By William Kaempffer, Register Staff 08/15/2008
NEW HAVEN — Reggie Blakey, in one regard, has been a bad influence in the firehouse, at least among his tone-deaf colleagues.
“A few of the guys on the shift who can’t sing, now just continue to sing, because they want to be like him,” said Michael Pozika, a lieutenant on the first division at Central Station on Grand Avenue.
Indeed, when the 28-year-old firefighter isn’t responding to alarms and dispensing medical care, Blakey sings: In the firehouse, occasionally at the Bushnell Center for the Performing Arts in Hartford, and in churches.
And next week, the representative from New Haven’s finest will be in East Rutherford, N.J., to audition for the eighth season of “American Idol.”
He will sing “Superstar” by the late Luther Vandross.
His co-workers already have agreed to pick up firehouse shifts for him Tuesday when the auditions take place, and he has optimistically laid plans to have more covered in case he is chosen to go to Los Angeles.
“I’m hoping that I make it. I feel I have the talent to make it,” the Blakey said at fire headquarters. “I have talked to my co-workers who plan on having people working days for me while I’m out there. I’m trying to get things together just in case I do make it to Hollywood.”
Blakey, a father of two, grew up in the tough Church Street South housing complex, known by some as Cinder Block City. He’s the oldest of three children.
The best he can recollect, he started singing when he was about 9, and first sang in public at his fifth-grade graduation. He’s a rhythm and blues, gospel and soul type of guy.
For years, Blakey said, he considered auditioning for “Idol,” but “brushed it aside,” especially after getting onto the Fire Department with its sometimes rigid schedule.
A short piece about the New York auditions in the New York Post changed that. Pozika noticed the article at the back of the paper and brought it to Blakey, who seemed interested.
It’s his last year of eligibility for the show. Twenty-eight is the age cut off.
In the firehouses, there’s been some playful razzing from some other firefighters, a sometimes brutal bunch. In fact, when a reporter called Central Station to talk with Blakey, he and his co-workers suspected it was a prank by notorious chops-breaking firefighters Pat Cannon and Richie Greene.
Pozika and his crew came back from an alarm and Blakey mentioned the reporter’s call.
“I said, ‘This has their handwriting all over it,’” Pozika said.
Blakey isn’t the only New Haven firefighter with unexpected talents. Not to be undone by his singing colleague, Firefighter Jaime Polite pointed out he had a small role in Denzel Washington’s “American Gangster” in a funeral scene.
He’s also made several appearances on “Law and Order” as a security guard, a construction worker and a cop. At this point, he said, he’s is eligible to join the Screen Actors Guild, the union for performers.
“It’s really about the look,” said the tall and slim firefighter. “You never know when you’ll be discovered,” so he regularly travels to New York looking for roles, which as a non-union actor isn’t particularly lucrative. “When you come from Connecticut to New York, they look at you like, ‘You came this far to make $100?’”
Blakey, meanwhile, is battling nerves. The largest crowd he’s ever performed before is a few hundred and “American Idol” reaches millions of viewers.
But Pozika figures Blakey’s time at Central Station under the command of Capt. Michael McNamara will prepare him for anything the show can dish out.
McNamara, who recently retired, was a good boss, but known for being strict and by-the-book, the lieutenant said.
“Reggie can face anything. If he can put up with Captain McNamara, he can put up with Simon Cowell,” he said.
©New Haven Register 2008
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