I get a lot of compliments on having lived for nearly 98 years, even though I have no idea why I am still here. Back in my late teens, I nearly ended my life then. I was in the Army, stationed at Fort Lewis, Washington, and bought a Model A Ford so I could drive home on weekends to Kirkland, about 50 miles north. I had made the trip several times, but on what was nearly my last trip, I fell asleep at the wheel.

It was late at night, and I woke up in midair. I had driven off the road and over a cliff. My first thought was, “I’ve killed myself!” Then I landed on all four wheels and stopped, and I heard a loud hissing noise under my car. My second thought was, “I haven’t killed myself, but I’ve destroyed my car!”

Pushing the door open, I found that I had landed at the bottom of a ten foot cliff in a huge blackberry patch in a swamp, and the canes of the bushes had broken my fall. The car seemed undamaged. I was able to climb up the soft clay cliff, and I found that there was an all-night gas station 100 yards away, and they had a tow truck! Within a few minutes my car was pulled back up onto the road, the tow truck driver was paid, and I was on my way home! You can be sure my eyes were wide awake for the rest of the trip.

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When I was first learning to play the bass, I could hear the notes I wanted to play, but I sometimes had trouble finding them on the instrument. I got called for a job on which Hank Jones was the pianist. I was doing my best to choose notes that fit the chords he was using, but I played one note that I really hadn’t intended to play. Instead of giving me a dirty look, Hank said, “Oh, thank you!” and changed his chord to one that used the note I had played. What a generous gesture!

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Dave Lambert once told me that he was walking by the Brill building with songwriter Henry Nemo one day. That was the building that held the offices of many music publishers. Nemo said, “Let’s go up here for a minute.” They got in the elevator, and on the way up, Nemo hummed a tune. In one of the publishers’ offices, he hummed the tune for the guy at the desk, who handed Nemo a fifty dollar advance, and said, “Get me a lead sheet on it right away.” On the way back down in the elevator, Nemo said to Dave, “Now, how did that go?”

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I dropped by Michael’s Pub one night to hear Al Cohn’s band. My friend Milt Hinton was the bass player and he let me sit in. I managed to get off a nice chorus, and while I was taking my applause, Milt came up and grabbed his bass and said, “…and don’t EVER play my bass again!” It got a good laugh.

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When I was doing one-nighters with Claude Thornhill’s band in the summer of 1953, we had played a job near Washington DC, and afterward we were heading south on US 1 to be in the next town on our itinerary, somewhere in Virginia. The band was traveling in four sedans, one for Claude and his wife and the vocalist, and the other three for the twelve band members. Two of the cars, including the one I was driving, arrived at the hotel where we were to stay that night, but the third car didn’t show up. We waited around before checking in, wondering what was keeping that car, which was being driven by saxophonist Gene Quill. It finally arrived, and we asked Gene what took them so long. Gene said, “The other guys were sleeping, and I got on US 1 like Claude told us to, and I started driving. After a while, one of the guys woke up and wondered why the sun was coming up on the right side of the car. That’s when we discovered I had been driving north!”

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Gerry Mulligan told me about a big band record date he once booked. He remembered his old friend Don Joseph, and he gave him a call. Don told him, “I don’t have a trumpet at the moment.” Gerry said, “I have a flugelhorn that someone gave me. Can you play that?” Don agreed, and Gerry brought the horn to the date. He said that Don was a little strange on the date. When the engineer would set up a microphone for him, Don would shift in his chair so that the horn pointed away from the mike. But the session went okay, and when it was finished, Gerry stayed to hear the playbacks and forgot to ask Don for the flugelhorn. About a week later Gerry got an envelope in the mail which contained a pawn ticket, and a note from Don that just said, “Sorry.” Gerry told me, “I guess that meant that he still loved me. He could have sold the pawn ticket.”