Peter Lemongello returns to Long Island, sharing concert stage with son

Before streaming services, before the iPod, before songs were downloadable or digitizable, there was basically one way to get music: Go to a record store and buy it.

And then came Peter Lemongello.

If you remember the name, you surely remember the television commercial that made him famous. It first aired in January 1976, and featured a handsome young man in an open-necked suit crooning into a slender microphone. At the end, viewers were encouraged to send a check for $6.98 for the LP and $8.98 for the 8-track to a P.O. Box in Manhattan, to receive a copy of Lemongello’s double album, "Love ’76."

Amazingly, they did — and today Lemongello claims to be the first artist to sell a million albums exclusively through television.

Nearly 50 years later, Lemongello is back in the spotlight. He’s set to perform as the supporting act for his son, Peter Lemongello Jr., on Saturday at the Bayway Arts Center in East Islip. The two promise an evening of the father’s best-known tunes — including his signature song "Do I Love You" — plus the son’s covers of classics by Frankie Valli, Jackie Wilson and others, all backed by a 10-piece orchestra. The younger Lemongello, 25, has a signature song, too: The Four Tops’ "I Can’t Help Myself," which he performed on his "American Idol" audition in 2019.

Saturday's show will be a full-circle moment for Lemongello, 78, who launched his famous television campaign while living not far from the Bayway in Islip. As the singer tells it, he raised money from acquaintances to purchase the airtime and rented a Manhattan studio to shoot the commercial. He describes the album’s material as "love songs set to a disco beat" — or, as he called it then, "mood rock."

Within weeks of the ad’s airing, Lemongello was a celebrity. "I come home at night and it’d be 14, 15 cars in front of my door and girls waiting to get a glimpse of me," he says. Talk show appearances on the Johnny Carson, Merv Griffin, Dinah Shore and Mike Douglas shows followed. There was even a parody on "Saturday Night Live" featuring Chevy Chase as a lounge singer named Peter Lemon Mood Ring.

"Let me just tell you," Lemongello says in a phone interview of the spoof, "after being ignored for almost eight years, everything was flattery."

The peak fame was short. Lemongello released a follow-up album, "Do I Love You," that fell short of expectations. The following decade was even worse. While working as a homebuilder in Florida, Lemongello pleaded guilty to bankruptcy fraud and lying on Florida bank loan applications. He served nearly 17 months in prison and was released in January 1987.

"I regret what I did," Lemongello says today, adding, "I paid my debt, and there’s never been another incident since."

A move to Boca Raton, Florida, in 1993 led to another full-circle moment: There, Lemongello says, he bumped into Karen Palladino, a former neighbor from Islip. "Two months later we were married and we’ve been happy ever since."

Their son, Peter Jr., seems to have inherited his father’s penchant for the music of yesteryear. "I love songs with great lyrical content and a story with a message," he says, "where you can understand the lyrics."

Lemongello senior says he has been retired since 2017 but couldn’t resist another opportunity to play on Long Island. "There’s no tour planned or anything, it’s just this," he says of the show. "Unless, you know, Hollywood calls and wants a movie."
 

By Rafer Guzmán

rafer.guzman@newsday.com