It doesn’t seem possible, but I’m about to begin my 38th year of writing this column. It all started when I was elected to the Local 802 Executive Board in December, 1982, as part of the ticket headed by John

Steve Herberman gave me this story from guitarist Mundell Lowe about playing with Charlie Parker: “Bird called me in 1950 to do this concert with him up in Harlem,” remembered Mundell. “We played ‘Just Friends,’ and he played the first

The late John Amoroso was a fine trumpet player and a great entertainer, both on and off the bandstand. He had a lot of schtick with which he entertained his audiences and his bandmates. And he often called his friends

I inherited my musical ear from my mother, a pianist and soprano who loved light classical music. She started teaching me songs while I was just learning to walk, and she always encouraged my interest in music even though she

My old friend and songwriter Margo Guryan posted this  memory on Facebook: “I was once flying home from Boston, feeling sad. All my high school friends were busy marrying each other, and I felt there was nothing for me in

Anne Phillips, Bob Kindred and Dave and Iola Brubeck wrote the jazz opera called “Bending Towards the Light…A Jazz Nativity” that has been produced every Christmas season since 1985 in New York and in many other cities. Many famous musicians

In my early years in New York City, I lived for a while in a basement apartment on West 10th Street with the singer Dave Lambert. He had broken up with his wife, who had found an apartment on 12th

When I was a kid, I had four musical instruments that every other kid I knew also had. I had a harmonica, a kazoo, a jaw harp…and a humanatone. The humanatone was a nose whistle. Cleverly folded out of a

Vinnie Burke was a wonderful bass player who was on the New York jazz scene when I first came here. I heard him at sessions when I was learning to play, and he sometimes let me sit in on his

Gil Evans developed his composing and arranging chops back in the late 1940s writing for the Claude Thornhill band. I’ve always loved an instrumental arrangement he did for Claude of a ballad by John Benson Brooks called “The Happy Stranger.”

I met Teddy Wilson when I joined the Benny Goodman band in 1962 for a tour of the Soviet Union, with a warm-up week beforehand at the Seattle World’s Fair. During that first week, Benny decided he needed a more

I usually have my car radio set to one of the two jazz radio stations in the New York City area. The music seems ageless, but the disc jockeys seem to be getting younger and younger. I suppose some of

Many years ago, Lou Caputo and the late Joel Perry were playing a wedding in Arizona on a horse ranch. During the cocktail hour the waitress kept coming over to them and offering them drinks of what she called “cactus

When I was a boy, our family made a trip every summer from our home near Seattle to Othello, Washington, my birthplace and the home of my maternal grandparents. In the Seattle railroad station for the Milwaukee Road there was

The British tenor man and club owner Ronnie Scott once told about his attempt to teach himself to play the guitar. He would get home from his club at about 3 a.m. and would begin playing a little exercise over

My old friend, songwriter Margo Guryan, attended a party at Neil Diamond’s house. Three large tables were set up for the guests. At Margo’s table, Bob Dylan was seated to her right, and her husband David to her left. When

While I was a member of Local 802’s Executive Board I got to know Shorty Vest, the late secretary/treasurer of AFM Local 70-558 (Omaha) on one of his many trips to New York. Shorty had been a drummer around the

I recently heard a clip on YouTube of Yo-Yo Ma playing Saint-Saens’ “The Swan,” very beautifully. It took me back to the record player that was in our house when I was a child, an Edison cylinder machine that you

I met Derek Smith when he first moved from London to New York City. Before there were Playboy clubs, there was an outfit called the Cliff Dwellers that ran open parties for young singles in a location on 5th Avenue

Dave McKenna (1930-2008) was a one-of-a-kind piano player. He often denied that he was a jazz player, even though he was steeped in the music. “I’m a song player,” he would say, and he certainly played all the wonderful songs

In a jazz cruise I once played, I was able to take my wife, Aileen. She already knew some of the musicians, like Clark Terry, Joe Cohn and Milt Hinton. She soon became friends with many of the others, and

When Robert Lindner got a call in 1990 from the Steven Scott office to play at John Gotti Jr.’s wedding at the Helmsley Palace, he was originally booked to play cocktail piano music at 7 p.m. in a separate room

Where the New York University Law Center now stands on Washington Square South, there used to be a joint called the Open Door. It was just a neighborhood bar, but it had a small bandstand on which various jazz groups

Phil Woods spent his last years suffering with emphysema, but he still managed to play the saxophone with his customary brilliance. When it finally got too tough for him, he ended his career with style. He played one last concert,

