The world knew Danny Aiello as the blue-collar character actor whose hit films included “Fort Apache, the Bronx,” “The Godfather, Part II,” “Once Upon a Time in America” and his Oscar-nominated performance as a pizza man in Spike Lee’s “Do the Right Thing.”

Jersey Shore music fans knew him as a singer.

Aiello, who passed away at the age of 96 according to his publicist, made his public singing debut in 2000 at the Old Mill Inn in Spring Lake Heights. The night was a “Salute to Sinatra,” a fundraiser for the former FoodBank of Monmouth and Ocean Counties.

“I don’t really count that as a first show or anything because I wasn’t thinking about singing as a career,” said Aiello previously to the Asbury Park Press. “I felt I didn’t have the guts to do it. I’d sing at a wedding here or there, if someone asked me, but that was about it. And yet, for the longest time, people have asked me to do it, either they had heard me singing in the movies or something. It took me a while to consider it.”

Aiello, a longtime resident of Ramsey and Saddle River, would often come to the Shore to sing and socialize. The former Old Mill Inn was his spot. It was owned by long-time friend Joseph Amiel, who posted a picture of him and Aiello in Paris on his Facebook page on Friday, Dec. 13.

“For some 57 years when we first met Danny could often be seen dining in my restaurants and socializing with guests,” said Amiel in a post. “He was always there for me and his many friends.”

Aiello released several albums. He knew his fame as a movie tough guy preceded him when he sang on stage.

“I know they’re afraid for me and terrified that they might have to be embarrassed for me,” Aiello said. “So I get up there and do two songs right away, no banter, to put everyone at ease.”

“I’ve had a lot of luck — again — in reinventing myself,” Aiello said. “I love acting and I love singing. I’m not giving up either one.”

Bobby Darin was his inspiration.

“Bobby Darin always said, `Dare them not to like you,’“ Aiello said. “And if anyone could exude his confidence, wow, you were set.”

Jersey Shore music promoter Sammy Boyd booked Aiello for Tim McLoone’s Supper Club in Asbury Park in 2013.

“He did beautiful arrangements of standards and he sang so wonderfully,” Boyd said. “He was so kind and so nice — he was a genuinely nice to people. I loved working with him.”

Aiello had been on the periphery of the music world for some time. He co-starred in Madonna's "Papa Don't Preach" video in 1986. He played Papa and he recorded a response song and video to the Madonna hit.

It was called "Papa Just Wants the Best For You.”

Daniel Louis Aiello Jr. was born June 20, 1923, to Italian parents. His father, a laborer, left the family of seven children, and Daniel started working at age 9 selling newspapers, working in a grocery store and bowling alley, shining shoes and loading trucks. In his teenage years, he joined a street gang and, he claimed, engaged in burglary and safe-cracking. He dropped out of high school before graduating, got married in 1945 and joined the Army.

After three years in the service, he worked at several factory jobs, landing as a baggage man at Greyhound. The ambitious Aiello rose to become president of the transit union.

“I wanted to become a politician,” he told a reporter in 1995. “I always thought that I could talk, that people liked me, that I can represent them.” But when Greyhound accused him of starting a wildcat strike and the union leaders agreed, Aiello quit his job.

He worked at one job after another, and in 1960 was hired as a bouncer at the New York comedy club, Improvisation. One night, he was asked to act as an assistant emcee. “It was no big deal; it was just ‘Danny, go up and announce the acts,’“ he recalled in 1997. “There was a little bantering between acts, and I kept that short. I was terrified.”

Yet Aiello soon branched out, playing small roles in the movies “Bang the Drum Slowly” and “The Godfather, Part II,” and as the bartender lead in a musical play “Lamppost Reunion.” Starting in 1980 he averaged three films a year, plus appearances in theater and television. Off-Broadway, he appeared in “The Shoemaker” in 2011.

https://www.app.com/story/entertainment/music/2019/12/13/danny-aiello-singer-songs-jersey-shore-dead-86/2640250001/

(http://www.autoadmit.com/thread.php?thread_id=4400825&forum_id=2#39261354)