Fasten your seatbelts as we embark on a journey into the past with Sal Randazzo, a renowned trombone player who shares with us not only the nostalgia of the early days in an assortment of bands, but also his sage insights and hilarious tales from a fulfilling career in the music industry. We present you with an episode that promises you laughter, learning, and some good old music nostalgia. We reminisce about the days without showcases or song sheets to adhere to, the million-dollar wedding gig, and the idiosyncrasies of the legendary drummer, Buddy Rich, all while navigating the current challenging band scene.
Adding to the compelling narrative of our musical past, Sal and I delve into the intricate dynamics of the music industry. We reflect upon the pressing need for a structured lesson program, confront our experiences of prejudice against band directors, and discuss how Europe and Japan are still ahead in preserving their music culture. We also explore the story of Richie Scollo who introduced us to the world of cruise ships and coffee anecdotes that continue to bring a smile to our faces.
Yet, as we look back, we also touch upon the present and future. We talk about Sal's inspiring journey of teaching music for three decades, his retirement, and the experience of hanging out with people two decades his junior. We also navigate the theme of disillusionment, education, and retirement, sharing our experiences, and providing a peek into the life and journey of musicians. Tune in for an episode filled with memories, music, and much more.
Fasten your seatbelts as we embark on a journey into the past with Sal Randazzo, a renowned trombone player who shares with us not only the nostalgia of the early days in an assortment of bands, but also his sage insights and hilarious tales from a fulfilling career in the music industry. We present you with an episode that promises you laughter, learning, and some good old music nostalgia. We reminisce about the days without showcases or song sheets to adhere to, the million-dollar wedding gig, and the idiosyncrasies of the legendary drummer, Buddy Rich, all while navigating the current challenging band scene.
Adding to the compelling narrative of our musical past, Sal and I delve into the intricate dynamics of the music industry. We reflect upon the pressing need for a structured lesson program, confront our experiences of prejudice against band directors, and discuss how Europe and Japan are still ahead in preserving their music culture. We also explore the story of Richie Scollo who introduced us to the world of cruise ships and coffee anecdotes that continue to bring a smile to our faces.
Yet, as we look back, we also touch upon the present and future. We talk about Sal's inspiring journey of teaching music for three decades, his retirement, and the experience of hanging out with people two decades his junior. We also navigate the theme of disillusionment, education, and retirement, sharing our experiences, and providing a peek into the life and journey of musicians. Tune in for an episode filled with memories, music, and much more.
Okay, this is episode 12 of on drums. I'm John Simeone Today have my friend Sal Rindazzo here today, so you want to say hi, all right, hi, john. Sal is a trombone player, so we were just talking about this is the third trombone player on the on drums podcast, which makes no sense.
Speaker 2:I just changed it to on trombone, but who even knows three trombone players? Well, you do now. I know You're the only few.
Speaker 1:You're the last one, I know I think you're the last one. I want to know so so, sal um Sal, I go back to what was the years of the oh God.
Speaker 2:You ask me years now.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I mean I was, I was with Gus for 17 years.
Speaker 1:You 17 years and I was in, so I was in 1615. Yeah, but you stayed.
Speaker 2:I think you were on past me and I was on before you because we went through a couple of different drums. We had this guy, matt Hardy. My friend Jim D'Amico played for a year.
Speaker 1:In Gus's band. Yeah, oh man, I don't even know that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then you came on after I started. I guess maybe 19.
Speaker 1:Let's say I got a. You sure was an 18.
Speaker 2:I started about 1980, 81, something like that. Right, I'd have to go to throw a buddy. I was living in a city and I was working with Gus, and so I went from like 1981 to 1997, something like that.
Speaker 1:Okay, that, so I was in, and well, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2:Anyway, it was a long time ago, oh yeah.
Speaker 1:Right, right. So so, and the reason that that I'm doing this whole podcast is supposed to be like drummers gripes, really, you know and I had a million gripes in, not not actually not that band, the gripes I have now mostly with the band the current bands like, but with Gus's band that was like the only band club they've been with players in it, Everybody played.
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, yeah, right.
Speaker 1:I mean, it was, it was, you went to the gig right. First of all, there's no showcases. That was huge.
Speaker 2:We did, maybe in the 17 years I played with him. It's probably two showcases yeah.
Speaker 1:So there were guys. There have been two a month. Oh I know there were no showcases. It was almost always cash right Almost.
Speaker 2:I think always. I don't remember ever seeing it, it was never yeah.
Speaker 1:And there was no songs to learn. Right, we didn't learn songs for weekends, did we? We just went in and played. I remember Gus going up there.
Speaker 2:We used to have rehearsals at his house sometime, you know, for a new song. Like the need to learn a new song or something Right, but it wasn't like yeah, no. We did. I don't know were you on the band when we did those Canon Christmas bars? Yeah. Oh, the big band, the big band thing, and I used to take our arrangements and just write out I wouldn't call it an arrangement.
Speaker 2:But I wrote out parts for all the horn players and the strings and stuff and we didn't even rehearse for that, we just put the band together and did the gig, didn't?
Speaker 1:we do a gig for the what was the fandom of the opera guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with the whole band it was like a million dollar wedding.
Speaker 1:The whole band had it with us.
Speaker 2:And then, who is the?
Speaker 1:who is the sax player? The sax player. The big guy with an R, oh man, richie, not Richie. He was a band director too. Anyway, he was playing Barry, I think, and the band tied the masks on. We started the gig and we played the first set with the mask on. Then everybody's like I fuck these masks, take them off. And then he was the only guy that didn't like see, and then he turned around. He's like the only guy.
Speaker 2:So he was the fan of the band.
Speaker 1:So anyway, my point, my point was I remember going to those gigs and just playing. Now you go to a gig that even had gigs anymore. Yeah, sure, yeah Well, yeah, we go any gig, this is any gig.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm not. You're talking about wedding gigs, or now you're talking about like the the well. So for I'm doing mostly like 40 stuff.
