Humor
In this section of my website I would like to include as many humorous, good natured stories as I can remember.  Please feel free to email me any stories you would like me to add at humor@helpnedfightals.org

Every musician loves a good story.  I have stories of people backing over their instruments, getting their basses smashed, being stranded at gas stations and airports, and dealing with certifiably insane club owners.  Here are a few memorable ones:
  • I personally know of three people who put their horns down and drove away, two people who drove over their horns, and one person who put their horn on top of their car and proceeded to drive off.  I have watched my bass sit on the tarmac as my plane pushed back, my good friend Marcus Rojas watched his tuba fall off the conveyor belt as it was being loaded onto the plane.  I had the airline refuse to put my bass on a direct flight from Martinique to NYC because they had flowers in the cargo hold.  It took me twenty-two hours and six flights to get home.  I had an airline cancel my flight, telling me not to worry: there was another plane in half an hour.  When I got to the gate, I noticed that the flight went to La Guardia, not Newark, where my ride was waiting.  Minor details.
     
  • I have had speaker boxes catch on fire, my Walter Woods amp spiked with 220 volts causing smoke to pour out the top, and had the guitar player's drink fall directly into my amp, which did not survive the incident.
  • The next story was sent to me by keyboardist extraordinaire George Whitty:  One of your "humor" stories reminded me of a story about Woody Herman.  One of his saxophonists had a soprano that was permanently out of tune.  It got rocked over by a rocking chair one day, and Woody just looked at it and said "A mercy killing".

 

  • I once had the privilege to play at Carnegie Hall with Michel Camilo's trio and to play the encore with Tito Puente's big band as part of Michel's trio.  During the sound check, the stage hand pulled the power cord to my amp in the middle of a song.  When the song was over, I asked him what he was doing, and he informed me that all the stage lights had to be on dimmer circuits so they could bring down the stage lights.  Needless to say, this would have destroyed my amp.
  • I've watched speaker fall onto dancers, and- sensitive viewers divert your eyes- watched a guy have a heart attack and die right in front of the bandstand.
  • I had the great fortune to spend a month touring in Spain with the Latin Jazz All-Stars, which featured Michel Camilo, Paquito D'Rivera, Arturo Sandoval, David Valentine, Giovanni Hidalgo and Ignacio Berroa.  When I arrived in Madrid with my bass and cleared customs, there was no one there to meet me.  I called the hotel and no one from the tour had checked in, and it turned out that the entire band was arriving the next day.  No one had told them I was coming.  After waiting several hours, I was approached by a cab driver that offered to tie my bass to the top of his cab for a small fortune.  They all drove small white cabs, and my Kolstein case was almost as big as the car.  Ill never know what possessed me to agree to this, but off we went on the highway, with my bass strapped on for dear life.  We arrived at the hotel and four guys each took a corner to lift the bass off the car.  The bellhops' heart obviously wasn't in it because he allowed his corner to scrape down the back side of the cab.  The perfectly white cab now had two five-foot gashes running down the back, and I had an irate cab driver screaming at me in Spanish.  I gave him all the cash I had on me, but this did not appease him.  I literally went inside to hide while the local policeman told the cab driver to be on his way.
  • I moved to New York in fall of 1986, with lots to learn.  I was thrilled to get a call to sub for a great bass player named Paul Adame.  The fact that the gig was Sunday after Thanksgiving meant nothing to me.  I left my house in central Jersey headed for Westchester around 3 PM with lots of time to spare.  As I headed north on the turnpike, the Giants game let out, causing complete gridlock.  An hour later, I finally gave up and tried to head up the Garden State Parkway and cut across to the Tappan Zee bridge.  It was now 5 PM Sunday after Thanksgiving, and the entire upstate region was trying to get to the Tappan Zee bridge, too.  Two hours and five miles later, I got off and called the leader to say "Do you still want me to try to make the gig?"  I was already two hours late.  He told me not to worry, to come as soon as I could.  I arrived three hours and fifteen minutes into a four-hour gig, and had been driving for almost five hours.  Welcome to New York.
  • I did jingles for David Horowitz productions, located on 30th and Park Avenue.  After two demos, I got the call for the final at one o'clock Friday afternoon.  I almost never double-booked gigs, but since my piano-bass duo was at five PM located at 50th and Park, I didn't think twice.  The session was booked for an hour, with a possible twenty.  It went over by two hours.  Great for the checkbook, I still had an hour and forty-five minutes to get twenty blocks.  What could go wrong?  I left the studio to find a blazing downpour and Park completely stopped.  The FDR had flooded, and the entire East Side was at a standstill.  I could've walked the twenty blocks except for the fact that it was pouring.  By the time I fought my way to Fifth Avenue, it was almost five o'clock on a Friday night.  After two hours and forty-five minutes, I had gone a total of two miles, and wound up being an hour late for a two-hour gig.
  • When I first moved to New York, I did a number of tours of Europe with Toshiko Akiyoshi's big band.  We would often leave right after the gig was over and still be lost the next night when it was time for the gig.  My brother played with Tower of Power, and this story has a malicious twist to this theme.  After twenty-two hours on the bus the promoter welcomed the band saying, "How did you enjoy the town?"  When they mumbled "we just got here", the promoter responded by saying, "But the ferry is only an hour ride.  What took so long?"  The band had driven all the way around instead of cutting across the fjord.  Oh, well! 
  • The great bassist Michael Moore told me that his ex was so mad at him that she threw one of his basses off the balcony.  He swore that he took the bag of splinters to Gage's repair shop and told them with a straight face to make sure it was ready by that night.  I wish I had seen the look on the repairman's face when he opened the bag.
  • The next story I heard from three different people, but I can't swear that it is not an urban myth:  A bassist in Brooklyn comes down to put his bass in the car and realizes that he has to put the amp in first.  When he returns with his amp, the bass is gone.  It's early morning, no one's around, and he can't believe that someone has stolen his bass.  He looks around, and the only thing on the street is a garbage truck.  Panicking, he runs after the truck, only to find that they've already compacted his bass.  Nice.
  • I was playing with Helen Merrill at a jazz festival in Guadalupe.  The drummer, Terry Clark, and I arrived at the airport together and were met by the jazz festival van.  We drove the half hour around the island to the hotel, and when we got there the promoter started screaming at us "Where's Danilo Perez?"  Terry and I had no idea what he was talking about and had not even been aware that Danilo was on our flight.  How we missed him in the tiny baggage claim, I'll never know.  We had essentially stranded him on a tiny island at an airport with nothing around it.  It was now ten PM and when they called the airport, it was closed.  Since Danilo was not scheduled to perform with Paquito D'Rivera until the following night, we were able to get the promoter to calm down.  The next day Danilo had not been heard from and he missed the sound check.  He finally arrived an hour before the gig having gotten a ride from a lovely local girl.  The story I heard involved overheated brakes that caught on fire.  Danilo seemed calm, and the concert went on without incident.
  • When I was seventeen, I started getting calls to do shows and big band gigs.  One memorable moment was playing with the great trumpeter Marcus Belgrave's big band without a rehearsal.  We were playing at a concert venue called the "Top of the Ponch", located on a balcony forty flights up.  The first song featured a piano and bass intro.  Four bars into it the wind blew my chart off the stage and over the wall.  I froze, and the piano player started to yell, "Don't stop!  Don't ever stop!"
  • I was on my first travelling Broadway show in Detroit.  Randy Newman had broken his glasses, and was wearing his prescription sunglasses.  The stage hands had forgotten to mark the front of the stage with lights, so he literally walked right off the front of the stage into the pit below, missing a mic stand by about a foot.  Welcome to showbiz.