Ronnie Zito

Ronald Zito was born on 17 February 1939 in Utica, New York. He grew up in a musical household: his father played bass in the orchestra of Utica's Stanley Theater, his brother Freddie played in big bands including that of Stan Kenton, and his brother Torrie Zito became an arranger and composer who worked with Tony Bennett. Ronnie started on drums at about the age of ten and at 14 took around a year and a half of formal lessons.

As a teenager of 17 or 18 he landed a house job at the Three Rivers Inn in Syracuse, accompanying touring acts such as the Mills Brothers and the McGuire Sisters. He later credited the bandleader there, Tony Riposo, with teaching him to read music by having him sing a rhythm and then pointing to it on the page.

Bobby Darin invited Zito to tour with him for six weeks, and the job lasted four years. It took in the peak of Mack the Knife on American radio, an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show and the live album Darin at the Copa (1960). In the same period Zito played jazz with the tenor saxophonist J.R. Monterose and in trombonist Frank Rosolino's group, and in 1962 he toured with Peggy Lee.

From 1965 he drummed for Woody Herman's orchestra and made five albums with it, including Woody's Winners and My Kind of Broadway. He later said the Herman records brought him more calls in New York than his years with Darin. He left the band after his marriage in 1965 and became a busy New York studio musician. He played years of jingle sessions for Steve Karmen, including dates with Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald, and recorded with Lionel Hampton, Herb Ellis, Don McLean (Playin' Favorites, 1973), Roberta Flack (Feel Like Makin' Love, 1975), Barry Manilow (This One's for You, 1976, and Even Now, 1978), Cher (Take Me Home, 1979), Irene Cara (Anyone Can See, 1982), Eartha Kitt, Toots Thielemans, Dusko Goykovich and Don Sebesky.

He is the drummer on Manilow's Copacabana (At the Copa), which reached number 8 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1978, and on Frankie Valli's Swearin' to God, a number 6 hit in 1975. He also played several Kennedy Center Honors for music director Elliot Lawrence.

On Broadway he played in Grand Hotel, and from November 1996 he was the drummer for the long-running revival of Chicago, covering drums, percussion and orchestra bells. In the 1990s and after he also played jazz with Jimmy McGriff, Marvin Stamm, Jay D'Amico and Ruby Braff, and in 2022 he headlined a drum summit at the Jazz Loft in Stony Brook, New York.

Zito married in 1965. Woody Herman had a concert with Tony Bennett on the wedding day, so Zito left his own reception to play it, and Bennett introduced his new wife to the audience. He later said he bought his first house with the residuals from his jingle work. Further details of his family life have not been widely published.

Ronnie Zito died on Wednesday 4 November 2026 at the age of 87. His death was reported on 7 November by the Broadway drummer Clayton Craddock in the newsletter Broadway Bound and Beyond, which recalled his long tenure in the pit of Chicago. The cause of death and the place of death were not made public in the first reports, and no funeral arrangements had been widely published.

Zito's drumming can be heard on some of the best-known pop records of the 1970s as well as on classic big band and small group jazz sessions. His nearly three decades in the orchestra of Chicago made him one of the longest-serving musicians on Broadway. A 2022 oral history interview with him, recorded by Monk Rowe and Rick Montalbano, is held by the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College.