Speaker 1:I'm doing like that now, but now you. So now it's like okay, the gig is eight to 12. You know, it's a stupid load in. It pays $120 and here's 40 songs to learn. It's ridiculous. I mean, I remember going to Gus's gigs. The drums were there already and he would start to the tunes by saying okay whatever swing be flat. Go one, two, three, four and we'd play right, everybody played.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing with that band too was that, you know, we usually have like seven people, eight people, sometimes nine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, it was nine pieces.
Speaker 2:There was always a core of the band. You know nobody. The whole band never left at one time. It was always one guy in one guy out. So the band, you know, have a nucleus of tunes that we knew and it was just one guy we'd have to bring along.
Speaker 2:You know, like when Frank Rizzo joined the band we just like you know we already had you know that stuff going on, so it was a little easier to to do gigs because I look, you had, you know, john Hips. He was like the, he was the he was the dead guy.
Speaker 1:He was dead on the gig, yeah.
Speaker 2:But he was great. I mean he, you know he had all the chords, the tunes, and you know he just carried the whole band along and everybody, you know.
Speaker 1:I miss Hips man. He was funny. Yeah, he definitely was funny.
Speaker 2:He's in Massachusetts, somewhere Western, is it messages?
Speaker 1:I remember the last time I spoke to him he couldn't check his email. He had to go to the library to check his email.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he might be in the mountain somewhere. That's what I'm saying, like what, like you know, like the, the Berkshires and stuff. Wow, I don't know. I wonder if he's still playing.
Speaker 1:What a waste. He was great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'll bet he's still playing, but maybe just at home.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so let's get go, get to you. Like you didn't just play with Gus Clady. Maybe did some, but you played with buddy. There he is, buddy Rich, right there. You played with the guy.
Speaker 2:If you don't mind, I have. I have a great.
Speaker 1:Go ahead. Story, a life story, yeah.
Speaker 2:Because I put it into three areas. I have the musician performance era 30 years.
Speaker 1:Yeah, how old are you?
Speaker 2:I'm going to be 70 in a couple of months. My music educator career era 30 years. But they overlapped a little bit right, very little, Just Gus Clady was going to overlap because I was doing gigs on the weekends with Gus while I was still teaching and all that. But um, and then my my last 10 years era is my retirement era.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So like on on Halloween you've been out for 10 years. Yeah, on Halloween it'll be 10 years this Halloween. Wow, I can't believe it. 10 years.
Speaker 1:So you're only eight years, eight years You're retired, eight years.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's amazing.
Speaker 1:From teaching.
Speaker 2:I did my three errors. My best error is my last 10 years, of course, of course. Yeah, I mean everybody underage retirement, it's like the best thing in the world.
Speaker 1:Well, your retirement is a normal retirement. I'm like retired like an Uber driver for three little kids.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm like when I retired, my kids were already grown, so, like you know, we were pretty much empty nesters and everything I have to.
Speaker 1:I have to hang out with people who are, you know, 20 years my junior and their parents, my kids friends.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I got to hear this whole other generation talk about shit. I want to strangle them. You know, like their kids to me, right? And they had their kids with my kids. I can't say how many students like we went to Disney Epcot last, last spring, and one of my students is in charge of the the staff.
Speaker 1:So she said you have to stop by my office, and we did, and she got us on a ride. And we got us. She got us on a ride and she's a year older than my wife. Oh, I try to explain it to my kids. Like how is that possible If she was just like I don't know?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I have like Brian Dunn was one of my students and he's like 50. Yeah, 57 or something. He was my student in high school.
Speaker 1:He's, he's great.
Speaker 2:And he's only a couple of years younger to my wife. You know, it's crazy.
Speaker 1:But anyway.
Speaker 2:So he has a he has a great story for you All. Right, I probably should have been a pizza rear owner and and be making pizzas my whole life.
Speaker 1:I can't wait to see where this is going.
Speaker 2:And it's all fate, because what happened when I was three years old? There's a show on TV called Lawrence Walk. This was in the 50s Sure.
Speaker 1:I remember that show Right Lawrence.
Speaker 2:Walk was a big band and he had all these. You know it was crazy.
Speaker 1:Very white. It was a very white show.
Speaker 2:One, yeah. And then a little Dixieland group out of the big band up in front and the trombone player is playing the tune with his foot on the slide. He's moving the slide with his foot, with a bare foot, and as a three year old I thought it was like I said why can I ask?
Speaker 2:why he was doing that, I don't know. It was just like a novelty thing. He was trying to show off or something, and I saw that as a three year old and I pointed to him and I said, mommy, mommy, I want to do that, I want to play the trombone.
Speaker 1:So that guy fucked up your life. He fucked up my life.
Speaker 2:That was it, I could have been making pizzas. I could have been a billionaire.
Speaker 1:You would have retired 30 years ago, you'd have three more houses.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so, anyway. So as soon as I got a little older, like maybe five, six, my mother brings me to music land in Lyndonhurst because, we lived in Lyndonhurst and that was a place they had back then, before they downgraded. They had all these music uh lesson rooms.
Speaker 1:Yup, I remember it, I remember it.
Speaker 2:And I asked them. My mother said I want, he wants, to learn how to play the trombone. And so the trombone teacher, whoever it was at the time I don't even remember if I met a trombone teacher or not but he said no, he's too small, he can't hold the horn.
Speaker 1:Can't get the sixth position.
Speaker 2:So he says why don't you play the accordion instead At the?
Speaker 1:pizzeria.
Speaker 2:This is a true story, though. So my mother said, okay, accordion. So we rented an accordion and, uh, I started taking lessons at music land on the accordion.
Speaker 1:They gave lessons on accordion, yeah.
Speaker 2:Well, back in, I talk in 19,. If I was uh five, six years old, it was 1960s 1960s. Yeah, so I did this for six months and I hated it. The guy I used to go home crying. The guy was mean to me, he never. He wasn't. You know, he wasn't a motivator.
Speaker 1:He was a, you know, like a whatever drill sergeant.
Speaker 2:So I quit accordion after six months and I still have to this day I have the little strap that you snap on to hold it with in somewhere in a closet.
Speaker 1:And I always look at this thing and I say son of a bitch that accordion teacher.
