Duane Rizzo
Duane was born into a large, musical, Italian Christian family in Buffalo, NY. His grandfather, a lay preacher with the Christian Church of North America, preached and played the harmonica and expected his nine children to be in church and be involved in the music. Duane's Mom, the oldest of the nine, took two years of piano and started playing for services soon thereafter. As children, they were in church whenever the doors were open and Duane's mom had him singing in church at two years old, He has a picture to prove it! Until he was five, all the services at his church were in Italian including the hymns. They started singing in English in the 60’s. Duane's earliest exposure to Southern Gospel was in his early teens when one of the local churches held an annual New Years Eve all night service, where they would bring in many of the popular groups of the day. These included The Prophets, Blue Ridge and Keystones. The Keystones ended up moving their headquarters to Buffalo in the mid 60's. Duane really fell in love with Southern Gospel while getting to help the Keystones with their equipment for a couple years while in high school. He knew he wanted to be a Gospel singer then. Duane started working in restaurants in 1967 and enlisted as a cook in the New York Army National Guard in 1970 where he served until 1977 and transferred to the U.S. Army Reserve as a Food Service Instructor (yes he taught people how to cook) where he served until 1998 when he retired as a Chief Warrant Officer 3. In civilian life, Duane was hired by the Buffalo Police Department in 1973 as a civilian fingerprint tech and was sworn in as a Police Officer in 1980. He served as a Patrol Officer and K9 Handler until his promotion to Lieutenant in 1989. Duane served as a Patrol Lieutenant and Public Information Officer until his retirement in 2000. Duane moved to Mooresville, NC after his retirement and started looking for a Gospel group to sing with. Apparently it wasn’t God’s time and he ended up playing tuba in a 60 piece Lake Norman Orchestra, singing with The Lake Norman Big Band and the Vocal News Barbershop Quartet. It was at a luncheon concert that Vocal News sang at that Duane met Big Jim Stewart who owned the Pine Ridge Boys. They struck up a conversation and Duane told him if he ever needed anyone to fill in that he would rather sing Gospel than Barbershop. Well, it was God’s time because their Lead singer hadjust submitted his resignation. Duane spent the next 8 ½ years on the road with them living his dream. When Duane hit 65 he decided his days on the road, more than 200 dates a year, were over and he really retired and moved to Hudson, FL in 2017. Duane lives there with his lovely wife Sally. Between them, they have four sons and two daughters in law. God has been good to us!!
