By Bill Crow

With everyone forced to stay home and all our gigs canceled, the internet has become more and more a place for people to stay connected. Many musicians are posting live performances. I’ve watched quite a few of them and enjoyed them a lot. As I write these words, Jay Leonhart was performing live on both Facebook and YouTube every day at 7 p.m. Mark Morganelli, Matt Munisteri, Steve Herberman, Ted Rosenthal, Joe Licari and several others were playing regularly on Facebook. One classical group managed to play separately and put it all together very well in a group performance via one of the conference call platforms. And many Facebook denizens are posting links to their favorite recordings. It all makes the many hours sitting alone in your room much more bearable.

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I found this one on the internet:

Trombonist Lloyd Ulyate was once pulled over for speeding by a cop in California. The cop said, “I’ve been waiting for you all day.” Lloyd replied, “Well, I got here as fast as I could.” The cop laughed and let him go.

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Eli Dimeff played with the bands of Si Zentner and Buddy Morrow, among others. When he decided to leave the music business, he found a job at the Belmont Plaza Hotel. He noticed that many racing fans filled the hotel during the Belmont Stakes, and he proposed that the hotel restaurant offer an item on the menu called the Belmont Steak Special. The idea was so successful that Eli was promoted to assistant manager, got a raise in pay, got weekends off and a free meal in the restaurant every evening. But he was told he could order anything except steaks or chops, and so he never got to enjoy the Belmont Steak Special!

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When Dimeff was on Si Zentner’s band, they got a brand new bus with a wrap-around windshield made of a single piece of glass. On long trips, Si would sometimes drive the bus to give the bus driver a chance to nap. Coming down the Pennsylvania Turnpike late one night, Si was driving pretty fast into a strong headwind, and suddenly the entire windshield imploded. Glass flew everywhere, the side windows of the bus blew open, and a lot of clothing and personal items blew out onto the highway. Si and the bus driver and the road manager fought the headwind to reach the brake and guide the bus to the side of the road. A state trooper who was just behind them stopped and picked up the debris, and all the lost articles were recovered. The trooper called headquarters, and they called the bus company to send another bus. So the band members got out the ball, bat and gloves and played softball until the replacement bus arrived to take them to the next gig.

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Bill Wurtzel and Peter Mazza were booked for a two-week Celebrity cruise. Onboard, they were told that they only had to play one night. Bill and Peter said they were disappointed and wanted to play more. So every night, before one of the lounges played disco, it became a guitar room, which developed quite a following. Bill says that starting a “jazz club” like that is easy when you have a captive audience!

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Larry Vukovich was playing piano with Jon Hendricks at Ronnie Scott’s in London when Buddy Rich dropped by and sat in. Don Prell, the bass player, later told Larry that, when Don was on Harry James’s band when Buddy was the drummer, the bass drum was being played so loudly that he couldn’t hear his own bass notes. So he stole and hid Buddy’s bass drum foot pedal.

Prell was well known for his sense of humor. On both his 80th and 90th birthdays, he carried his bass partway across the Golden Gate Bridge and played solo concerts there.

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Kirby Tassos was doing a tour of “Will Rogers” which had 22 dancers in the cast. After 14 one-nighters in a row, the stage manager scheduled an unpaid rehearsal on their first day off. The dance captain demanded a day of rest for the dancers, and was told, “You don’t understand. You all look so bad that we’ve got to clean up the dance numbers!” The dance captain replied, “No, you don’t understand. We’re having a day off, or we’re walking, and the band can do the dance numbers!” They got their day off. And the band was relieved to hear it!

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Jim Hall told Geoff Keezer that he once passed Thelonious Monk on the street and said, “What’s happening, Monk?” Monk replied, “Everything’s happening, all the time!” and walked on.