Speaker 2:So then, finally, when in Lyndon Hurst summer third grade, they have a program where you can become, you could take a music life. So that's where I met, that's when my whole fate changed, because at that time my father had one of the first pizzeria places in Lyndon Hurst called Annie's pizzeria, named after my mom, and he was at the pizza.
Speaker 1:I didn't know any of that.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, he was at the pizzeria place all day long. My mother would work there, she would run home when I get home from school and everything, and then we'd go to the pizza place and I'd hang out in the back of the pizza place. But anyway, come, come. Uh, summer, third grade, I meet my mentor, my life mentor, and that's Julie Rubin. I don't know if you know who, julie Rubin?
Speaker 1:is. I don't know who that is.
Speaker 2:He was a music teacher, elementary music teacher, in Lyndon Hurst. He lived right down the street here on Allen Street and used Islay and uh he must be dead right, he passed away just two years ago, so he starts teaching me trombone. So I, I, I Like privately or no?
Speaker 2:no at school, at school and in the summer music program, and then he happened to be the elementary teacher at Albany Avenue Elementary School, which is where I went. So now in fourth grade I have him as my elementary band teacher and we do it for about a year and he tells my mother you know your son's really good I he should take private lessons. And back then it wasn't no, no, nowadays you can't do that. But he he recommended I take private lessons with him, right, and at the time it was at music land. So I started taking lessons with him at music land for about a year or so and then music lane was horrible. They, they were not paying well or whatever, and he recommended we take private lessons at home. So he came to my home and he talked my mother into buying a spin at piano.
Speaker 1:And now.
Speaker 2:Julie Rubin. You don't know Julie Rubin, but he was in all the big bands in the 40s and everything. He was a big, you know heavy duty, big band trombone player. So he was the guy who started to get me interested in music. And my father died when I was in second grade.
Speaker 1:I had seven, so I didn't know that either.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so. So my mom raised me as a you know, as a single parent all through high school, and Julie Rubin became my what?
Speaker 1:do you call it?
Speaker 2:Like my mentor in my what do you call it Like a substitute father, right, serigate, serigate father. That's what I was thinking of. So he not only started teaching me trombone, but he got me into hockey, which, to this day, I'm still in. We went to range of games in the city together there was no Islanders at the time. We he taught me handball and we remained best friends, and he taught me privately all through high school until I went away to college, and that was what sparked my interest in becoming a musician. Wow, it wasn't for him. Now my father, if he hadn't died at when I was seven years old, he'd still have the pizza place, I would have been going there and making pizzas with him and that would have been my whole life probably.
Speaker 2:It would have been probably good. I mean he, you know there's a lot of people that made a lot of money doing that, but I think music was my calling Right. So that was it. And you know, and, and through Julie Rubin, interesting me and everything else. In fact, when he died two years ago he willed his. He had several trombones we built, we played the same model and he willed his best trombone to me, so I have his trombone now.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we remain good. You know, best friends, that's cool.
Speaker 1:I mean that's, that's a standup guy right there, right, you don't?
Speaker 2:really see too much of that Unbelievable.
Speaker 1:You couldn't, like you said, because the teacher would be really worried to do any of that. Oh, I know, yeah, I know that's a shame. It is a shame Because you know he, because there are kids who need that.
Speaker 2:He realized I needed that I didn't have a father figure in my life and he became the father and he had a son. He had two sons and two daughters as well, but none of them were, as I guess, as interested in music as I. He saw that I had a big interest and because of him I ended up. He put me in the all elementary district jazz band, he, which he headed. He got me real into all of that and then in high school I had a band director.
Speaker 1:Bernie Rajesky, who was my high school band director.
Speaker 2:Bernie Rajesky was here at East Island.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right and I took his position. And East Island.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2:But Bernie was into big bands and when I was in high school we had, you know, the jazz ensemble and he got me interested in playing jazz and everything like that. And you know. And then I got into the, the very first all state jazz ensemble, the very first one. You know, billy Drew's right, sure, yeah Well, billy and I, and I don't know if you knew, Dennis, I mean Bill Drew, not Glendry's. No, Glendry's brother.
Speaker 1:Okay, so Billy's? I don't know Billy, then what's his?
Speaker 2:Billy is this alto player with the, the Vanguard band and he's and he's well. He plays all around the world. He's an amazing sax player. But Billy and I and Dennis Wilson also from West Babylon, because it was a great jazz program in West Babylon to this guy, bill Titone, and he had the town of Babylon All Star Jazz Band and we're all in that and this guy by the name of Bill Katz.
Speaker 1:Oh, I know Bill Katz. You know Bill Katz Because I had what's his daughter's name. I don't know his daughter.
Speaker 2:I, I my bassoon play.
Speaker 1:My first year at Beat Street, I had a Katz, oh and I, and they said, you know, she's Bill Katz's daughter. I had no idea who Bill Katz was and I found out later.
Speaker 2:So Bill Katz kept petitioning Nisma for years we had an all count, an all state jazz, an all state sorry, all state chorus, all state win ensemble, all state band. He said we need an all state jazz ensemble. So he finally talked them into it and I happened to be lucky Me, billy and this guy Dennis Wilson from was Babylon, the only three that we knew each other. We all were in the first all state jazz ensemble and played at the Concord Hotel.
Speaker 1:Wow.
Speaker 2:And I was. I was in 10th grade at the time, then in 11th grade Billy and and Billy and Dennis went on to Berkeley. But in 11th grade I was in the second jazz ensemble and the band director there for the jazz ensemble, all state jazz, was Phil Wilson, which was my Berkeley connection. He was the jazz trombone player at Berkeley and he said oh, you should come to Berkeley, and that's what made me go to.
Speaker 1:Berkeley.
Speaker 2:So it all. You know. It's funny how that works right, it's all fate, I mean if it wasn't for Julie, if it wasn't for my father Dine, it wasn't for Julie Rubin, it wasn't for Bernie Rajeski, bill Titone, then Phil Wilson. That's what brought me to Berkeley, and then in Berkeley I had another whole experience there.
Speaker 1:It was amazing, you know.
