Young Man with a Horn

In his blue suit with short pants, his long-sleeved shirt and long white socks, nine-year-old Enrico Tomasso looks like Little Lord Fauntleroy. When he picks up his trumpet, the youngster from Leeds, England, sounds like Louis Armstrong. What he plays is mostly Louis: When It's Sleepy Time Down South, When the Saints Go Marching In. And at the Manhattan nightclub where he has been appearing, customers respond with rare enthusiasm to his strong, clean horn tones. Just in case anyone misses the point, Enrico rolls his eyes occasionally like Satchmo and even pulls out a white handkerchief to mop his forehead.

Tireless Lips. For all the theatrics, Enrico is that rare individual, a genuine musical prodigy-and on an instrument that demands physical maturity above all else. Many a child can scribble music or peck away at the piano. But an accomplished trumpeter needs a strong, well-developed diaphragm to pump a constant, high-pressure stream of breath into his horn. He needs powerful, tireless lips to shape his embouchure (or his "pucker," as Louis Armstrong liked to call it). Enrico has it all.

He has been developing his skills ever since age four, when his father Ernie Tomasso, an experienced clarinetist, started the boy on the piano. "He could play flattened ninth chords before he even knew what they were," says the proud father. A year later Enrico heard Satchmo on records and that was the end of the piano. Recalls Enrico: "Dad bought me a trumpet. Then he brought in a teacher. Most people think you blow ordinary when you blow a trumpet. You don't. You have to put your lips together and make a sound like bluebottle flies buzzing on the window." Breath control exercises came next-"lying on me back with a book on me stomach so I could see me breathing."

Enrico steeped himself in Satchmo's music. In 1968, he even met the great Armstrong, and played the Basin Street Blues for him. "Boy, you got some chops there!" growled the flabbergasted Louis. For two weeks Armstrong had Enrico as his backstage guest, teaching him to shoot craps and offering sporadic worldly advice: "Don't marry any woman who don't dig your horn."

At 7 1/2, Enrico started playing with his musical family professionally. England's child labor laws were-and still area considerable hindrance. "They only allow kids to be in 40 shows a year," explains his father. This spring the family brought Enrico to the New Orleans Jazz Festival and dropped the youngster like a tiny sonic bomb into the midst of America's most famous jazzmen.

After Satchmo. Success there led to an offer to appear on the Dick Cavett Show. That fell through. Enrico's current engagement at Manhattan's Inner Circle came next, as well as a number of tapings for television appearances before the family heads back to England -and school.

Enrico hopes one day to have a band of his own, but for a while intends to go on styling himself after Satchmo. Right now, his father says, he can play high C's easily. As to just how high a note a trumpeter can hope to reach, Enrico is upbeat. "You just keep going," he says. At his age, he has a long time to go.

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