Up-Close with Tony Orlando
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Tony Orlando
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UP CLOSE ⭐️ Tony Orlando ⭐️
Hudson County hitmaker Tony Orlando is the bridge between old-school show biz and pop music. The 2023 New Jersey Hall of Fame inductee retired last year, but honored Newark composer L. Russell Brown a few months ago with the NJ HOF “Everyday Hero” Award (Brown co-wrote “Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round The Ol’ Oak Tree” with Livingston composer Irwin Levine.) A longtime champion of veterans, supporter of countless charities, he has traversed the fragmented terrain of being a chart-topping pop singer, TV star and Las Vegas headliner. Long before “crossover” became a common entertainment cliché, Orlando not only starred on Broadway in Barnum, and had his own theater in Branson Missouri, but also co-hosted the Labor Day MDA telethon with Jerry Lewis for 30 years. (Thanks to the NJHOF’s Aimee Brooks and Deanna van Woerkom for getting my questions to him.) The first question was for L. Russell Brown who sat in on the interview.
Johnny Cash & Tony Orlando performing a prison song in 1976 on the Tony Orlando & Dawn Show.
The Jersey Sound: Did anyone even realize that "Tie A Yellow Ribbon ‘Round The Ol’ Oak Tree” would go on to become such an American institution? After Tony took it to #1 in ’73, millions of Americans did exactly that in support of U.S. soldiers taken hostage in Iran six years later. It became a touchstone of American culture and patriotism. Do you think we need another song like that right about now?
Frank Sinatra and Tony Orlando
L. Russell Brown: We can always use a song to bring our country together. I wish there were 10 more like it. At the time we wrote it, we never in our wildest dreams thought it would do all the things that Tony said it would. But we’re thankful. All we tried to do is bring people three minutes away from their troubles. I brought the song to Tony and he took the stone, cleaned it off into a diamond, and made it shine.
Tony Orlando and Jerry Lewis
Tony Orlando: I don’t think it was the greatest song ever written and I say that not as a music fan but as a historian. When you analyze music, you can talk about hit records all you want, but most hits on the radio don’t become symbols of what the song is talking about. This hit, though, had me touring in Germany, Hong Kong and Taiwon because of what it symbolized. Remember, it's a love song. Think about it. Here’s a guy who’s been in prison. He hasn’t been in touch with his loved ones. He’s wondering, “does she still love me?” He gets on a bus to go home. He’s telling everybody on the bus, “oh my god, I’m just coming out of prison and I left a message for my wife that if you want me back, just please put a yellow ribbon around the tree.” And those people on that bus are waiting, and as they approach his house, they look at the tree, and see not one ribbon, but 100 ribbons! His wife still loved him! And she loved him a hundred more times than he even thought she did! Welcome home! There isn’t a love song I’ve ever heard that describes it like a motion picture. Now the whole damn bus is cheering! No greater love song has ever been written, in my opinion.
LRB: Thank you.
Orlando receives his star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame, 1990.
TO: You could say I love you I love you I love you, fine, but to talk about it in a way that’s so cinematic, a movie, on a three-minute piece of vinyl, and then, to have cultures that don’t even speak this language, adopt the action of those ribbons as being a homecoming for their own people. This is something rare. This isn’t just another hit record. No! This is rare! When I met the POWs upon their arrival home from the Hanoi Hilton, they were tortured. They knew every word of that song two weeks after they were out of that prison. Bob Hope said to me that opening line of “I’m coming home/I’ve done my time” is every prisoner’s mother’s prayer. I’m not kidding. This isn’t me trying to prop up my songwriter friend here. This is to educate everybody about what that song has accomplished is a little bit different than most hit records.
How many celebrities can you find here at the Dean Martin Roast of Muhammad Ali? Orlando is on the far right next to his best friend, the late Freddie Prinze. We also spotted Orson Welles, Howard Cosell, Dino, Ali, “The Jeffersons,” boxer Floyd Patterson, Gabe Kaplan, NBA star Wilt Chamnberlain, Ruth Buzzi, Foster Brooks, Red Buttons, Nipsy Russell, NFL star Jim Brown and Billy Crystal.
TJS: Every year, on Labor Day, my grandparents, mom and I would huddle around our old black-white television in that cramped Newark apartment to see if Jerry Lewis would cry when he sang “You’ll Never Walk Alone” to end the annual MDA telethon. And he would never disappoint.
On Aug. 3, 1976 in the East Room of the White House, President Gerald R. Ford, Betty Ford, Tony Orlando and the U.S. Marine Corps Band enjoy a moment after the State Dinner for the President of the Republic of Finland. (National Archives)
TO: I did the MDA telethon for 33 years with Jerry Lewis. I met him when I was nine. I brought him a bottle of coins I had collected in the ‘50s when he had a local show. I stood on line to meet him and said, “Mr. Lewis, I got $39 in coins to donate” and he just said, “thanks, kid.” Little did I know that in 1983 he would ask me to be his co-host and the host of the New York City portion of the show. Nobody has done more than Jerry because when you think about it, DNA was what was being used to find a cure for Muscular Dystrophy but the science of DNA in crime-solving came out of our research to cure this disease. There would be no DNA testing if it weren’t for Jerry using it to help cure a disease. He raised four billion dollars for a charity no one had ever heard of before. It was a dream-come-true for me. People still come up to me all the time to say they miss the Labor Day telethon and they miss Jerry.
Tony and Bruce
TJS: I’ll never forget being flown to Branson Missouri by a record label to visit all the different theaters populated by Andy Williams, Roy Clark, Boxcar Willie, Mel Tillis, Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, Wynonna Judd and yourself. The only thing I didn’t like about that town was that it was dry, no liquor allowed!
“I was so humbled,” says Tony, “to be given The Bob Hope Award and stand with Medal of Honor recipients.”
TO: It’s the Bible Belt. They say “good morning,” “how are you?” and “please” and it’s still that way. If there’s ever a beacon of light for what America was and should be, it’s Branson Missouri. When I went there in 1993, I noticed the soil was fertile for God, Family and Country. I got the idea of maybe bringing Bob Hope to Branson to do a veterans show even though it was two years after Desert Storm. There was no war at the time. But I knew that little town of Branson, population around 10,000, with its 143 theaters, hosted eight million people a year. So I called Bob Hope and asked him if he’d come to Branson on Veteran’s Day. He said, “what? You’re asking me to come to you on Veteran’s Day? Everybody and their mother wants me to come to them on Veteran’s Day. But let me ask you a question. Where the hell is Branson?” I told him, “if the United States was an animal, it would be the heart of the animal.” So he shouts to his wife: “Delores! Tony Orlando wants us to come to Branson on Veteran’s Day!” And I hear Delores shout right back to him, “where the hell is Branson?” But they come. And Bob Hope performs for me. I open the doors to veterans on that day for free in the style of Bing Crosby/Bob Hope. We had only 300 vets show up but the theater was sold out. When that show ended, we had a waiting list of over 5,000 vets for the following year. Branson now does 173,000 vets that weekend of November 11. It’s the #1 town in America for veterans. And what song do you think they have playing there when people get off the plane?