Speaker 2:I mean I was in the great ensembles there the recording band with Herb Pomeroy, the Dews band with Phil Wilson. We used to do concerts in the area. I remember once we had him backed up, tony Bennett in Rhode Island. I mean we did all kinds of great things in Berkeley. I had a band that my who is now my brother-in-law, but we were best friends in Berkeley. We started a band called Pinocchio. It was a quintet and we played music from the Miles Davis Quintet of the 50s and 60s.
Speaker 1:All that stuff, you know Pinocchio all those tunes, infiniy's.
Speaker 2:you know all that whole era, that whole genre and we play little pubs and stuff in Boston. I was going to school.
Speaker 1:It's a shame there's no walking for that now. This is just nuts, man.
Speaker 2:But you know we're resurrecting that band Really In 2020?
Speaker 1:Resurrecting is the right word too. Yeah, right, if we're all still alive.
Speaker 2:You have to dig everybody up. Well, the play see the rhythm section was Japanese. Really good friends from Tokyo went to Berkeley Shiro Mori on guitar, jun Saito on drums and Hiroshi Kishimoto on bass. I'm sorry, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:Those guys went to Berkeley.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're all at Berkeley together and they're all made big names from the city. They went back to Japan and they're all like pretty famous jazz players in Japan. Anyway, so our plan is in 2025 now, me and my brother-in-law gonna fly to Tokyo and spend a couple of weeks there and get that band together and do gigs in the Tokyo area.
Speaker 1:Oh, that is great, because they're still a market for it, and Shiro because they're culturally, they're always ahead of us.
Speaker 2:Europe and Japan I mean, you know they're still, I mean over here, jazz, where's jazz? You know, you've got some clubs in the city. See, that's the sound.
Speaker 1:This is why I'm doing this shit, because this is what bothers me about music right now. Like this I don't think this would happen in Japan. Like, what other profession can you think of where you could say I dabble at it on the weekends? Like, so, you spend your whole life studying to be, let's say, an accountant? Okay, and I'm not an accountant, but I read up a little bit and I say I do some taxes on the weekends. Who does that? Like you? This is the only profession where you could go to Sam Ash, buy a guitar and say, yeah, play a little guitar and then go get a gig at a fucking get paid, like you know, 20 bucks. You're getting paid 20 bucks a night. You're undercutting every guy who's legitimately a guitar player and you're doing it. You are a guitar player. As far as the people in the cafe are concerned, you're a guitar player.
Speaker 2:Right, there is no other profession like that. I know it's crazy.
Speaker 1:That's what you know Terry's take on. It is great because Terry Nogrelli is like you know the amount of school when you go through to get what you are and it's like it becomes nothing. It's like anybody can do it because it's just fun. I know, check this out. I'm sitting in a. I should know if I should say this, but whatever, I don't give a shit. I'm sitting in an open house for my kids in middle school and the band director is telling you know the parents, us what's expected.
Speaker 1:You know, if they miss a lesson they gotta make it up you know, and so one of the parents raises his hand and says what if my son has science and he has lessons and the band director says she goes, he's gotta come to lessons? She goes, well, can he miss lessons that period because it's in science? And she says, well, yeah, but he can make it up, but he can only make up a certain amount of lessons and then it's gonna affect his grade. Right and the parent says the parent could have left it at that. Instead she says well, I would rather him miss band than science.
Speaker 1:So, she's, but ultimately she's really saying your credentials, which is the same as the science teacher, are not as good or not as as powerful, as somehow science is the thing. Now, like is it? They're not equal, you know, because this is just entertainment, and that's what bugs me, man.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, I went through that all the time and I was in three different districts and we had different policies for lessons and every one but the, the, the. The backside of that was the parents complaint was well, science is five periods a week, or let's say, math is five periods science sometimes as a lab, but math is five periods a week and band is five periods a week, so why now you're adding a six period onto band? Well, so the argument that was it's like science, science and you have the labs too.
Speaker 2:So, you know, but but that's the program. I mean you can't you can't have a band without having a lesson program. And you can, but it'll be a shit band.
Speaker 1:Just the idea that we're in the music entertainment business. We're here to put you, at your pleasure, right To make you smile when you're drinking. That bothers me, man. That really, really bothers me, I know, I know you know it's, it's.
Speaker 2:But you know, thank God I'm past all that, you know. I don't think I forgot what I did in education. I already forgot. I'm trying to, and that's a good thing Like like I don't because now, because my kids are out of school, I mean I went through the same thing with you when I went to my kids open houses and all that.
Speaker 2:So, but you know they've been out of public school. Now my son's out five years already. So you know my youngest son. So I mean, I I don't even remember. People say what did you do when, when you were a director in hip-hop?
Speaker 1:hills.
Speaker 2:Oh gee, I have to think about it, I couldn't tell you, and it's great because I, you know, I used to my first couple of years out, you know it's my book, my kids I used to think about it and worry about you. Know what's going on.
Speaker 1:Is it?
Speaker 2:really I used to worry. You know the district was going to sustain the programs and now I'm so far gone.
Speaker 1:I drove out of the parking lot after retiring and look back, I just, I just left. I don't even think I cleaned out my desk. I think I left there.
Speaker 2:I don't know, anyway, and I have kids.
Speaker 1:My kids are now playing clarinet, and now I'm back to teaching clarinet. Like I'm sitting down here with a clarinet you're doing, you know, concert B, flat scale. So so go, go on.
Speaker 2:So again we're talking about the music, the music industry, whatever. It was very different back then when I, when I got out of Berkeley, I graduated Berkeley in 75. There were still big bands, you know, they were, you know there's a couple.
Speaker 1:There's a couple, now right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but I mean back then it was a big thing. You had Woody Herman's band, had Maynard Ferguson's band, buddy Rich's gigging bands.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you had all these bands that you know you tried to get on and it was. It was not like I don't know how to do it today, but there was no auditions or anything. I mean, when I get out of Berkeley, like I mentioned before Dennis Wilson, he was a year ahead of me because because I had got the Berkeley year before him, a year after him, so when he had he graduated Berkeley he went right into Lionel Hampton's band and then he moved from there to count Basie's band. And when I graduated Berkeley he just recommended, he says they said, oh, you know, he's moving to count Basie. Oh, sal Vendazzo, he's got take him, that's funny, they must do auditions now.