After reading my note about the Nut Club in a recent Band Room column, Phil Woods sent me this note: “I worked the Nut Club after Juilliard in the early 50’s, with Nick Stabulas (leader), George Syran (piano) and Jon

I sometimes play at a jazz spot in Greenwich Village called The Garage. When I first came to New York in 1945 that space was called The Village Nut Club, and it featured comedy bands. Sometime in the 1950s the

Karl Kraber sent me an excerpt from Nicolas Slonimsky’s book “Perfect Pitch,” which listed some of the remarkable expressions of conductor Eugene Ormandy. Back in 1987 in this column, I printed a collection of Ormandy-isms that had been sent to

On Facebook, Roberta Gambarini posted a very nice tribute to the late James Moody. It reminded me of an encounter I once had with him. One winter night I was walking up 54th Street nursing a cold. As I walked

Back in the 1950s, when I was with Gerry Mulligan’s quartet, we played a week at the Village Gate opposite Dizzy Gillespie’s quintet. Woody Allen was the comedian on the bill, just starting his career as a standup. When Woody

Bassist Ken Rizzo often did travel dates with Julie Budd during the late 90s, usually with Kenny Hassler on drums and Art Weiss on keyboard. He took an offer to fly to Cleveland, hoping to visit the newly opened Rock

When I first moved to New York in 1950, Local 802 was located on Sixth Ave. in the West 50s. We had two floors of a building: one for offices and one for the “exchange floor,” which was a large

In March 20, which would have been Marian McPartland’s 96th birthday, a program of remembrance and celebration of her life and career in jazz was presented by the 92nd Street Y and South Carolina ETV Radio, the co-producer of Piano

A few years ago, Howard Danziger had a solo piano gig in the lobby of the Grand Hyatt Hotel on 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue. The hours were 6:30 a.m. to 9:30 a.m., a “power breakfast” session. The piano was

The jazz world lost master guitarist Jim Hall in December, and it struck close to home for me. I had a deep connection with Jim both musically and personally, and I’m overwhelmed by the loss. We met when he came

Linda Novis sent me this story that was told to her by her late father, Frank Pomerantz, who worked in New York advertising for over forty years. A colleague, Ken Silverbush at Hi-Fi Stereo magazine, told him that one day

When Local 802 bought its own building in 1992, there was a rubble-strewn vacant lot adjoining it to the east that ran through to 47th Street. The property belonged to the Salvation Army, which eventually used the 47th Street end

Erroll Garner used to carry a New York City phone book with him on his concert tours. If he found the piano bench wasn’t adjustable, he would use the phone book to raise himself up to the height he liked.

William Zinn told me that, while he was concertmaster of the Queens Symphony, they played the Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto #3 in D minor with Van Cliburn as soloist. At the dress rehearsal, the conductor wasn’t setting the tempo that Cliburn

Jim Young in Baltimore posted this one on the Web: For anyone who thinks Thelonious Monk was unable to play any style but his own, Leslie Gourse relates this story in her 1997 biography of Monk, “Straight No Chaser”: “Unknown

Louise Sims has an unusual wood carving on her living room wall. She told me that Zoot had carved it from an interesting piece of wood he found. He brought the piece of wood home, saying, "I think I see

Wil Greenstreet sent me a snippet from an interview with Shelly Manne:
 “I did a date with Jimmy Bowen… the song was ‘Fever.’ I had never worked with Jim, but I had made the original record of ‘Fever’ with Peggy

The recent passing of Hugo Fiorato, former conductor of the New York City Ballet Orchestra, reminded Jay Blumenthal of the following story. One of the things Hugo found particularly irksome was when orchestra musicians continuously looked down at their music,

Joe Hanchrow keeps his string bass, bass guitar and tuba in gig bags in his laundry room. That is also where he keeps crunchy dog food, in a bag enclosed in a garbage can. One day he unzipped his string

An internet friend, Colin, sent me a story he heard from the British jazz tenorman and clubowner Ronnie Scott: “I tried teaching myself to play guitar at one time. I’d get home about 3 a.m. and start playing my little

Abby Mayer sent me a story she got from Arthur Goldstein. When Arthur was playing a Broadway show, one of the trumpet players realized just before curtain time that he had left his mute in his locker. He rushed out

When Zoot Sims passed away in 1985, his widow, Louise, said that instead of a funeral, Zoot had asked that his friends throw a big party for him. With the help of many friends, she did, and those parties turned

William Zinn sent me a musical story from his youth. When he was 15 years old, living with his parents in the Bronx, they were visited by Zinn’s uncle, the timpanist of the Cleveland Symphony, Harry Miller. Their three-bedroom apartment

