During the ten years that I lived in Greenwich Village, in the 1950s, I discovered the city operated the Leroy Street public swimming pool, which I visited every Sunday morning during the summers when I wasn’t on the road. Weekday mornings at the pool were reserved for swimming lessons for the neighborhood kids, but Sunday mornings were for the adults. We called it our country club.

One Saturday I found Charlie Parker sitting on a bench in Washington Square Park. He was living in the East Village at the time. We sat and talked for a while, and I mentioned the Leroy Street Pool to him. He said he would like to come, and sure enough, the next day he showed up at the pool with swim trunks and a little rubber bathing cap. He enjoyed the pool that day, but I never saw him there again.

When we arrived at the pool that morning, we found that someone had climbed over the wall during the night and painted on the wall, in huge brown letters: MARVIN THE HAIRY ONE IS A PREVERT. We laughed as we spread out our towels beside the water. Soon, two men dressed in khaki overalls came out of the dressing room and inspected the wall. They went back inside, and in a while one of them returned with a bucket of paint. The paint was nearly the same color as the wall, and the man carefully painted over all the letters. But he only painted the letters themselves, so, to our amusement, the graffiti was still legible in the fresh paint.

The other man returned, and they inspected it again. Realizing that the message was still there, they got out the paint again and finally obliterated the letters. Charlie Parker and the rest of us got a good laugh from that, and afterward, whenever I met Charlie, we would mention Marvin the Hairy One, and laugh some more.

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I played with Pee Wee Russell, both before and after he stopped drinking. During his later phase, we were having breakfast in a cafe in Boston one morning, and a couple walked in and recognized him. “Pee Wee!” cried the lady, and rushed over to him. He looked a bit nonplussed, and said hello. The lady turned to her husband and said, “He doesn’t remember us!” Then she said, “Pee Wee, you stayed at our house in Saint Louis for three months!” Pee Wee nodded and mumbled, “If you say so.”

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When I was once playing the Paul Whiteman radio show with Marian McPartland’s trio, Whiteman was waving a baton at the studio orchestra for the benefit of the audience, but pianist Lou Stein was hiding beneath the rostrum wearing headphones, conducting the musicians with his forefinger.

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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. Unfortunately, by the time his instrument was tuned, he was too inebriated to play, and had to overdub his parts later!

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Gregory Waits reposted a friend’s post:

Interesting repartee at work last night.

Me: playing solo piano and having a grand evening.

Intoxicated guest: I need to use your microphone.

Me: (continuing to play) I’m sorry, I don’t have a microphone.

Guest: I only need it for a minute.

Me: I don’t have a microphone.

Guest: Well, I’ll just have a word with the manager then.

Me: please do. Any requests?

Guest: I NEED to use your microphone

Me: (starting to play “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”): I don’t have a microphone.

(Guest leaves}

5 minutes later

Guest drops two ones in my tip jar and says, “NOW can I use your microphone?”

Me: sure

Guest: (looking around piano) well, where is it?

Me: in the trunk of my car.

Guest (I’m being serious here) why didn’t you tell me you didn’t have a microphone?

Me: takes break.