Ernani Bernardi - Music

Music

Bernardi's father, Alfonso, was a music teacher who taught his son how to play the saxophone. Ernani went on to become a musician, performing under the name Noni Bernardi as lead alto sax for several of big bands of the era such as those of Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey and Kay Kyser. He was known for his arrangements of Goodman's "And the Angels Sing" and Dorsey's "I'm Getting Sentimental Over You."

Bernardi moved to California in 1940 to perform with Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge. His musical prowess was acknowledged in 1994 when at age 82 he was awarded a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Ironically, as the Los Angeles Times pointed out, his star—and those of 29 other musicians and actors—was funded by the city's Community Redevelopment Agency, an organization that Bernardi had been fighting with for years. The tribute is in the 7000 block of Hollywood Boulevard.

The ex-councilman continued playing the sax well into his eighties. In 2000 he was a regular at age 88 with his band booked, among other places, at a retro big band restaurant called Leon's Steak House in North Hollywood. The Times reported:

When this guy takes his spot in front of a 16-piece ensemble of blaring trumpets and gleaming saxes—The Way It Was Orchestra, as he calls it—his frail arms start pumping, his toes tap and his body begins to radiate a vigor that energizes the old musicians like swigs from a fountain of youth. . . . nothing stirs the diminutive Bernardi—he's about 5 foot 3, a little over 100 pounds—like his music.