Speaker 1:No, I don't know, but there's no.
Speaker 2:So I just went on the first gig, opened the book site, read the book and if you either sunk or you swam, you know Right. And that's how you did it. Same thing with Buddy's band. Years later, when I was on Buddy's band, roger Homefield was a friend of mine from Berkeley. He was on Buddy's band, he was leaving and he told the the, the manager or whatever it was. He said, yeah, sal, sal Vendazzo's available. Why don't you call him? He'll do it. And the first gig I did with Buddy was in Atlantic City at that big place where they used to have the beauty pageants or something. It was a big gig and I just sat there, opened up the book and site read the book.
Speaker 1:You site read the book. You site read the Buddy Rich book on the first gig in the first gig in Atlantic City, wow yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Although just before the gig in the back in the green room, you're like looking over? Well yeah, I looked over. But also, you know, some of the charts were very well written and everything. Some of them looked like chicken scratch and like the big charts like good news and West Side Story they had edited so many times and cut this.
Speaker 1:It was roadmap.
Speaker 2:You had to be like Rand McNally as Richard.
Speaker 1:Scullo would say you had to be Rand.
Speaker 2:McNally to get through it, and nobody knows who Rand McNally?
Speaker 1:is now no, I know.
Speaker 2:Everybody's got GPS right, but anyway. So, so that was the gig. And you know I got on and I was nervous as shit, you know. But you get on, you play the gig. And I remember after the, after the thing was over, I was worried. You know what he thought? He came over to me and he goes who, buddy? Oh he goes, he goes. He called me Randazo. You know, he didn't call me by my first name. Yeah, randazo, not bad, not basis. Little loud he says be careful, don't play too loud. That's, that's the only thing you told me, that's a lot from Buddy Rich.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know.
Speaker 1:That's a lot of input.
Speaker 2:The other thing was I sat right next to him, so he probably put his lab because he couldn't hear anybody else because his damn symbols were so freaking loud.
Speaker 1:I got a buddy rich story. Oh, I got plenty of buddy rich story, but I was. I didn't play with him, but I was a kid, you know, used to used to play East ice high school. My parents, my dad, would take me and my dad had this thing. He had to get an autograph all the time. That's that autograph right there on that page. So somebody at work went to the thing, got an autograph for me and I had it. So I had that picture with Buddy Rich's autograph and my dad's like well, we're going to see Buddy Rich sign it again.
Speaker 2:So we go playing drums. I was playing drums, yeah, great.
Speaker 1:So we waited for him and he came in with like two guys, I guess on bodyguards, whatever they were, and and my father had the picture and I was like 12 or something and my dad said, but you might, mr it's, you might sign this and he can in the picture. He went to sign it and then he handed it back and said it's a dirty guy and he's. And my father said, yeah, could you do it again? And he, like, reluctantly, signed and he and I was in my mind. I was told I was like fuck this guy. I don't care how good he plays, this shit is not. He was so like nasty to a kid, you know.
Speaker 1:I was a kid, you know, that's that.
Speaker 2:In other words, it had his signature from another time.
Speaker 1:There's. If you look at that picture right there, there's two signatures from Buddy Rich.
Speaker 2:Yeah, from two different concerts Right, and he didn't want to do it again.
Speaker 1:See, it was Buddy Rich, so I do too, yeah.
Speaker 2:Oh, I got. I got a lot of good stuff.
Speaker 1:Anyway. So go ahead, go ahead, go talk what you're doing.
Speaker 2:So yeah, so that was that and that's, and that's how I got into the uh, that that whole thing with uh Lionel Hampton's band.
Speaker 1:So it's, it's sort of like everything else, right, it's, it's band to band to band. Yeah, who you know, and you know you gotta have to play.
Speaker 2:You gotta be able to play. But it's really who you know if you didn't, if I didn't know those guys, I never would have got on that band. If I didn't go to Berkeley. You know. So, again, it's all fate going back from the pizzeria, it's all it's all fate.
Speaker 1:That's how I look at it, you know.
Speaker 2:and then and then after Lionel Hampton, I got a little you know this, this disenchanted with with that because he was kind of like buddy.
Speaker 1:Was he really what's with you? Yeah?
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know he didn't treat us like I thought we should have been treated anyway. So then I I was at the time, I was also in Long Island cause Lionel Hampton's band we didn't go out on a road for long periods of time, it was only like one night, as we would all meet in New York city by his apartment, get on a bus and do a one night at the Pennsylvania, one night at to Rhode Island, one night at Washington, whatever, and we stayed fairly much local. Once in a while we did a one week tour somewhere, but um, you know so. So then I was, I was living back at home at my mom's house in the first, and Richie Iconi had that little big band thing going on.
Speaker 1:Did Richie Skull do that one? Well, that's, that's. That's what I'm leaving to, yeah, so, um, so, we used to rehearse in the basement of his house in Copa.
Speaker 2:And one day I'm in there rehearsing and there's this saxophone player in the sax section talking about screw ships and I'm listening and it's Richie and it's Richie Skull and uh, and so I said oh, yeah, I said Gee, really. I said yeah, I played on the. He was doing Princess Cruises with his brother out on the West coast and everything. Oh, it's great.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, bobby's car.
Speaker 2:Yeah with Bobby. So, uh, I saw talking to him. He goes yeah, he says I'm getting ready to do this cruise with Carvel Cruise Lines and I think they're looking for a trombone player. I said you know, sounds great, I think I want to do that. Oh great, yeah, you can come over, we're going to go and get a meet in the city, go on Penn Station, go down to Northbrook, virginia, and all that stuff, so then. So then Icona sees me talking everything, so he pulls me off to the side I don't know if you ever heard the story and he goes. Sally said you're talking to Richie Skull yeah, yeah, he was talking about Cruises. He says yeah. He says you know, he's gay, right I?
Speaker 1:knew it. I knew he was gay.
