Jazz Anecdotes

[Ken Dryden]

I was chatting with Alan Broadbent this morning to go over preparations for his upcoming September concert here.

After I told him about witnessing Marian McPartland's disgust with an unsuitable piano provided for a trio concert, he shared this gem:

The late pianist Frank Strazzeri was also a skilled piano tuner. He arrived for a gig and found an untuned piano awaiting him. Frank tuned the piano, played the gig, then detuned it afterwards.

 

[HutchFan]

Ha!   

 

[Peter Friedman]

 Frank Strazzeri was one of my favorite piano players.

Very funny !

 

[Niko]

Thanks for sharing!

[Gheorghe]

anectdotes.....once I almost got into a battle when we had a one nighter in some goddamn town with a pick up personnel of mixed nationality (one US-Girl on trumpet, one italian guy on bass and a bit vocal, and three romanian guys if you include me (as beeing a "terrible" mixture of jewish, romanian and hungarian blood). 

They had hotel rooms booked for us to stay over nite after gig and while the girl was in the dress room, we went to the bar to discuss WHO will be the one who will be with the girl in the same room..... I pretended that I must be the one, while the italian guy shouted that of course he will sleep with her, and my other compatrioți also yelled as loud as they could. The whole situation became quite grotesc and curse words where yelled. Both italians and romanias can be very very irascible and what a wealth of dictionary of ugly words we have in those latin-based languages.

When words was not enough, it was damn near that fists and who knows what all have in their pockets will be used. 

At that moment, the manager of the event came into the room and said with a grin on his face: „Hey guys, calm down, the lady just booked a separate room for her.......