Joe Negri, an elegant jazz guitarist who passed up touring with Tony Bennett and other luminaries to remain in Pittsburgh, his beloved hometown, where he played Handyman Negri on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” cleaning castles, mixing cement and bantering with King Friday, died on May 30 in Scott Township, Pa. He was 99.
His death, at a senior living facility near Pittsburgh, was confirmed by his family.
Mr. Negri appeared on more than 300 episodes of the long-running public television show — first as an affable, singing handyman in the Neighborhood of Make-Believe and later as the congenial proprietor of Negri’s Music Shop, demonstrating instruments and playing alongside Wynton Marsalis, Yo-Yo Ma and other musical guests.
“The thing about Joe was that he wasn’t acting,” David Newell, who played Mr. McFeely on the show, said in an interview. “He really was like the friendly fellow you might find walking around a neighborhood. He was just incredibly gentle as a person, but also as a musician.”
After touring with the jazz bandleader Shep Fields as a teenager, Mr. Negri accompanied Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis and other headliners in the 1950s, framing their melodies with rich, effervescent chords. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette arts critic Harold V. Cohen called Mr. Negri a “wizard.”
Impressed by his talent, some Pittsburgh musicians persuaded him to move to New York, the center of the jazz world, where stars like Mr. Bennett wanted him to tour with them. But after arriving with his family in 1959, Mr. Negri realized he had made a mistake.
“Living wasn’t easy in New York,” he told NPR in 2010. “The kids had babysitters. Somebody had to take them to the park to play. The whole scene just kind of turned me off. So we packed up.”
Returning to Pittsburgh, Mr. Negri started a band and eventually became the music director at WTAE, a local television station. There, he worked with Fred Rogers on a short-lived children’s show.
In 1966, Mr. Rogers left WTAE to develop “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood” for the public television station WQED. He hired Mr. Negri to be on the show and later asked him to play a handyman.
“I almost started laughing,” Mr. Negri later recalled. “I said: ‘Fred, you got the wrong guy. I’m not very handy. You know, I can’t do anything. I can’t even put a hammer on a nail.’”
Mr. Rogers was undeterred.
“Don’t worry,” he told his new handyman. “It’s going to be all pretend.”
From the outset, music was central to the show. Mr. Negri sang for the first time in Episode 13, performing “Sometimes People Are Good,” a song written by Mr. Rogers, after the puppet Lady Elaine Fairchilde borrowed a painting without asking.
The lesson is in the lyrics:
Sometimes people are good
And they do just what they should.
But the very same people who are good sometimes
Are the very same people who are bad sometimes.
It’s funny, but it’s true.
It’s the same, isn’t it for me …
Isn’t it the same for you?
At the end of the episode, Mr. Rogers reflected on what Lady Elaine had done. “If you want something, you ask for it,” he said. “And if you can’t have it, then you find something else.”
Bending down to pick up domino blocks from the floor, he added, “I wonder if Lady Elaine knew that.”
Then he, too, sang the song, lingering on the words “for you?”
Joseph Harold Negri was born on June 10, 1926, in Pittsburgh, the son of Italian immigrants. His parents were Michael Negri, a bricklayer, and Rose (Viggiano) Negri.
Growing up in Mount Washington, a working-class neighborhood with a spectacular view of the city’s downtown, his home was filled with music. His father played the banjo. His mother listened to pop songs on the radio.
When he was 3, he started playing the ukulele. By the time he was 5, he was singing on “Uncle Henry’s Radio Rascals,” a local program for child performers. He took up the guitar when he was around 8, taking lessons at Volkwein’s Music, a well-known store in downtown Pittsburgh, where he learned to play solos by the jazz guitarist Eddie Lang.
He had found his chord in life.
“I guess there’s been a mainline for me — the guitar,” he told Vintage Guitar Magazine in 2010. “I call myself a work in progress.”
In 1942, he played his first professional gig, sitting in with a local orchestra. Frank Andrini, a guitarist in Pittsburgh, took note of the performance and connected him with Mr. Fields, the bandleader. Joe dropped out of high school to tour with him.
“He promised my mom and dad I’d be in good hands and he would look after me,” Mr. Negri later recalled. “And he did.”
At 18, in the midst of World War II, he was drafted into the Army and sent to Europe, playing when he could at nightclubs and bars. An officer who saw him perform helped him join a special services unit that entertained soldiers.
After his Army service, Mr. Negri returned to Pittsburgh, studying music at the Carnegie Institute of Technology (now Carnegie Mellon University). His path seemed set — move to New York, play on albums and tour with jazz stars — but the road led back to his hometown.
“I feel that in this town I’ve gotten to do such a variety of things that I could never have done in New York or on the West Coast,” he told The Pittsburgh Press in 1971.
In addition to playing Handyman Negri and running Negri’s Music Shop on “Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood,” Mr. Negri played on several albums, including “Fly Me to the Moon,” the singer and pianist Michael Feinstein’s 2010 collection of standards, and also occasionally played with symphony orchestras.
“He is one of the most magnificent guitarists I’ve ever worked with,” Mr. Feinstein in an interview on WQED-FM, a public radio station in Pittsburgh. “You can mention any tune and he can immediately play it on the guitar. He does this quite amazing, dexterous fingering with songs that is really a unique and a lost art.”
Mr. Negri also taught jazz guitar for many years at the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Carnegie Mellon. For students, it was a thrill.
“Joe never considered himself a big deal, but he was a big deal to our students,” Deane Root, the former chairman of the music department at the University of Pittsburgh, said in an interview. “I would hear some of the students say, ‘Wow, next year I get to study with Handyman Negri.’”
Mr. Negri married Joan Serafini in 1954. She survives him, along with their daughters, Lisa Negri, Laurie Bentz and Gia Leven, and three granddaughters.
Mr. Rogers was fond of saying that he liked people just the way they were. That was especially true of Mr. Negri, with whom he had a natural rapport.
“Music was really Fred’s first love,” Hedda Sharapan, a child development expert and longtime producer of the show, said in an interview. “So naturally, he had this tremendous appreciation for Joe’s musical ability. But Fred also appreciated warmth and kindness and caring and neighborliness. And that’s who Joe was.”
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