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08/08/2018 08:30 AMVinnie Carr has been a serviceman, a New Haven police officer, and, for most of his life, one of the shoreline area’s prominent entertainers. He’s also a perennial feature at East Haven’s Senior Day.
“I started the band—are you ready?—in 1966 and I’ve been going ever since,” he says. “Same music, too.”
Vinnie was in the Army when he got to know a group of older musicians who became his first band. In the early days, he played piano for the officers in the service hall, though he was an enlisted man.
After the army, Vinnie served as a New Haven police officer for three years. Shortly after he left, his music career took off. Vinnie’s had other jobs throughout the years, but music has always been there.
Vinnie’s parents started him on the accordion when they spotted his interest. He performed on that instrument until the weight of it became uncomfortable on stage. Now, Vinnie plays the keyboard to perform songs from the likes of Glen Miller and Frank Sinatra.
“I always liked music,” Vinnie says. “Dean Martin was my idol.”
Vinnie has performed all over the state and has earned his great success by sticking to his repertoire of ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s rock and roll.
“The gentlemen that were with me [in that original band] were a great inspiration for me,” he says. “They taught me a lot of what I know today.”
Vinnie learned to put together his own skills with rhythm learned from his drummer and business savvy taught by another bandmate. This, he says, is what helped him find success in East Haven and around the state.
During the height of his career, Vinnie would perform two to three shows a day, working every day of the week in lounges, dance halls, and senior centers.
He remembers performing at New Haven’s Wooster Street feast in 1975 for a crowd packed in down the street.
“I looked out on the audience and I saw a sea of people,” he says. “I couldn’t believe it. These people came to see me?”
Now, because he performs less, he can pick and choose where he wants to play. He calls it a semi-retirement, spent mostly at his home in West Haven with his wife, Denise.
“It becomes a lot of work because you’re traveling,” Vinnie says. “You know, you got to break down the band, set up the band.”
Vinnie says music was his “first love.” Now, his family is most important to him. His daughter, Daniella, studies social work at Southern Connecticut University and his son, Vinnie Jr., teaches at Live Oaks School in Milford.
But Vinnie still gets a thrill out of playing his music before a live audience.
“I like the camaraderie that I can have with an audience,” he says. “When I see them dancing, singing, they’re responding to what I’m doing, which makes me feel good.”
Vinnie has performed at every East Haven Senior Day since its beginning more than 20 years ago. He says that he’s gone on stage there with mayor since Anthony Proto.
He’ll return to the East Haven Green for Senior Day on Saturday, Aug. 18 from noon to 3 p.m. Attendees will be treated to the same show Vinnie has performed for mayors and even presidential candidates—the same show audiences all over Connecticut will remember.
Even simply adding different songs into his rotation, will often yield requests for his standards. So as popular music changes, Vinnie doesn’t plan to change his act.
“I love my rock and roll,” he says.
“The name of the game is keeping your audience happy,” he continues. “And that’s what I try to do.”
In the past, Vinnie played with a larger band, but these days he plays mostly with a four-piece group. He’ll play East Haven’s Senior Day solo, but will close out the town’s summer concert series at 6 p.m. on the town Green on Sunday, Aug. 26 with Charlie Salerno and Ralph DeLucia on guitars and Al DeLucia on the drums.
Vinnie knows that even if his act doesn’t change, popular music must—but he doesn’t let this bother him.
“If I didn’t realize the change, well, then I’d be a sad person,” he says. “There’s got to be change. I accepted it. I know there’s got to be people to take over.”
But Vinnie says he’s still going strong. He’s not ready to stop performing yet. This year, he kicked off North Haven’s summer concert series.
“As long as I get to entertain my people and they’re happy, I’m happy.”