Ed Berger posted on the internet a part of an interview he did with trumpeter Joe Wilder. They were talking about his travels through the South with Lucky Millinder’s band, which was integrated at the time. Joe said, “One time,

Billy Triglia, 86, passed away on Feb. 3, closing a lovely chapter in my life. He was a jazz pianist born in the Bronx, who lived most of his life in Bergen County, New Jersey. I met him soon after

A few years back in this column I wrote about the trombone case telephone that a stagehand rigged up for Merv Gold. It was in the days before cell phones. Merv had a button under his case handle that would

Here’s an e-mail I got from Paquito D’Rivera: I met the great African-American soprano Martina Arroyo during a celebration of the Jazz Masters’ National Organization in New York. They had placed chairs on one side of the Marriott Marquis Grand

Herb Gardner passed along a story he got from the late Arvell Shaw, who was Louis Armstrong’s bass player for many, many years. Arvell told Herb that the first tune of the night on Louis’s concerts was always “Back Home

It was an unhappy day when we said goodbye to Hank Jones, who passed away on May 16 at the age of 91. He was one of the most wonderful jazz pianists to ever grace this city. I had been

As I was slipping one of my favorite Zoot Sims records into my CD player recently, it struck me that he’s been gone 25 years now! How can that be? His music is still so potently with us, and the

While I was shopping at the Apple/Macintosh store in the Palisades Center Mall last December, the computer maven that I was chatting with told me about a recent theft. Someone had made off with four of the iPhones that were

In 1980, while I was playing a production of “Man of La Mancha” at a dinner theater in Nanuet, I had to take a week off for some minor surgery, and got Steve Johns to sub for me. At the

Richard Beeson, whose book, “Seduction of a Wanton Dreamer” was published this year, sent me a remembrance from his student days in Aspen, Colorado. At a restaurant called “Trader Ed’s,” clarinetist Joe Marsala, who had retired to Aspen, put a

Marlene Verplanck sent me a nice interview with her late husband Billy that had been published in the Jersey Jazz Society’s monthly newsletter. Telling of his days as a big band trombone player, Billy described his time on the Jimmy

I don’t often tell stories on myself, but this one is really stupid. In April I spent several hours in the studio at station WBGO-FM in Newark, recording a Benny Goodman birthday broadcast with a nice group put together by

While chatting on the phone recently, Frank Tate and I were remembering the late, great Dave McKenna, who spent most of his career playing solo piano. Dave sometimes denied being a jazz musician. “I’m a song player,” he would say.

Thom Pastor, who is the secretary-treasurer of AFM Local 369 (Las Vegas), spent some time in the late 1970’s and early 1980’s playing lead alto on Si Zentner’s band. One New Year’s Eve they were playing at the Sahara. A

When Larry Benz found out about the cabin that my wife and I have on Martha’s Vineyard, he sent me this story:  “I grew up there, in Vineyard Haven, two houses down from the Episcopal church. In the 1950’s, Lennie

In the early 1970’s, Bill Zinn’s Ragtime String Quartet booked a media concert held at O. Henry’s Steak House in Greenwich Village. Dick Hyman was to be their special guest, but when he arrived, they discovered that there was no

Dan Barrett lives in California now, but when he was around New York he occasionally played at the Cornerstone, in Metuchen, NJ. One night there, a guy cornered him between sets, bought him a drink, and said, “I’ve been watching

While we were getting ready for a concert at St. Peter’s church with Lou Caputo’s Not So Big Band, guitarist Jeff Tillman told me about a jazz concert he once played with Harold Lieberman when Harold was the music director

I played a school concert with Art Baron’s quartet at Lincoln Center recently. Jackie Williams was the drummer, and Richard Wyands was the pianist. Art did a nice job of getting a roomful of elementary school kids to participate in

Len Dobbin, up in Montreal, told me about one of the last record dates Pepper Adams did before he passed away. The date was with the Denny Christianson big band, at Montreal’s old Victor studios. Pepper, already suffering from terminal

For a couple of years around the turn of the last century, I played with a bebop trio in the restaurant portion of a club called Scores, on East 60th Street. Their main feature was a showroom filled with dozens

William Zinn sent me another story about Boris Malina: After the guests had a sumptuous chicken dinner at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills one evening, the band played a 10 p.m. show. When they were finished, Zinn and four

George Avakian told me about a European tour made by his wife Anahid Ajemian and her sister Maro. Ernest Krenek had written a double concerto for them and they were driving from Paris to Baden Baden for the premier performance.

Doug Ramsey posted on his blog “Rifftides” this excerpt from André Previn’s biography “No Minor Chords,” which is now unfortunately out of print. Previn wrote: Cole Porter was the most elegant of creatures, his manners as courtly as his dress.