Speaker 2:I always thought he was gay. No, he's not. I know he's not gay, but it was so funny it was and and you know, you could just picture, I can imagine what my face looked like when I draw probably drop, like this guy's getting me on a cruise ship, and he wants probably room with me, you know. So then then Richie goes nah, I'm only kidding, I'm only kidding, Okay.
Speaker 1:So anyway, that's how, Richie and I right, and and it was love at first sight.
Speaker 2:I mean Richie and I, you know and that's so.
Speaker 1:That's how Richie you guys got into. God's band, I guess, right Cause one of you, one of you had to get in first and get the other guy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I don't remember. I think I was at first. Yeah, I was, because I think Joel Levy was before Richie. Oh yeah, joel was playing sex, so so then Richie and I we did the Carnival Cruise for I know six, eight months or something, and then we got off and then there was a new ship, the festival opening up, and they needed a band director and they asked me to be the band director and the, you know, the conductor for the shows and everything. So I asked Richie to come back and join me and that's when I got my friend, ron Rubio. I got a couple of all your time guys.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we had a great band. We call it Hocus Pocus and and that was our theme song on Lee Moore. I don't know if you know Lee Morgan tune Hocus Pocus, oh yeah. That was our theme song and everything, and that's how you know. Richie and I developed a great relationship all these years and everything and right, so, and that was great.
Speaker 2:And then, then, when I got off the cruise ships, I that's when I got asked to go with Buddy's band, and that was the same thing. Like I said, my friend Roger was getting off and he asked oh so you knew, richie, before you went on that band yeah, yeah, so Richie, I was just thinking about Richie, I know he's going to be listening to this podcast.
Speaker 1:I don't give a shit, hi Richie.
Speaker 2:But the funny, the one of he was funny for sure. Out of all my friends, he's the funniest guy and as good as he was on Tenor.
Speaker 1:he was that funny he was definitely funny. And I remember, you remember this too. We used to, on the gigs, we'd go up and do a first set and it'd be, you know, first course, blah, blah, blah, blah, right. And then you get to the last course, the sorry, the dessert cake Right. And the way we talked about coffee, they would. It would because I think it was Jim Cherry who would say Avesesordu right, avesesord is your sister's ass your sister's ass in Italian.
Speaker 1:But he'd go Avesesordu at the end right. And then Richie made that Gazzini got Avesesordu right. So then it got, and it got even different, more different. It got to the point where we did it so many times when coffee was served, richie would go where's the Gazzini?
Speaker 2:That's great.
Speaker 1:He's so excited.
Speaker 2:Here's my funniest moment. Richie Scola on this on the Gus Coletti band and I think he would have drummed at the time. If not, it was Matt Hardy. But anyway, we're playing and I don't know if you remember the horn section. We had these little monitors on mic stands and we used to try to crank them up to hear ourselves, but we couldn't hear ourselves because right behind us with those bows, I know what you're going to say, with Gus's voice coming out of it and John Hipps's keyboards, and they were.
Speaker 2:They were like if 10 was maximum, gus, gus and John Hipps, gus was 11, gus was 11, john Hipps was 10, and the horns were two Yep, and we couldn't hear. So we're playing, you know, but I would, whatever song we're playing, and I look and Richie's always I think it was always to my left and look to my left and he's not there. Where's Richie? Where's Richie? I turn around.
Speaker 1:He's behind the speaker.
Speaker 2:He's behind he's got the speaker in his hands behind the speaker like a machine gun he's going. Because it was so loud, it was so appropriate. I just I stopped playing. I can't play that.
Speaker 1:I remember that distinctly and the reason, the thing that precipitated that was Gus, one of the people to go home.
Speaker 2:So he says let's get rid of him, and he turns up. That was so funny.
Speaker 1:That was that was to this day. I can't. I'll never forget that. That was important stuff. That was a great day. Remember the fist fight between him and Jim Cherry At? Yeah, it was that.
Speaker 2:Maybe you just wait, fist fight Jim cherry and who, richie, and we just go though. Yeah, no, I wasn't there. I would have a fire. Yeah, I would have remembered it was at the place with the loading literally a fist.
Speaker 1:Well, they got into each other's way, or something really started.
Speaker 2:Richie. Of all people, he's like the most mild.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you're cool, he'll tell you that.
Speaker 2:but Jim Jimmy, you know wrong buttons yeah he was a put button push from in.
Speaker 1:Well, which he used to say to Jim cherry and for those of you don't know, jim cherry is a great singer, but he looked like an accountant he did not look like a singer Richie said oh, he said, oh, he said a gym. You know, I think maybe this is why Jimmy didn't like him. He'd say you know when, when they were given our voices, you got on the wrong line, man, you should have been on the accountant. Somehow you got on the R&B line with the accountant body.
Speaker 2:He didn't look like a singer Right exactly. You would think he was black or something right, he was great.
Speaker 1:He sounded really was great. He was great I.
Speaker 2:Tell you we had great moments with that band. I had to this day I had to thank the fact that I was with that band for all those years after I'd gotten off the road. If it wasn't for Gus Clutty's been, I probably wouldn't have been able to buy. I bought a house.
Speaker 2:I know that the same year when I got married, I bought a half. My wife and I moved into a house. We never had an apartment. We bought our own house and it was because I was doing not only teaching, but I was doing 150 gigs a year with us seeing that for me.
Speaker 1:It screwed me up in the opposite way, because I was single and I had all this cash. I didn't know, I didn't understand. I thought you just had hundreds on you all the time.
Speaker 2:I was buying stupid shit.
Speaker 1:I could have bought two houses but I was buying boats and co. I didn't get you know. I was like, I was like 33. I had an apartment for $400 a month.
Speaker 2:I had all his money and I thought that was normal you know, yeah, well, it was for someone who's single, but you know you were lucky to do that. But you know, yeah, but you try, you're, I could have you know, and you know.
Speaker 1:I could have, you know, bought a house outright pretty. I'm pretty sure that I had thought about it.
Speaker 2:You, know had nobody. Yeah, and back then houses when I bought my house was a hundred and eighteen dollars. I mean, it was like you know, it's unheard of today.
