When I was a little boy, we had an Edison cylinder record player. No electricity. You cranked up a spring and it played the records. One of them was a World War I song called “The Last Long Mile.” The lyrics I remember are:

Oh, it’s not the pack that you carry on your back,
Nor the Springfield on your shoulder,
Nor the five inch crust of Khaki colored dust
That makes you feel your limbs are growing older,
And it’s not the hike on the hard turnpike,
That wipes away your smile,
Nor the socks of sister’s that raise the blooming blisters,
It’s the last long mile. 

The song was written by Emil Breitenfeld. Paul Desmond’s birth name was Breitenfeld. Emil was Paul’s father. I wish I had discovered this before Paul passed away. I would have sung the song for him, and he would have laughed

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I was listening to Duke Ellington’s band at Birdland one night many years ago. Paul Gonzalves saw Duke’s old tenor man Ben Webster at the bar and waved to him to come and play. Ben came up and took Paul’s tenor and sat down next to Johnny Hodges, who sat looking at him with his arms folded, giving him no greeting. Duke said, “Well, Ben, what would you like to play?” Ben thought a bit, and then said, “In a Sentimental Mood.” Duke gave him an arpeggio, and Ben played it beautifully, with the band adding some backgrounds. Hodges continued to stare without playing. Ben took a bow and returned to his barstool. When Gonzalves sat back down in the sax section, Hodges said to him, “That was MY tune. (pause) The man KNOWS that was my tune.”

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Many years ago, at a very crowded press party in New York, I was standing next to pianist Randy Weston, who was very tall. He was chatting with dancer Geoffrey Holder, who was also very tall. They were about 20 feet apart, but their heads rose above the throng, making it easy for them to converse.

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When bassist Red Kelly lived in Olympia, Washington, he had a bar of his own. When he found out that you could run for office in Olympia with just 100 signatures, he organized a grand put-on. He and his waitress and his mother-in-law all ran for office as the OWL party (Out With Logic.) Red was running for governor, and his mother-in-law ran for secretary of state. (She said it would be a change to have a secretary who could type.) Red’s slogan was, “Unemployment isn’t working.” Everyone loved it except the professional politicians.

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Bob Alberti sent me this:

Back in the 1950’s when I lived in New York, I was called upon to replace pianist-bandleader Chauncey Gray who had an eight-piece hotel band at the swanky long-gone Hotel Ambassador. This was a medical emergency for him, so I took on this gig pretty much as a lark. The old Ambassador Hotel was an upper-crust place that drew New York’s elite, such as the Romanovs. The restaurant was famous for its pageantry of a parade of waiters marching through the premises in a line, with the lead waiter holding a flaming sword with what I believe was “shashlik” (shishkebab), to an eagerly-awaiting table. One evening, as I was leaving the bandstand, a dowager asked me what that was. As a snarky 20-something, my reply was, “It’s the remains of a patron who left a $0.25 tip!” The expression on her face was priceless!

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Frank Pedulla was carpooling with two trumpet players on the way to a July 4^th gig at West Point. Their names were Omar Kabir and Sharif Kales. Not knowing if they knew each other, Frank asked, “Have you met Omar, Sharif?” They looked at each other with delight and everyone had a good laugh.

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Many years ago, I was playing a wedding reception at the Plaza Hotel with Lester Braun’s society band. He started the first medley at a brisk two-beat tempo, the rhythm that the musicians called “the businessmen’s bounce,” but after we had played a few measures, Braun waved frantically at the drummer and cried, “Slow it down! Slow it down!” The drummer asked, “Why?” Braun said with urgency, “I just remembered, these people are from New Jersey!”

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While I was once rehearsing with Eddie Bert for a record date, Eddie pulled out a Shorty Rogers tune and we ran it down. Our tenor man, J. R. Monterose, said to Eddie, “You take the solo on this one, I don’t want a solo.” Eddie said, “It’s just the changes to ‘I Got Rhythm.’” J. R. said, “I have nothing further to say on ‘I Got Rhythm.’”