Eddie Caine, one of the founders of the New York Saxophone Quartet, now lives in North Miami Beach. Eddie has been writing the story of his life, and he recently sent me his manuscript. One of the stories he tells

Ken Arzberger sent me this memory of the late contractor Boris Malina: Boris was a character straight out of the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. He was a huge man, and when he spoke he sounded like Boris Baddinoff on steroids.

From John Altman in London: Chris Laurence, the great classical and jazz bassist, comes from a distinguished musical family, the Goossens. His grandmother and great aunt were both preeminent harpists who only retired when they were in their late 90’s.

When record producer George Avakian assisted the New Orleans Jazz Club in producing the first New Orleans Jazz Festival in October 1955, where he made the world’s first recordings at a jazz festival for Columbia Records, he was ceremoniously given

This story has been hopping around the Internet lately: While Si Zentner’s band was doing one-nighters in the 1960’s, they played a rural bar in southern Virginia made from an old Quonset hut. It was a real rathole, but many

Dave Frishberg wrote the liner notes for a Verve reissue of a record called “You ‘n’ Me” by the Al Cohn-Zoot Sims Quintet, a band he used to play piano with. In those notes he told this story: One night

In the back of the Local 802 directory is a list of instruments, in which you will find William Zinn listed as the only member who plays the “Octahorn.” I often have wondered what one was. Zinn explains: “It is

For several years I had a cheap cell phone that I rarely used. I just kept it in my car for emergencies. Since the phone was never turned on, I never gave anyone the number. Once, about three years ago,

Joe Rutkowski graduated as a clarinet major from Mannes College in 1976, and took a summer job as custodian at the college, as did an oboe major who had graduated a year earlier. They both had teaching positions that began

Have you seen many dollar coins in circulation these days? They can be used in the new parking receipt dispensers on the block in front of Local 802, but they don’t turn up too often. You have to remember to

I lost another of my first friends in New York last December when Frank Isola passed away in Detroit. Frank was the first drummer I met when I moved to New York in 1950, when I was still a valve

I got a call last summer from a leader who said, “I have a gig for a Dixie trio that I can’t do. Do you want to do it?” He told me the date and hours and the money, and

The new Henry Mancini postage stamp triggered a memory for trombonist Sam Levine. Over 20 years ago, when Sam was still a member of the Washington D.C. local, he played lead trombone for a band that Mancini fronted at the

Andrew Beals told me about a job Ravi Coltrane was playing at a jazz club out on the coast. Ravi, son of the famous John Coltrane, is a fan of Jim Carrey’s movies, and was excited to see that Carrey

This story was told to Jamie Aebersold by trombonist John Welsh, and was sent to Pete Hyde by Pat Dorian, an educator out in East Stroudsburg, Penn. Pete passed it along to me. John, 18 years old and naïve, was

Back in the 1950’s, when Dave Lambert and I were living on West 10th Street in the Village, Dave was scuffling to survive a rough spot in his career. (This was before he met Jon Hendricks and formed Lambert, Hendricks

My friend the late Tommy Mitchell was in the orchestra of one of my first Broadway shows, “The King and I.” He lived nearby in Englewood, New Jersey, but he seemed to have difficulty getting to the theatre with any

Back in the 1950’s, bassist Georges André developed a pain in his right foot. The podiatrist who examined it thought he needed an operation, but was unable to do the job right away as he was leaving for a three-week

Art Baron told me about a club date he played at one of Manhattan’s major hotels. He arrived a bit early, while Tony Sotos and Eddie Montiero were playing the preheat. The hors d’oeuvres tables were groaning with food, and

I turned on my car radio a few weeks ago day and heard the voice of my old friend Walter Norris, a wonderful jazz pianist who has been living in Germany for many years. He was talking on an NPR

Broadway producers aren’t the only ones looking at technology that is designed to replace live musicians. Sam Levine sent me an article from the Washington Post that describes a new device that can be placed in a bugle held by

I played at a jazz festival last September up at Chautauqua Lake, N.Y., an annual event that is put together by Joe Boughton of the Allegheny Jazz Society. Joe is an enthusiastic organizer and always puts together a good program.

