Domenico DiCesare and the Beatles
On September 30, 1920, a handsome, seventeen-year-old man with dark hair and grey eyes named Domenico DiCesare disembarked from the ship ‘Duca Degli Abruzzi’ shortly after it docked in a Philadelphia port. He traveled fourteen days from a port in Naples, Italy, and was greeted by hordes of screaming teenager girls trying their best to get near him as the local police restrained the crowd.
Cue the scratch across the record - this story is only partially true - remove the screaming teenagers and police. This was hardly the way Domenico was greeted in the United States. However, a similar scene would play out 44 years later at the Greater Pittsburgh Airport, and Domenico was partially responsible for those screaming teens; clarification to follow.
The young man disembarking from that ship in Philadelphia, not knowing the English language, and not likely to receive a warm greeting in 1920s America had only $50 to his name. He had to find his way to an uncle’s residence in the Frankfort neighborhood of Philadelphia. This was a time of post-war high unemployment, a country only two years out of the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, labor markets being flooded with immigrants coming to the United States in large numbers to seek work in factories and mills. The anti-Italian sentiment was also widespread, and Pittsburgh’s own Senator David Reed was one of the main architects of the Immigration Act of 1924, aimed at setting quotas on the number of immigrants allowed to enter the United States. The percentage of visas available to individuals from the British Isles and Western Europe increased, but newer immigration from other areas like Southern and Eastern Europe were limited. Reed made it known that immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe, most of whom were Catholics or Jews, were believed to arrive sick and starving, and less capable of contributing to the American economy, also claiming they were unable to adapt to American culture. Despite these anti-immigrant sentiments, Domenico would find a home in Trafford. He started working as a laborer in the Westinghouse foundry and began to assimilate into his new country. He would later meet and marry Florence Asquino and in 1925 he signed his declaration to become a United States citizen. The couple would have ten children.
Fast forward to September 14, 1964: Domenico was in fact partially responsible for a mob of screaming teenagers being held back by the police in Pittsburgh, but the affections were not aimed toward him, they were intended for a group of musicians from Liverpool, UK, known as The Beatles. Long story short, Domenico was the man to provide the funds that opened the door to getting the Fab Four to appear in Pittsburgh.
Patrick DiCesare, the youngest son of Domenico & Florence, was then working for Tim Tormey at a record distribution business in Pittsburgh. Patrick told his father what it was going to take to get the Beatles to potentially appear in Pittsburgh. Domenico, with the blessing of his spouse, went to the Westinghouse Credit Union and borrowed $5,000 against their home on Fourth Street, and gave the money to Patrick. That $5,000 was wired to an individual in New York, turned into cash, put into a brown paper bag, and delivered to a bartender in a Brooklyn bar. This selfless act by a mother and father undoubtedly gave their son an opportunity that would not only make music history in Pittsburgh but may well have marked a date in history that christened Pat DiCesare as the legendary Pittsburgh concert promoter …and it started at the kitchen table of a modest Trafford home.
Today, we remember Domenico “Dominick” DiCesare, born #OnThisDate, January 10, 1903, in Montesilvanio, Italy. Be sure to check out Pat’s book, "Hard Days Hard Nights," where he does a much better job telling the full story in detail.
