Jimmy Bruno ’71

When Jimmy Bruno was a student at the Prep, he didn’t share his musical talents with too many classmates. “I didn’t want them asking me to play at mixers or parties,” he says now with a laugh. 

While his Prep brothers missed out on the early chance to hear his talent as a guitarist, Bruno has spent the past 50 years honing his craft and playing with some of the best entertainers of the past half-century: Frank Sinatra, Doc Severinsen, Lena Horne, Robert Goutlet, Don Rickles, Joan Rivers, Wayne Newton, and Lola Falana, to name just a few. He has also recorded 10 of his own albums and been part of dozens more as a recording player. It’s been an amazing career for someone who didn’t want to be a musician at first.

“My father was a professional musician and he didn’t want me to follow that path,” says Bruno. Instead, his father wanted him to be a doctor, and Bruno even got the chance to see some surgeries at Graduate Hospital.

But the music bug was too strong. “The money was so good and I was young,” says Bruno. “I got a job playing down the shore in Wildwood, the Lucky Club, making $175 a week in cash. When you are young, you think you know everything.”

At 19, he joined the Buddy Rich Band, traveling with the well-known group. He wanted to pursue jazz but “there wasn’t enough interest in that to make a living,” so he went to Las Vegas in the early 1970s. That’s where he played with some of the biggest acts that came through town. His best gig was playing in the Doc Severinsen Orchestra, helmed by the famed band leader of “The Tonight Show,” even getting the chance to sub on that show occasionally.

From there, he went to Los Angeles, where he did studio work, including an album with the LA Philharmonic. However, the lifestyle there wasn’t for him, and he decided to retire from the business and move back to Philadelphia. “It was such a tough life,” Bruno says. “One day you make a lot of money, the next you are playing a bar mitzvah. That’s not why I got into music.” 

Back home, he took a job as a manager of a bar called Feathers in Fairmount, sometimes also serving as a bartender. “I was done and had sold all of my guitars except for one,” he laughs. “I liked working at the bar. It was like hosting a party every day.”

One day, two young men entered the bar. “They were too young to be drinking so I asked them why they were there,” Bruno remembers. “They asked me if I was Jimmy Bruno, the guitar player.” Those “kids” were Zak Kruz and David Brodie and they talked Jimmy into playing again. 

“That really kickstarted the second phase of my career,” he says. The trio got an opportunity to play at a club called JJ’s Grotto. “The owner was a guy named Jack Prince. We played there every Wednesday, Friday and Saturday, and Jack would tape me every night, saying I’m going to get you a record contract. He called Concord Records so much that they listened to the tapes that he sent them.”

Prince believed in Bruno because he saw the effect that Bruno had on business at the club. “He said, ‘I knew there was something special about you when there were lines out the door,’” Bruno remembers. “He loved music of all kinds and he just had a hunch about me.”

Today, Bruno, who lives in Abington with his wife, plays mostly in New York City where jazz music is thriving. Though he didn’t graduate from the Prep (he sadly had to leave after his junior year because his family could no longer afford the tuition), he still has love for the school. “It was a terrific place and I am so glad that I got a Jesuit education,” Bruno says. “I really enjoyed going to the Prep, so much so that I didn’t even want to have a snow day.”

Outside of his recording work, Bruno taught for many years at the University of the Arts, running the guitar program. He also teaches private lessons and this summer was an instructor at a guitar camp. He credits the Prep for helping him have a stage presence.

“For history one year, we had a teacher who would have us cut articles out of the newspaper and then present or debate on it,” Bruno says. “I was really shy but that helped me learn how to perform in front of others.”

He also remembers Rev. Ken Meehan, S.J., a scholastic who taught Latin. “He was very disciplined in what he did but we would say off-the-cuff things sometimes,” Bruno remembers. “One class, when we were complaining about something, he said ‘you think this is hard, wait until you get a job and have to go out in the real world.’ That really stuck with me.”

Learn more about Bruno’s music at jimmybruno.com.