Back in the 1950s, when I was studying bass with Fred Zimmerman, I got my first awareness from him of bowing technique and the existence of a fingering system. After studying for a while, I played a little etude at one of my lessons, and he said, “Why, that was beautiful!” He called his wife in from the other room and asked me to play it again. I did, and he said to his wife, “Isn’t that lovely? And he’s not even serious!” I think that meant that he knew I didn’t aspire to be in the Philharmonic.

When I was playing bass in Peter Duchin’s band in Fort Lauderdale in 1971, we were invited to visit the yacht that belonged to Mr. Evinrude, the outboard motor king. After showing us the captain’s deck on the yacht, he led us down to the living room, where we saw a small piano tucked behind the stairway. “And,” said Mr. Evinrude, “Do you know who was the last person to play that piano? Richard Nixon! And he played VERY well!” “Well,” I scoffed, “He’s no Harry Truman!” I wasn’t surprised that nobody laughed. They were all Republicans.

I heard Count Basie’s band many times when they played at Birdland, and I got to know Basie better on a wintertime Birdland tour that included the Gerry Mulligan Quartet, with which I was playing bass, and Basie’s band, and four other groups. I only got to play with Basie once, in his dressing room in a Detroit stadium. There were several dressing rooms, but the one that had been assigned to Basie was the only one with heat, and it was a very cold day, so everyone on the tour was in there with Basie while Miles Davis’s quintet was onstage. There was a small upright piano in Basie’s dressing room, and he sat down on the bench and began playing. I was standing nearby with my bass, ready to go onstage, and I started playing along with him. Freddie Green broke out his guitar, and a couple of horn players joined in. A few more musicians drifted in for a sample of Basie’s scotch, and I was having a great time playing, until I realized that there were six bass players in the room, and one of us should have been onstage. Sure enough, it was me. I stopped playing in mid-measure and ran out onto the stage with my bass, where Gerry Mulligan, Bob Brookmeyer and Dave Bailey were just about to start playing without me.

Keith Bishop posted this on Facebook:

Bryant Byers told me a great anecdote about his dad, Billy Byers. When they lived in Paris, Billy used to regularly watch a musical segment that ended the broadcast day in France, and he saw and heard an amazing musician who played wine glasses, eliciting eerie and beautiful sounds by rubbing a moistened finger around the rims of crystal stemware. Billy was so taken with the musician that he made a note of the man’s name, and a few years later was scoring a horror film and decided he wanted that sound as a featured solo part with the orchestra. He contacted the man’s agent and negotiated for him to play. The man arrived at the studio on the appointed day and time and asked Billy what style of music he was going to be playing, since he had to choose the proper wine with which to fill the glasses that made up his instrument. The proper variety and vintage chosen, he proceeded to fill every glass to the brim. His method of tuning the instrument consisted of consuming the amount of wine necessary to empty the glass enough to sound the required pitch. By the time his instrument was tuned, he was too inebriated to play, and had to overdub his parts later!

Chuck Redd sent me this:

I loved and respected Joe Ascione. His humor and virtuosity are legendary. On one of the last jazz parties that we were on together, he’s asked if he could use my cymbals. As a joke, I requested that he please only play on the underside of the cymbals, so he wouldn’t ruin the shine on the top. I walked into the room where he was playing a very swinging up tempo tune. He spotted me and immediately started playing UNDER the cymbals, still burning! He was funny and great. 

Jason Ingram told me this about baritone sax player Frank Hittner:

Frank used to buy his tuxes used at thrift stores. I guess when you bought stuff at thrift stores the suits and tuxes were cleaned prior to reselling them. Frank would wear a tuxedo until it was getting dirty, and then he would go to a thrift shop and donate his tux, and pick out another used one. He repeated this process for years on the road. One day, when he had selected another tux to buy, he noticed that his name was written on the label. It actually had been one of his old tuxedos that he had donated years earlier.

Michael Rose sent me this:

Richard Hayman, who for 30 years was the principal arranger for the Boston Pops Orchestra directed by Arthur Feidler, told me that on one occasion he met with Duke Ellington to discuss the tunes that he wanted arranged for a solo appearance with the Pops. During a rehearsal for the show, Richard presented Feidler with the score for him to conduct, and everything went well. After rehearsal, Feidler approached Richard and said that the arrangements sounded great, but that there were a lot of notes that Ellington played that were not on his score. Richard said, “Arthur, that’s called improvisation. They are not written but spontaneously created by jazz musicians during the performance.” Feidler said, “Yes, but I find it difficult to follow him if I don’t know what he is going to play.”