While my dear late friend Bill Moriarity, seventh president of Local 802, was still serving as the union’s secretary, it was his job to get all the major club date leaders to sign the new contract that had just been negotiated. He told me that the last one to come in and sign it was Lester Lanin. He said that Lester finally came into his office, but stayed across the room from Bill’s desk, where the contract lay, waiting his signature. When he eventually made his way to the desk and picked up the pen, he said to Bill, “You’re taking the food out of my mouth. All I want to do is retire to a little house by the ocean. Instead, I’m going to have to live in one of those retirement homes, where they put a little arsenic in your food every day, until you die.” I can still see Bill’s look of wonder and hear his laugh when he told me this. (Bill passed away on April 29, 2025 at the age of 87. Read his obituary in Allegro here.)

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Several years ago, in the New Yorker magazine, the music critic wrote that he usually dreaded having to attend concerts of music by contemporary composers, since he said he hadn’t heard any contemporary music that appealed to him. But he dutifully went to a concert he was assigned to attend, and he said that he was surprised when a young woman with a cello came out and played music that reminded him of Scriabin. At the interval, he went backstage to congratulate the cellist, telling her that he admired the composer’s having resisted the current tendency among modern composers to write atonally. “It isn’t what you think,” said the cellist. “All it said on my part was, ‘Play what you like,’ and I happen to like Scriabin.”

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Herb Gardner posted this on Facebook:

During intermission at a jazz concert in a Poughkeepsie theatre, there was suddenly an enormous crash from backstage. Our star leader Eddie Condon had managed to fall backwards into a big pile of metal beer kegs and knock them all over. The next time we played at that theatre the stagehands had made a chalk outline of his body on the floor where he had landed.

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When Conrad Kirnon was playing drums with Lester Young at Birdland, Pee Wee Marquette, the Birdland MC, always mispronounced his name. Lester Young laughed and said, “He’s f—ing up your name again, Lady K.” So, Conrad told Pee Wee, “Just call me Connie K.” He later changed it to Kay, and Connie Kay became his well-known stage name.

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Vincent Borsell wrote this:

One New Year’s Eve I got a call from a local area contractor, could I make a last minute gig? Sure, I said. Arriving at the gig I saw the band setting up and the piano player was warming up with a very nice classical piece. We started talking and he told me that he graduated from Manhattan School of Music (way before I attended). The drummer chimed in, “I graduated from Juilliard!” The bass player added, “Hey, I went to Mannes School of Music, and I studied with so-and-so. All of our conversation was heard by the guitar player/leader of the band. Before we launched into the first tune the leader announced “Hey, I wish that I went to music school. I could’ve become a sideman!” Maybe that’s an old joke, but it’s a good line.

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From Clint Sharman, remembering working with Liza Minelli:

Occasionally when sound-checking for an evening performance, Liza would ask the band to play a certain song up a half-step, down a half-step, up a step, or down a step, depending on how her voice behaved that day. We’d rehearse it, and all would be marvelous that evening. One time, Liza asked the band to play a particular selection up a minor third. At the sound check, we ran down the tune. All was fine with about half the arrangement. Then the chart became more ambitious and challenging, including some key changes, and the band started to crumble under the assault and ultimately crashed and burned. Bill LaVorgna, Liza’s longtime drummer and musical director, cut off the band and after an awkward pause, asked the band, “Where do you want to go back to?” I replied, “Manhattan School of Music!”

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At the time that the Gerry Mulligan Concert Jazz Band was active, there were two Congolese leaders who were in the news, Congolese president Joseph Kasavubu and Congolese prime minister Patrice Lumumba. In Mulligan’s trumpet section, Nick Travis was sitting beside Clark Terry, and for fun they began calling each other Kasavubu and Lumumba. One night, when Clark was playing at the Half Note, he was expecting a phone call from Nick. When the phone rang, bartender Mike Canterino answered, and called, “Clark, it’s for you.” Clark, thinking it was Nick, grabbed the phone and cried out, “Hey, Kasavubu!” He said that the voice on the phone, sounding puzzled, said, “No, Olatunji.” It was Michael Babatunde Olatunji, the Nigerian drummer, calling Clark about a gig. Afterward, Clark said, “Boy, I didn’t know how to explain that, so I didn’t try.”