Cancer survivor Piscopo to headline New Year's Eve charity event

Joe Piscopo can tell great Chicago stories, and doesn't think there's anything strange about that, even though he's a New Jersey guy through and through.

"I think it's the same work ethic, sweating and working hard on stage and loving every single second," he said Tuesday. "It's the immediacy and the audience. I always say I'm in the blue collar part of show business."

Piscopo, 58, is a thyroid cancer survivor who spends as much time as he can with his three young children.

"If they're happy, I'm happy," he says of the two girls and a boy age 10 and under.

He's pleased to get his charity fee to perform New Year's Eve in Chicago at an event benefiting Kids Fight Cancer. The group, based in Arlington Heights, raises money for the Oncology Activity Center at Children's Memorial Hospital.

Piscopo will sing Sinatra favorites and share the humor fans remember from his years with Saturday Night Live.

When he entered a ballroom Tuesday at Germania Place, where he will perform New Year's Eve, he couldn't resist sitting down at an antique grand piano and improvising.

The New Year's Eve event on Clark Street just south of North Avenue is $150 for drinks and a buffet or $300 for the sit-down dinner, Kids Fight Cancer is hoping to make more than $10,000, said Jim Pesoli, executive director.

His father, also Jim Pesoli, is a four-time cancer survivor. The elder Pesoli started the organization in 1985 when his wife, Susan, gave him a surprise 30th birthday party, and he needed a cause that could use the $5,000 his friends had given him.

"He realized how difficult it was for an adult to go through chemotherapy and radiation, but he couldn't imagine what it would be like for kids to go through it," said his son. The elder Pesolis still live in Arlington Heights.

The Piscopo event was put together by Kendall Lewis, a friend of the younger Pesoli. The Lewis Brothers - sons of Chicago jazz legend Ramsey Lewis - will also perform.

Tickets are at germaniaplace.com or (312) 573-1968, ext. 15.

"My life is a reality show," Piscopo said. "Yesterday I did a morning radio show in New York City and then drove home because I had to sing at my daughter's prekindergarten Christmas party. There I was with a guitar singing 'Rudolph.' And then I get on a plane and I'm out in Chicago."

During one previous promotion in the Windy City he learned that actor Jean-Claude Van Damme was holding a news conference across the street.

He didn't just crash the event. He called up Van Damme and got permission to crash. Then Van Damme one-upped him, executing a neat backward jump onto a booth so the shorter man towered over the 6-foot-plus Piscopo. The photographers loved it, and so did the performers.

He tells about how he met his friend Stan Wozniak, an owner of The Joynt, where Piscopo will perform Dec. 29. He plans to feature in a TV pilot with jazz musicians called "Piscopo After Dark."

The singer was working Las Vegas doing his Sinatra impersonations when Wozniak showed up and said, "I work with Frank, and Mr. Sinatra likes what you do." Piscopo wasn't convinced until the next day when a humidor full of cigars arrived.

He's always working on several projects at once. He is trying to get funding to produce a drama with Queen Latifah called "Bloomfield Avenue," about the Italian, Jewish and African American families who lived in Newark - a retrospective of the 1967 riots and the city's renaissance.

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