Speaker 1:It was. It was a good run. I remember that, though I was a fun and I forget how I left, I think, with the band. The band was kind of like ending, wasn't it? Yeah, after you left sure I left I.
Speaker 2:He kept calling me back to sub in there, but then I was so busy I had gotten that job at East. I saw and I was so busy with that gig that was a crazy gig, you know I you know it was directed for the whole district and I, just I couldn't do it anymore.
Speaker 1:I didn't do it, I did one or two and that was the end of but I actually left because I joined a different band, because I thought I Don't remember this was like 20 front years ago. I thought Gus was like you know ending it. He was like just stopping to get.
Speaker 2:But yeah, but you know he was in his heyday. I mean he was the narrowgans it. You know house band. He was the express hollow now's band. Yeah, we, we, we were all over to play.
Speaker 1:I have to say he and he was like he was a good singer man. He was a great entertainer for the songs he was his bass playing.
Speaker 2:you know?
Speaker 1:Agree on that, yeah, the best was the pipe bass that was on a stand with it. He had that crazy expensive bass with a Pipe going through it to hold it up, so he could just go behind it. Oh, I have to wear a strap. Yeah and then the gloves used to work love.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but yeah, no, you know, hey, everything, like I said. So again, going back to the pizzeria, right, it's all for everything lined up, you know. But I got some good buddy stories. If you want to hear what he got, shoot man, okay. So anyway, buddy, he used to In the in the year I was in, the year and a half I was on a band. We went through 19 bass players.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because I could.
Speaker 2:I can't because the reason why I counted him is because because I was the second trombone chair, was next to buddy and right behind me was the bass. I was the one that always leaned back and said skip, letter B, go to, let us see. You know stuff like that. And he knew that. I knew the book really well and everything. So every time we hide a new bass player, I was the guy who had to sit with him and show him right the you know the roadmaps and and he never could find a good bass. But he never.
Speaker 1:But he didn't like any bass.
Speaker 2:He didn't get no, we had some great bass players but he didn't like any of them. No, I know, because he's just a nut. Yeah but he finally found a bass player he liked. That was Mike Hall. Oh.
Speaker 1:Oh, mike Hall.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Mike. Mike was the bass player for like the last six months I was on the band we went to we went to Europe together.
Speaker 1:Mike Halls isn't there.
Speaker 2:Michael the bass player. His wife is Robin Hall. She's the vocal jazz vocalist. Does like my own all that stuff.
Speaker 1:I this. There's definitely two my calls, because somebody was talking about oh, my friend Ken Tauvey plays guitar. He's talking about getting my call to cover the bass part but I think Michael bass players I.
Speaker 2:Stick and electric. He's great. He's like one of the best bass players ever played, was a great guy and anyway. So so Mike was finally the last one and buddy actually liked.
Speaker 2:Mike, yeah, he went and he actually got mad. When we were in London and we had had it, we were on the band for a long time and and we had just finished doing a tour of the UK and everything and me, mike, and I think it was the lead trumpet player at the time, somebody's calling my phone I, michael Lead trumpet, and one or two other people, I think a sax player, something. We all went in because we're all afraid to talk to him by ourselves.
Speaker 2:We all went in and gave him our two weeks notice buddy yeah oh shit, and we were, and and we were going, we were going back to New York and we were supposed to go to Tokyo a couple of weeks later and To this day I regret I should never. I should have went to time to still never got to Tokyo. I'm hoping to go next yeah but I mean I should never.
Speaker 1:I should have got to Tokyo first and then quit right.
Speaker 2:But, but anyway, we all quit and he hated us for it. Oh, what you leaving me? I remember, and that was it. And we all left on bad terms with buddy.
Speaker 1:But two weeks is to I mean wanted, yeah, I mean, did he give guys two weeks notice when he fired him?
Speaker 2:no, yeah, oh, yeah, he did oh yeah, so two weeks. His, his big line was call your friends, because call your friends meant you had to go look for another gig call your friends.
Speaker 1:Hey, bill, call your friends.
Speaker 2:He's got two weeks you know, and so it was crazy, but anyway. So what was it gonna say? A couple of funny stories we had At the time. I was on a band, we had Dave Llamar. You know Dave, sure?
Speaker 1:yeah.
Speaker 2:And my call was playing bass and the two of those guys you know, great jazz players and everything. But they never had a chance to play together because on buddy's band you had to just read these charts right and play with buddy. So they would go. If we would, we would get to. We go to the, to the town we're playing in the bus who dropped the band off at the hotel. The bus would continue on to the venue and set up me, and I'm sorry.
Speaker 2:Sorry me and the first trombone plague, glenn Frank. We were there. I used to get paid extra. We would set up the band and what do you mean?
Speaker 1:said at the band, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Just there stands his drum set. Glenn taught me. Glenn was first out of. He taught me how to set the drums. You had a, very specifically you know the Tom.
Speaker 2:Tom had to be taped to the snare and the angles and there was a there's a plywood board that you had to put. There was a mark for every stand when it went like it had to be exactly right, and so I ended up inheriting that job. I was set up as drums and everything, and then sometimes Dave and Mike would go to the venue just to play together. Right you know, because they never get it yeah, so they sit down and play tunes.
Speaker 2:So I Don't know, if you know, I don't, I don't have any chops, but I play a little drums, I have a good sense of time and I have a drum set.
Speaker 1:I've always had a drum set and I could, you know, do Easy swing a little boss you know I just keep my left, thought I remember being there was a giga Got on Gus's band. I was somehow late from getting back from a break and you were playing drums. Oh really right. And then you did the band because they started without me and you were playing drums. And then I just got a slip in behind you and as soon as they started to play, Richie said oh, what happened to the time?
Speaker 2:So anyway. So here's the theme, the fun part of the story. So after I set up his drums while they're playing I, I said they, I sat down on the drums, on buddy's drums.
Speaker 2:Yeah and I started playing trio with them, with playing some tunes, just like stuff, and I never expected Buddy to find out. I didn't want him to know that I played his drums because I think he would have probably fired me on the spot. So as we're playing, I forgot what to we're playing, you know some? To who walks in the back of the whole buddy.
