al viola...

 Alfred "Al" Viola (June 16, 1919 – February 21, 2007) was a jazz guitarist who worked with Frank Sinatra for 25 years. He played the mandolin on the soundtrack of the film The Godfather.

Viola grew up in an Italian family in Brooklyn and learned to play the guitar and mandolin as a teenager. He enlisted in the Army during World War II from 1942 to 1945 and played in an Army jazz band. After he was discharged in 1946, he and Page Cavanaugh, whom he had met while serving in the Army, formed a trio with bassist Lloyd Pratt. The band appeared in several films, including Romance on the High Seas with Doris Day, and played a few dates in 1946 and 1947 with Frank Sinatra. Viola continued to work with Sinatra regularly, accompanying him on several hundred studio recordings and concert dates between 1956 and 1980.

A reliable guitarist with a cool tone, a hard-swinging style, and strong technical skills, Al Viola had been an asset to every session that he appeared on, and there have been many. Viola was a session musician in Los Angeles, performing in films, television and in commercials. His mandolin playing can be heard on the soundtrack of The Godfather. Other credits include West Side Story and Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?. He continued playing jazz as well, with Bobby Troup, Ray Anthony, Harry James, Buddy Collette, Stan Kenton, Gerald Wilson and Terry Gibbs.

He also worked as a session musician on over 500 albums, including releases by Jimmy Witherspoon, Helen Humes, June Christy, Natalie Cole, Neil Diamond, Ella Fitzgerald, Marvin Gaye, Steve Lawrence, Julie London, Anita O'Day, Nelson Riddle, Linda Ronstadt and Joe Williams. Viola and Cavanaugh reunited in the 1980s with Phil Mallory and continued to play regularly in Los Angeles until the late 1990s.

Viola took up the classical guitar in the late 1940's and in the next three decades made the solo guitar recordings for which he was best known; Solo Guitar, Guitar Lament and Alone Again. The solo recordings showed the remarkable versatility and musicianship of Al Viola. And, when taken in the total context of 50 plus years of music making, they completed the picture of a musician who was an early pioneer of the electric guitar, was able to swing with the best of them, check out his comping on Riviera from the 1958 Flute In Hi-Fi, provided backup for the best singers of the day, and could stay in the background providing solid rhythm for other soloists.

Viola died of cancer in 2007 at the age of 87.