nickhoorwegmusic

I don’t know if you’ve ever read any of those musical anecdote books, where a whole lot of musicians contribute various stories with varying degrees of interest and humour. They are usually pretty hit-and-miss affairs, to be honest, often you have to search through a couple of hundred dreadful stories for one good one.

I read a couple of jazz anecdote books a few years ago that were a cut above the rest. One featured a whole series of anecdotes about 1920’s-30’s violinist Joe Venuti, who had a reputation as being somewhat of a prankster. Supposedly he once sent a massive, elaborately wrapped gift to Wingy Manone, the one-armed trumpet player. It took Wingy fifteen minutes to unwrap the huge unwieldy box and find Joe’s present - one cufflink. Venuti also once nailed a horn player’s shoe to a bandstand because he was tapping his foot out of time.

My favourite Joe Venuti story is the one where he called up thirty seven different double bass players and to each one said ‘I’ve got a gig for you, meet me on such-and-such a corner with your bass at two o’clock and I’ll give you a lift’. Thirty seven bass players showed up with their basses at the appointed time and location, creating a huge block in the footpath. Venuti just drove around the block in his car, laughing at them. To his credit, he paid each bassist a regular gig fee! An expensive practical joke but worth it.

Without doubt my favourite story from those books was one about Art Blakey. According to a few of his bandmates, Art went through a period where he would tell anyone he was talking to about jazz, the positive virtues of it, how it was an important, crucial art form, how it was developing etc etc. The story goes that one day while on tour, the band bus stopped in a small town. Across the street from where the bus stopped was a cemetary, with a funeral in progress. Art Blakey wandered over and joined the crowd at the funeral, just as the minster asked ‘Does anyone have any words to say about the deceased?’ After a brief silence, Art piped up and said ‘Well, if no one has anything to say about the deceased, does anyone mind if I say a few words about jazz?’

Our father, thou Art Blakey.

Nick