Dave Frishberg remembered his first night with Ben Webster’s group at the Shalimar in Los Angeles. Ben was at the microphone introducing the next song, “Danny Boy,” and he turned to Dave at the piano and said, “Reminisce.” Dave said,

Andrew Schulman, who plays the eight-string guitar, was invited to do a five-concert solo tour of the Soviet Union in the fall of 1991, while the dissolution of the USSR was already under way. Andrew played concerts in Smolensk, Petrozavodsk,

Shortly after Rolf Ericson arrived in the U.S. from Sweden he joined the Charlie Spivak orchestra, where he met drummer John Perilli. John told me that Rolf was living in a new apartment in Queens at that time. Most of

On a job I played in Pleasantville with Herk Ferranda last June, a lady came up to pianist Johnny Morris and said, “You jumped in our pool!” John chatted with her for a while, and later told me the story:

Eric Holroyd, in Australia, sent me a couple of stories: Micky Maher, one of Sydney’s top tuba players, has played with every type of band from circuses to theatre pit orchestras. He stayed at the Red Garter Saloon long enough

My wife and I flew to Florida for a week last February, taking advantage of a low fare offered by Spirit Airlines. When the plane arrived at La Guardia from Detroit and discharged its passengers, the pilot reported a mechanical

Milt Hinton left us during the last Christmas season after a rich, full life of 90 years. Much beloved in the jazz community, “The Judge” was the dean of jazz bassists and one of the most recorded bassists in New

At a rehearsal of Ted Blumenthal’s big band, Pete Hyde gave me this one: When Charles Mingus’ jazz group was playing in New York, Bob Zottola dropped by the club to hear the band and to visit his friend, Paul

Lester Lanin likes to use subject themes in assembling the medley sets he calls for his society jobs. For example, he might call “June Night,” followed by “April in Paris.” Or “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” might lead

Pianist Loonis McGlohon, one of the late Alec Wilder’s lyricists who lives in North Carolina, describes Wilder in a letter as “the most erudite, warm, caring, curmudgeonly, ill-mannered, well-manned, rude, Edwardian, insulting, tender, ill-kempt, inconsiderate, hostile, funny, eccentric, original, frightened,

Oscar Peterson told this story on a Jazz Cruise last year, and a friend of Marshall McDonald’s brother in New Orleans passed it along to him: On a Norman Granz Jazz at the Philharmonic tour, most of the musicians would

Playing at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago around 1966, with a trio that backed some of the acts that appeared there, bassist Joe Levinson inadvertently became part of the act. Kaye Ballard swept onstage on opening night wearing a fancy gown

Here’s a story from Chicago bassist Joe Levinson: The late Joe Rumoro was one of the Windy City’s top guitarists, on call with the Chicago Symphony as a classical virtuoso as well as doing the cream of the jazz and

Last fall I played a concert at the Center for Mature Living in Allendale, N.J., with the Saddle River Concert Band. When we arrived to set up in the center atrium, I unpacked my tuba near two old ladies who

Frank Dickinson passed along a Country Music Glossary that he found on the internet. Here are a few definitions: 12-Tone Scale: what the police weigh your truck with. A-440: the highway that runs around Nashville. Bach Chorale: place behind the

Abe Osser told me about his first steady job in New York over 60 years ago, playing at the New Yorker Hotel with the Bob Crosby band. After he’d been there for about a month Abe got Gil Rodin, the

Howard Johnson told me a story he heard about a 10 a.m. recording date in Los Angeles many years ago, for which Henry Mancini hired trombonist Frank Rosolino. Frank told Henry, “I have a gig the night before in San

Dick Meldonian has a tape of a roast that took place at Donte’s jazz club in Los Angeles, at which Shelly Manne told this one: Chet Baker was booked into a club where very few customers showed up. “I thought

In 1943 Ray Beckenstein got his first chance to play lead alto in a name band, with Bobby Sherwood. This prompted him to begin studying with Joe Allard, the “maven” among teachers at the time. Ray was one of his

Sam Levine remembers a parade in New York that appeared to have more marchers than were actually present. The organizers were using the subway to transport the participants from the finish line back to the starting point to make additional

Steve Turi wrote to me about his late uncle, trombonist Joe Turi. Steve says that Joe always arrived early on jobs. He lived in Point Pleasant, N.J., over an hour from Manhattan by car, and he would leave home anywhere

British jazz writer Steve Voce sent me a couple of stories several years ago, and I just discovered that I filed them and never ran them. The first tells of the much-reported 1957 tour of England and Scotland by a

Herb Winner passed along a story he heard about a quartet in a New Jersey jazz club led by bassist Vinnie Burke. A noisy foursome at a front table was getting Vinnie’s dander up. Jazz bassists are used to suffering

When bassist Trigger Alpert was serving with the Glenn Miller band during World War II, a small group that included drummer Ray McKinley, pianist Mel Powell, guitarist Carmen Mastren, clarinetist Peanuts Hucko and trumpeter Bernie Privin was sent to Paris