If you grew up in the "50s you probably have a very warm spot in your heart and fond memories of entertainers of that generation. And nowhere can you see more of them than in Las Vegas. For instance, from April 11-13 Frankie Avalon will perform at the Suncoast in Las Vegas. I talked to Avalon this past week about his career.

Born in South Philadelphia, he started out as a trumpet player at a very early age and actually appeared on The Honeymooners with Jackie Gleason and on the Jackie Gleason Show. It all happened, he said, "... because of a house party that was thrown in my neighborhood for singer Al Martino, who was a big star and from the same neighborhood. I was 12 and a brazen kid who thought I could play this horn, so I knocked on the door and the owner of the house invited me in. Everybody was eating and drinking, and he said, "Go ahead, play.' Al said, "Who is this kid? He's really good. Let's take him

to New York and I'll take him to my agency,' which he did. "His agency handled Jackie Gleason and when they heard me play, one of them said, "Gleason loves the trumpet. Let's take him to his penthouse. He's having a meeting with the director and writers. We walked in; I took out my horn and started to play. Gleason said, "Write a show and put him in it.'"

A few years later, Avalon joined a band called Rocco and the Saints where he met Bobby Rydell. "That's when I made the transition to singer. They hired me as a trumpet player, but they started getting requests asking if I could sing." From there, a record company signed them to a contract. "I sang one side, the band did the other side, and that was start of my career."

He had a string of hits before the music changed and his career stalled. But Warner Brothers had taken notice of the young singer when he received 12,000 to 15,000 fan letters a week. "The producer of my first film was none other than Aaron Spelling," Avalon recalls. "He hired me to do a picture for Warner with Alan Ladd. From there, I did The Alamo with John Wayne."

He says he enjoyed working with John Wayne. "I spent a lot of time with him when we did The Alamo in a little town in Texas for five months. Got to know him pretty well. On our days off we'd have dinner together, play a little cards. He was a great guy and a wonderful mentor to me. He gave me a lot of advice on a lot of things, not just the film business." Then came the Beach Party movies with co-star Annette Funicello. "We did the first one, Beach Party, in January 1963 and it was an instant hit. So we went right back to the studio to do the second one, then the third one and on and on. When you talk about sequels, we did seven."

Today, he works "as much as I want which is really good because I do want to work and I still have a following who want to be entertained by the old-timers, so to speak." Married since 1963, Avalon and his wife, Kay, who make their home in Malibu, California, have eight kids and 10 grandchildren. As for his marriage of 45 years, Avalon says the secret is that "you respect and love one another. You have the great times, which are the majority, and the lousy times that you go through and you hang in there and remember the good times, because you'll have them again."

He is also an entrepreneur. "I've continued doing a lot of things throughout my career. One is a health and cosmetics product line that I started about 17 years ago and we've had a great response over the years. And I just started a T-shirt company called Hollywood Surf Legends, so I'm always doing something." You can check out all of Avalon's products by going to www.frankieavalon.com.