Biography
A Swedish devotee of antique 78 rpm discs closed his inquiry to a specialized vintage-record site by asking “Hvem er denne Mosiello,” a common appeal for elusive sides by trumpeter Mike Mosiello. Born Alfonso Michele Mosiello in Italy, the musician is credited with approximately 1,435 recordings across a career that opened in the early 1920s and embraced an assortment of jazz and dance ensembles, several of which existed solely as label credit lines. Having arrived in the United States as a young child, Mosiello grew up in a musical household; his uncle Frasso Telesino composed and led brass bands. At the age of six the boy began practicing bugle calls, an activity that later proved useful when he joined the Marines during the First World War, served in Europe, and performed with a military band. Roughly three years after the armistice he made his first documented recordings at a 1921 Victor session alongside Nat Shilkret’s orchestra. Within a short time he ranked among New York’s most sought-after trumpet soloists, reportedly commanding eight hundred dollars per week—an unusually high sum in that decade and more than double the weekly earnings of most New York musicians in 2002. Among the artists with whom he collaborated were Jimmy and Tommy Dorsey, Fats Waller, Ukulele Ike, Ben Selvin, and Xavier Cugat. Certain of these ensembles also accompanied performers whose styles approached cowboy or early country-and-western territory, including Carson Robinson and Vernon Dalhart. Although ensembles such as the Arkansas Travelers and the Virginians might evoke bluegrass or old-time string bands, they were in fact large horn sections whose output resists neat classification yet is generally placed within early swing jazz. Mosiello himself composed “Sweet and Hot,” which he recorded in 1929 for Brunswick with Bob Effros’s orchestra. Multi-instrumentalist Andy Sanella frequently appeared alongside him. The phrase “dime store dance” did not refer to young women who worked daytime retail jobs and danced for pay at night; rather, it described the inexpensive discs that Mosiello, Sanella, and their associates cut for sale at Woolworth’s for ten cents each. The same personnel often recorded the same day under several pseudonyms and different leaders, complicating any attempt to assemble a comprehensive Mosiello discography. Collectors therefore face persistent obstacles, and even a rare acquisition may suffer from surface noise that equals or exceeds the musical content. The economic collapse of the 1930s brought Mosiello severe investment losses; conditions at home deteriorated further in 1934 when his daughter developed serious illness. Throughout much of the 1940s he played in the orchestra of the Roxie Theatre before relocating to the West Coast for motion-picture studio work. In the early 1950s he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is said to have sounded the bugle for the final time at his daughter’s wedding the year preceding his death.
Singles