Owner of Italian Market in Tustin Finds a Good Recipe for Mixing Jazz and Food

Walk into Joe Massimino’s Italian market and you get a hug and maybe a kiss if he’s known you for a long time, like for a minute or two. Joe is like that. “I love people,” he says.

It’s a friendly greeting from an unpretentious man who spent 25 years dealing with the likes of Frank Sinatra, Gene Kelly and Fred Astaire, and 1950s singers Julius La Rosa, Jaye P. Morgan, Diahann Carroll and Florence Henderson.

Starting in 1956, at age 18, he played piano in the Tommy Dorsey band.

He then spent time as musical director for several singers.

Later, Massimino was musical director for the popular Mike Douglas television show for 13 years.

“I don’t feel I’ve come down 12 notches selling salami,” said Massimino, 50, who still pens songs and arranges music when he’s not selling salami and sausage during the day or offering cooking classes at night. “I know food and I know how to cook it.”

He also knows music. On Sundays, he and other jazz musicians give free concerts in the parking lot next to his San Remo market on Newport Avenue in Tustin. It’s called “Jazz at the Deli.”

Five years ago, when the Douglas show folded, “I felt the talk show business didn’t seem like it had much of a future,” he said, “and I was tired of all the red tape and bureaucracy of television.”

The market has been his gig since then, although Massimino has lived in Tustin for 10 years. The building that houses his market is the former Tustin City Library.

He said selling salami and sausage is tougher than working with superstars. “I saw them every day,” he said, “and we were on common ground with each other.” He said Douglas “was and is a wonderful man.”

He said he thought that opening a store would make him the boss. “The customers are the bosses. They tell me how to operate the store and what to sell, but they like me and I like them.”

Massimino said he thinks he’s getting an education in the store that he didn’t get working with celebrities. “You know it’s not easy trying to make a living in an Italian store when there’s such an ethnic mix in the county.”

But all is well with Massimino and Don DeSimone, his store partner and former trumpet player.

“I get the best of everything,” Massimino said. “I play music on Sunday, I teach cooking during the week, and all the time I make good salami and sausage.”

Early on, Steven Knudson, 28, had dreams of becoming a concert pianist. But the 1977 class valedictorian at Dana Point High School decided in college that the ministry was his calling.

This did not upset his father, the Rev. John Knudson of Gloria Del Lutheran Church in Dana Point. After his son’s ordination there last Sunday, the Rev. Steven Knudson became the fourth-generation minister in the Knudson family.

“It was an exciting day for all of us,” said the new minister’s father. “Steven just found out that instead of music, he was better suited for the people business.”

He is now associate pastor of the Christ Lutheran Church in West Covina.

The major prize of the Joanna Hodges Piano Conference and Competition held in Palm Springs was not awarded at all because judges found no one qualified. But Alexander Ip of La Palma, who played a minuet by Bach, was presented the $200 John Campbell Kennedy Memorial Award for being the youngest pianist in the competition. He is 6 years old.

The Mullens get a lot of golf ball action in their front yard from the course across the street, but it has helped to pay for some of son Kevin’s college books. He sold 1,600 golf balls that the family picked up from the front lawn.

Donna J. Mullen, who doesn’t play golf, said she doesn’t know exactly how many balls they’ve retrieved at their Anaheim home, but they’ve been doing it for 20 years.

“I have 600 saved up in the garage right now,” said Mullen. Her husband, Ron E. Mullen, a non-golfer, gives them away to friends.

“There’s two golf balls on the lawn now,” she said in a telephone interview. “It’s like that every day. We get leery about going outside and that’s our front yard.” She said golfers often climb a fence to retrieve their wayward golf balls.

She said her house and car windows have been broken and her son and dog have been struck by golf balls flying over the fence from the eighth tee on Dad Miller’s Anaheim Municipal Golf Course.

“When I get the chance, I have to see if the city can’t get the golf course to move the eighth tee,” she said.

And as an afterthought, she added: “Maybe I’ll take up golfing, but not now.”