4 • COMMUNITY ADVOCATE • Friday, November 27, 2020
COMMUNITY | News
Let the good times roll Tony Soul Project’s frontman strives to perform until he’s 80 M A R L BO RO UGH – By Ed Karvoski Jr., Contributing Writer
D
uring the same time period when some workers consider retiring to get rest and relaxation, Tony “Soul” Parente of Marlborough relaunched his professional singing career at age 64 in 2011.
Parente adopted the stage name Tony Soul when he began his first singing stint as a teenager. After a lengthy hiatus, he returned to performing and ultimately formed the Tony Soul Project. He plans to continue singing into the foreseeable future. “I want to keep this up until I’m at least 80 years old,” he declared. “Right now, I’m in the best shape of my life.” A Milford native, raised in Framingham, Parente first heard soul music in his early
teens on WILD-AM when the radio station was devoted to airing rhythm and blues, and its subgenres. “The vocals, the style and down-home dialect of this music that these guys were singing fascinated me,” Parente recalled. The teenage Parente worked an after-school job and hitchhiked from Framingham to Boston to buy 45-RMP records. He shopped at the now-closed Big John’s Oldies but Goodies Tony Soul | 7
Above: Tony “Soul” Parente Right: The Tony Soul Project: (l to r) guitarist Mike Kalenderian, saxophonist Marcus Washington, vocalist Tony “Soul” Parente, drummer James Thomas, bassist Henry James and slide guitarist Danny Clark.
PHOTO/SHERRY MARIE PARENTE & EFFECTS/BUBBA SQUATCH
