In the Irish Channel, a few blocks away of the birthplace of Nick LaRocca, on August 8, 1914, Philip (A. William Theodore) Zito was born, son of a modest and large family (seven children, between males and females).
The father, Frank Zito – a Sicilian native of Bisacquino (Palermo) who was a close friend of Girolamo LaRocca (Nick’s father), he, also, Sicilian native of Salaparuta (Trapani) played the trumpet, the guitar and the mandolin, but stopped with music when he got married, promising solemnly that none of his sons would leave the unstable life of the musician.
The young Phil challenged his father and began to play the drums as a student at Fortier High School; it happened to him, in fact, to be present at an audition of LaRocca’s orchestra in the birthplace of Nick, at Magazine Street and the thing had excited him to such a degree that he decided immediately to become a musician,too.
In 1931, after graduation, he obtained a scholarship for the study of music at Louisiana State University. “But at that time – Zito remembers during an interview given in 1992 to “Metairie Picayune” – my father made bankruptcy and we lost the house, the work and everything.”
So Phil had to renonce the scholarship remaining with his family, in order to help and upkeep his six brothers and sisters; he worked during the daytime at a dredge, playing in the night in the circuit of clubs.
“I was so young, full of energy in those days – goes on Phil – music was a great thing, people thrilled for jazz and I was making money in the night, in the clubs, than working during the day.
When Nick LaRocca, in 1938, returned to New Orleans, abandoning definitely the musical activity to become a building contractor, got married setting up home at 2218 Constance Street, retaking the contacts with Phil Zito, younger than he, but family’s friend for a long time, who lived at a few blocks away, at Virksburg Street, near Coliseum Square. Nick And the young wife Ruth loved a lot to go dancing on Sundays, and became constant customers of the various places where Zito played, from the clubs of Elysian Field Street and St:Claude Street to Lions Club, to Parisian Room and in many premises of Royal Street where they could meet also some emergent talents such as clarintetist Pete Fountain and trumpeter George Girard.
In November 1942, while walking for Canal Street, Zito learned that a friend was recruiting musicians for a military orchestra; he signed and after a tew days he joined the Navy of the United States.
During the four years of war spent in playing the drums in the Navy, Zito, with some other musicians comrades who were like him natives of the zone of New Orleans, constituted a jazz orchestra in order to hold concerts for the servicemen. At war’s end Zito went to New York to study for a year at the famous Juilliard School of Music, later, returned to New Orleans, continued its studies at Loyola University, while returning to plunge in the night world of clubs and hotels of the downtown New Orleans.
At that time Zito and his band were also engaged for official parties such as the onde in honour of President Eisenhower, for the premières of movies, for dances, inaugurations, jazz concerts, in the French Quartier and in the downtown hotels.
The picture below shows Zito next to Mr. And Mrs. LaRocca at the inauguration of the “Joy Theatre”.