Bazzano was only 5 years old when his father, boss of the Conti crime family (later known as the LaRocca family) was brutally murdered in Brooklyn, most likely on orders of The Commission for the unsanctioned murder of the Volpe brothers. Just when WWII was over Bazzano, Jr. enlisted in the US military in August of 1945, two weeks after his 18th birthday. During the 1950s he was a soldier in the crew of his father-in-law Antonio Ripepi, for whom he ran the numbers rackets in the Monongahela Valley for many years. During the late 1960s Bazzano slowly began to run Ripepi's crew as the aging capo began to withdraw from family activities.