Still spinning records

Jack Ninivaggi got his start in music over 40 years ago at the present site of a picnic grove near the Fairview/North Bergen border.
The property on 95th Street was once the Orchard Grove Bar, and a hall for hire, which his father and uncle owned.
“I was still in grammar school,” Ninivaggi said at his childhood home on Durham Avenue, where he still lives.
“So now, my father books these parties there, and now he’s telling people, ‘Oh, my son, he plays music.’ So he started booking me for little parties in the hall at 13, 14 years old.”
From that point on, Ninivaggi – who sings, and DJ’s, and used to play the drums — began making money performing as a disc jockey, and never looked back.
Even with the music industry changing rapidly, he manages to get gigs, including singing for local seniors.

Deejaying today

Today, Ninivaggi runs Accent Music Makers, his own DJ service based in North Bergen. He DJs 95 percent of the company’s bookings, but also sends out freelance DJs. Much of his work today comes from private weddings, though he also does performances at bars and restaurants in the area, such as the Picco Tavern in Hackensack and the now-shuttered Antonia’s By The Park restaurant in North Bergen.
Ninivaggi is also a singer, performing multiple times per week for North Bergen seniors at North Bergen Housing Authority buildings. And while he no longer DJs full time (working in the food preparation business as well), his passion for turntables started with a musical relic in his dad’s bar, decades ago.
“He always had the jukebox playing and I was always glued to the jukebox and playing,” Ninivaggi said. “My father would give me money to put in. When the records came off, and the guy came to service the jukebox, he would pull all the old records off—45s–and he would give them to my father. That’s what they did back then. They would give them to the merchant to keep.”
Ninivaggi’s father took the vintage vinyls home to keep. As a result, “by the time I was 10 years old, I had hundreds of 45s already.”
As he grew older, Ninivaggi would take the bus to stores in West New York like Jock Em’s and Music Scene to buy records. Then the disco era hit, spearheaded by Saturday Night Fever. Acts like The Bee Gees, Diana Ross, and their 12-inch singles became all the rage.
“When I had enough money, I had really junky home equipment in the beginning,” Ninivaggi said. But in the early ’80s, he bought Radio Shack turntables, which “were still junky, but better than what I was using.”
He regularly spun dance acts such as Sylvester, Miquel Brown, and France Joli, developing a strong passion for the genre. He hadn’t delved into DJ’ing full time by then, mainly performing on the drums for bands in various clubs in Hoboken and North Hudson.

House parties

But all that changed in 1982 when Ninivaggi left the drums behind and decided to become a professional DJ, working house parties throughout West New York and Union City, and in VFW halls and people’s basements. That was when the money was great, he said. He also began doing birthday parties and Christmas parties, but never clubs at this time. “I never worked clubs,” he said. “I wasn’t a club DJ.”
In 1984, he launched Jack’s Entertainment, before later renaming it Accent Music Makers, so it would show up earlier in the phone book.
“I never had a huge company with a staff,” he said. “I networked with other DJs. So if I had extra parties I couldn’t do, I would book friends in the business that were good, and sub them out on those parties. But mostly, I did all my own parties.”
He performed in local pubs such as The Loft in North Bergen. He later earned a steady gig at The Green Kitchen in Guttenberg’s Galaxy Towers.
In 1997, Ninivaggi got involved in karaoke at North Bergen’s Boulevard Diner. “Within six months, I was working seven nights a week at different bars, just doing karaoke,” he said.

Deejaying today

But though Ninivaggi was able to make great money as an entertainer, he says that today’s atmosphere makes it nearly impossible to make money as a DJ.
Back then, “there weren’t as many guys, and equipment was priced different,” he said. “Anybody can deejay now with MP3s, a computer and cheap speakers. Back then you had to buy stuff.”
“I started out like 250-300 a night for a four hour party—private parties,” he said. “A lot of guys aren’t getting that much now, because the market is so saturated, guys are working really cheap, and it’s hard for guys like us, who were making really good money 15-20 years ago.”
“I see guys going out with a computer and a hard drive, and DJ’ing—to me it’s not DJ’ing, it’s just using a computer,” said Frank Ferraro, a fellow DJ who has been friends with Ninivaggi since the late ’60s and has performed in a band with him before.
Though he still deejays, Ferraro works full-time fixing electronics, finding it more financially steady.
But even with the changes they’ve seen in the DJ world, both men still love mixing tunes.
“It helps keep your sanity,” Ferraro said. “It keeps from depression. It’s mediation, too.”
“It makes me happy,” Ninivaggi said. “Nothing beats the feeling of when you’re DJ’ing and you have a packed dance floor and everybody’s having a good time. Because you’re doing it. You’re responsible.”

Hannington Dia can be reached at hd@hudsonreporter.com