named Joe Giambra, who was teaching a course on crime in Buffalo. “You gotta sit in”, I was told and sure enough I did: up close and personal with “Professor” Giambra, as he reminisced about “the wise guys” he’d busted in nooks and crannies all over the city.

“I got an idea for you, kid,” a gravelly voice on the line said. “A good one. You’re gonna like it.” I knew already that I would and we agreed to meet down the street at Spot Coffee.  “Spot Coffee…What?” he shot back. “That’s Holzman’s Pharmacy. You wanna meet at the counter at Holzman’s?” After explaining that Holzman’s, that iconic drug store with its long-winding lunch counter and endless supplies of theatrical accoutrements, was no more and that it had  been transformed into  “Spot,”  Joey reluctantly agreed. “Sure,” he said, “I’ll meet you at Holzman’s… I mean Spot. What the hell kind of name is that for a coffee joint, anyway?”, he muttered under his breath.

 I was waiting outside on that cold, snowy afternoon when trudging down Chippewa, his head bent slightly forward,  I saw coming towards me--Joey Giambra--shoes covered in snow.  In one hand he carried a trumpet case and in the other a briefcase. Nodding at each other at the door, Joey  triumphantly held up the trumpet  in the air. Before as much as a hello he said “I just bought this trumpet for eighty bucks, ain’it.  It’s a friggin’ beauty!”  Then, looking around, he said “What the hell happened to Holtzman’s? You shudda seen that store. It catered to all the theaters in downtown Buffalo. You could buy all kindsa theatrical make-up. Costumes too. What a place! The lunch counter. Where the hell did it go?”  All the actors used to meet there for lunch. Oh, well….Let’s have a cawfee….  Waddaya want? I’m gonna have a muffin an’cawfee. It’s on me.” I took the same: two muffins, two cups of “cawfee.”  “What”? Joey exclaimed in mock outrage when the waitress told him the price. “Twelve dollars? What did I do?  Break a frikkin’  window!”  And so I was introduced to Joey Giambra.

As if we’d known each other for years, Joey took hold of my elbow and led me over to a table. “I heard about you, kid. You helped the O’Neills set up the Irish Classical Theater Company. I got a play for you. I may not be Irish but, it’s classical, that’s for sure. You’re gonna love it! Sit down I gonna read  some of it to you, he commanded. It’s called Bread and Onions.”

“It’s based on my youth—the people I knew, the things we did--on the Lower West Side.” Putting the trumpet down he opened his briefcase and took out a sheaf of pages filled with text, some typed, some scrawled by hand. “Listen to this.” Joe began reading intently, losing   himself instantly into the world of his transcendent Lower West Side.

He read: “Andrews Hall; a hot summer’s day…may it never end. A wedding at Bronzino’s. Sam Scamacca, “Jabber” Calabrese, a four-piece band, an abundance of rhythm; the windows dressed in black. Draft beer in glasses;  pop, Queeno, Oscar’s, Nehi. Ham sandwiches in wax paper wrapped, cold pizza, homemade cookies. Who could ask for anything more. Agnes Alessandra, their sons and Luisa lived upstairs. In front of the store children wait religiously to board Mikes carousel: miniature horses, colorful moments of happy, galloping abandonment, innocent faces, thrilled, turning, always turning clockwise.”