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MICHAEL ACAMPORA: My name? Red Mike. Michael Acampora. Red Mike Festival Band. I'm playing the trumpet since I was 9. I'm still playing. Eighty, eighty, eighty-two, eighty-three years. Yeah, I love to play. That's it.

GUS FIORENTINO: My name is Gus Fiorentino. Fiorentino means "little flower." I know Mike 55 years. I remember Mike when he had red hair. It's the truth.

ROBERT MILLER: My name is Robert Miller. And many of the things that I know how to do on the trumpet is a direct result of Red Mike.

PAT BROWN: My name is Pat Brown. Today we are playing a funeral service.

(Funeral song.)

BOB: There's no name to that song. It's just we use it as an entrance each time that we go and play before the caskets.

PAT: They call it "Number One." Nobody knows the name, except we call it "Number One," you know.

GUS: They've been doing this thing for seventy years. We used to work six days a week, all year round. One time we were very busy. Every theater house had a band; we used to play with the film. It ain't happening no more. Forget about it. It's gone. Once rock'n' roll came around, it killed us. I seen a lot of guys come and go. Oh God, I think there's about three guys left. We come here, we do a couple of bad notes, and we go home. That's it. We're living to die.p

(Funeral song ends.)

BOB: Finut! Good! And that completed a Chinese funeral.

(Honking horns.)

PAT: laughs.

GUS: Ah, there comes my girlfriend now.

WOMAN: Hello

GUS: Hello. Oh, she's nice. I'd like to dance with her. Ah, I wish I was twenty-two years old again, with what I know now. Hmmm, mar one.

Producer: Piya Kochhar / Excecutive Producer: David Isay / Funding provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the National Endowment for the Arts.

"Red Mike's Band" premiered December 4, 2004, on Weekend Edition Saturday. Copyright © 2004 Sound Portraits Productions. All Rights Reserved.

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This piece is available in the following audio formats [3:00 min]:
		ISDN Real Audio

		intro
		transcript

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