Another great act of the past! It's Johnny Puleo and the Harmonica Rascals. I used to see these guys on all the variety shows of the fifties and I never quite understood what they were doing…but the music was pleasant enough and the act was silly, so that was reason enough to watch.
The history, as I understand it, is that there was an act called Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals, and that Puleo was one of the many musicians auditioned and hired over the years by Mr. Minevitch. In the late forties when Minevitch retired, he handed the act over to the diminutive Puleo. At some point, there was a trademark dispute over the name and the group became The Harmonica Gang. Ed Sullivan especially liked them and was known to call them in at the last moment if he thought the show that week needed their kind of energy.
Puleo retired in the late sixties and the group disbanded. He made a brief cameo appearance in an episode of SCTV in 1982, a year before he passed away. Here he is with his troupe on a Milton Berle telecast of the early fifties…
