Joe Negri dies at 99: Actor and musician known for playing handyman on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood passes away

Joe Negri, the actor and musician who delighted children for more than three decades on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, has died at 99.

Negri died Saturday, just days before he would have turned 100 on June 10, according to TribLive.

His oldest daughter, Lisa Negri, confirmed to the publication that he died of natural causes, though his exact cause of death has not yet been revealed.

Negri, who appeared on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood as Handyman Negri, is credited with appearing on 331 episodes of the show from the year of its debut, 1968, to the end of its run in 2001.

He was an accomplished jazz guitarist, and he managed to integrate his real-life talents into his appearances on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, where he was known as Handyman Negri.

On the side, he ran Negri’s Music Shop, where he would hold guitar performances for Rogers and his viewers.

In addition to teaching the joys of music to children on television, Negri boasted numerous students as a longtime adjunct professor at the University of Pittsburgh, Duquesne University and Carnegie Mellon University.

Negri was well into his 90s when he finally retired from Duquesne University, where he founded its jazz guitar program, in 2022.

He had retired from the University of Pittsburgh three years earlier, nearly five decades after he began working as a professor.

Deane Root, professor emeritus at Pitt and the former chair of the university’s music department during Negri’s tenure, told TribLive that the late actor and guitarist ‘radiates life as an art form.

‘He crosses generations, and he brings out the best in the musicians he plays with,’ Root said of Negri.

Negri’s devotion to musical education appears to have given him a special affinity for children’s television that began nearly a decade before he began appearing on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood when he appeared on the Pittsburgh-based series Adventure Time in 1959. 

Negri had also performed with the jazz pianist Johnny Costa in 1954 on the Pittsburgh-based series 67 Melody Lane, which was hosted by the organist Ken Griffin.

His performance history reportedly stretched all the way back to when he was three, when Negri began singing and playing ukulele on the radio.

In the 1940’s, the guitarist was featured in Shep Fields’s big band, his Rippling Rhythm Orchestra, before a two-year stint in the Army from 1943 to ’44. 

Negri reportedly solidified his musical skills by enrolling at Carnegie Mellon University – where he would later return to teach – in the 1950s. 

During that time, he regularly performed in ensembles with his brother, the pianist Bobby Negri, and Costa, whom he played with on Pittsburgh’s KDKA.

At the start of the 1960s, Negri moved from the CBS affiliate to Pittsburgh ABC station, WTAE, where he served as music director for more than 20 years. 

The performer released multiple recordings as a leader going back to the 1960s, though he was particularly prolific in the late ’90s and 2000s.

One of his final albums, 2010’s Fly Me To The Moon, was a collaboration with the standards singer and revivalist Michael Feinstein.