What If You Saw

What If You Saw? Tony M and the Jazz Sounds of Salvation (2006) is inspired by the Caravaggio painting on the album cover...

Jesus taking the hand of Thomas and placing it in the wound on his right side. Would you ever stop talking about it? BIOGRAPHY Tony Monaco is a Broadway song and dance man of Jewish, Irish, Italian decent whose amazing born-again Christian experience makes some of the major motion picture characters he's played pale in comparison. Born and raised on Manhattan's mean streets, Tony would ride the subway to the Paramount Theatre on Broadway to soak up Frank Sinatra and the Tommy Dorsey band. After the show he slipped his shoeshine box out from under his seat and beat it to 42nd Street to dance on the corner for nickels and dimes like his hero Gene Kelly. Early on, Monaco and eight-time Tony Award-winning choreographer Bob Fosse rented a New York City dance rehearsal studio together - because neither had the money to pay for it on their own - hoping to land a Broadway show. Bob eventually started a trio, and Tony at age 16 achieved a childhood desire of being on stage when he became part of the hoofing chorus of Are You With It?, followed by High Button Shoes (with Phil Silvers), Make Mine Manhattan (with Sid Caesar), Angel in the Wings (with Elaine Stritch), Lend An Ear (with Carol Channing), The Littlest Revue (with Joel Grey), and toured the country as Joey in the Richard Rodgers national production of Pal Joey. This resulted in his first film for 20th Century Fox co-starring opposite David Wayne in George Jessell's Wait Till The Sun Shines, Nellie. His outstanding reviews in that film led to a seven-year contract with Paramount Pictures and a co-starring role with Rosemary Clooney, Anna Maria Alberghetti and opera star Lauritz Melchior in Paramount's The Stars Are Singing. A screen test for MGM gave him the coveted dramatic lead opposite Tallulah Bankhead and Helen Hayes in Main Street To Broadway, garnering a Time magazine review calling Tony 'a junior Marlon Brando.' He later went on to tour in Barbra Streisand's first Broadway show, I Can Get It For You Wholesale, co-starring Lillian Roth and Larry Kert, and produced by David Merrick. Tony guest starred in scores of top TV shows like Dr. Kildare with Richard Chamberlain, a fellow classmate in Hollywood where they studied acting with Jeff Corey, to an Emmy-nominated performance with Dean Jones in Target: Corruptors and on to Michael Landon's Highway to Heaven TV series. An opportunity in production gave Tony the honor of being the Associate Producer on Dalton Trumbo's Cannes Festival award-winning film Johnny Got His Gun, which launched the acting career of Timothy Bottoms whom Tony chose. Further production interests brought him into a six-year association with Quinn Martin Productions as Buddy Ebsen's Dialogue Director and Script Supervisor on the '70s hit TV detective drama Barnaby Jones. But it was really in his two amazing original musical theatre productions, Come Follow Me and The Road to Damascus, that Tony was able to begin sharing his love for the Lord. The Jazz Sounds of Salvation started in the late '70s with friend and legendary Jazz bassist Arnold Fishkind (Charlie Parker, Stan Getz, Les Brown, Benny Goodman, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Barnet, Dean Martin, Bob Hope), who introduced Tony to pianist and arranger Bobby Corwin at The Vineyard Christian Fellowship where Corwin was working with Contemporary Christian singer/songwriter Keith Green. Corwin has been musical accompanist for some of the most well known singers, among them Peggy Lee and Anita O'Day, and served as guest conductor for the George Burns show at the McCullum Theatre in Palm Springs, as well as joining the late Henry Mancini in performances. His relationship with his famous song writing father-in-law, Johnny Mercer, where he notated the music that Johnny composed, prepared him for his twenty-plus-year association with Tony. Tony founded the Jazz for Jesus record label as an outlet to make available the flood of songs that were com