Speaker 1:Oh geez.
Speaker 2:And he sees me playing the drums and he walks up and I'm like, oh shit, I'm starting to sweat and everything. So he comes up and we finished the tune. Hey buddy, hey man, he's not bad, not bad, that's all he said to me. And then I got off the drums and we finished setting up and that was the end of it.
Speaker 1:Oh so you're lucky, I was lucky.
Speaker 2:A good day, yeah, right now here's, here's the crazy part of it. About a month later we're doing a tour with Mel Tormé. We're doing a I think it was a month tour or three week tour. So we melt. He's actually on the bus with us when traveling around the country and and Mel would get out and sing some tunes or one day on the gig. For some reason it was only that only happened is once. I don't. I wish I could remember more, but it only happened once. Mel invites buddy up to sing with him on this duo, some silly kind of a tune or something, yeah, and so buddy gets up and he looks at me, goes and does, always says get on the drums, so you play drums.
Speaker 1:So I play drums with a buddy rich band and Mel Tormé.
Speaker 2:Yeah, with the buddy rich band, and I don't even remember what song was, just a swing thing, you know, just to keep some time, and that was it, and that was my one quaint, you know it's funny.
Speaker 1:I have another buddy rich memory. I know it's all this buddy rich stuff, but when I was kind of in doing those things, going to East Ice of high school, we used to go to all the concerts and it was one somehow my father got me backstage again, yeah, and nobody was there except the bass player and some other guy who wasn't a drummer playing drums and I'm sure it wasn't you and they, you know he, they were just like doing a sound check or something. And then they got off and my father was like get up there, man, just get up.
Speaker 2:And I I could see my mind's eye.
Speaker 1:I could still see the kid. It was like five feet in front of me from the back and I was like no way man. And my dad's like just get up there, it's buddy, we're just trying and I wouldn't do it. And I regret it now, but I was like there was no fucking way I was climbing. Well, he would have probably shot yeah well, there you go, and then it would all be better off at this point.
Speaker 2:But yeah, he had he. You know, he was very unpredictable.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But I have to say in the time I was on a band, some reason he liked me we never had, except when I gave him my notice. Up until that point he always we, sometimes I was an early bird. I would get up in a hotel. I go up and have breakfast at seven, three, eight o'clock and he was too. Sometimes we'd be in the hotel coffee shop and we'd sit down together and he'd actually talk and have a little breakfast. Very rare but it was. You know he was but a couple of funny stories. You know the buddy Rich takes, of course you know.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, man yeah.
Speaker 2:But he would not only the bass players, but he would fly the whole band one by one.
Speaker 1:Oh, make them fly it. I heard that story. Well, he fly out and rehire him.
Speaker 2:He's that would have. Steve Marcus was the straw boss on the band right and he was the, in other words the go between between the band members and buddy, so we'd have a bad set. For some reason you know it's the Trump one and the Trump players came in wrong or the bass player was dragging and we'd get off the bandstand. He says, Marcus, in my dressing room right now, and so we'd go, we'd go band and all he's like, oh, what's going on? So Steve would go into his dressing room. You could.
Speaker 2:Marcus, he said that Trump a player. Give him two weeks notice, want me to fire him? Yeah, yeah. He said in fact, fire a whole trumpet section. And then he would go on and on, and little by little he'd go. He'd say I want, I want a whole new band. We get back to New York. He says I want a whole new band, we're going to find a whole new band. So then Steve would say gee, buddy, you Salvren Dazzo, you sure Salvren Dazzo?
Speaker 1:No well, Salvren stays, Salvren stays.
Speaker 2:What about Glenn Glenn's doing? You know, no, Glenn's a right. He would go through about 10, 15 guys and he said, no, all right. And then, oh, just fired a bass player, Right, Right. And that's how he fired the bass player. He'd start off firing a whole band.
Speaker 1:Then he fired a bass player and that happened probably five or six times. See, that's easy. He's lunatic. The story I heard was some, some guy who stood up to buddy, which like a tenor player or something.
Speaker 2:I said you know.
Speaker 1:I quit, I'm leaving, I'm not doing it again. He quit, he flew home and then and he's, and then Buddy Rich called him wherever he flew to and said listen, man, I'm sorry about the misunderstanding, come back, I need you on the gig. But the guy flies back, gets a gig and Buddy Rich goes. Nobody quits this band. You'll fire.
Speaker 2:That that's a story I heard. Yeah, oh yeah, that sounds right.
Speaker 1:That's crazy, that's craziness man.
Speaker 2:Well, I'll tell you how crazy he was he. He would not allow people to dance when we played, even if we were playing like a medium swing tune. So we were playing in Iowa once. I never forget this one Playing at a place. It was almost like a VFW hall.
Speaker 1:It was like well, what's an Iowa? I mean.
Speaker 2:I don't know, but it was like a hall. There was maybe 250, 300 people. Most of them were all senior citizens. You know the Buddy Rich big band. You know, and I saw all these old people came to see the gig and we start playing a tune I don't know, Medium swing, I don't know what it was and this little old couple gets up and starts doing a fox job right in the middle, right in front of the band. Boom, he stops right, that stops. The whole band Come on and he looks at them. He goes. Nobody dances when Buddy plays he says sit down, Holy shit and these poor little people they were.
Speaker 2:They were probably seven, 80. Well, now I'm seven, probably 80. Yeah, yeah, old. And he was scared and he just went. They went and they sat down and that was it.
Speaker 1:That's, that's just, that is just.
Speaker 2:I know, but that's that's. That's the kind of thing.
Speaker 1:That's. That's that's why there's jokes about um, I heard, you heard the Buddy Rich joke, right? He said I heard about the guy who calls Buddy Rich's house after he dies, cause he, someone, gets his number, he calls his house, his buddy, his buddy which they're in. He said no, buddy buddy which passed away last week, he was okay and it keeps calling back and then it finds it. Why are you just called? Why do you keep calling Cause? I just want to hear it again.
Speaker 1:That's a shame, but yeah you know he had, he had good, you know, it's just it's a problem is it's like you get to a point right when you become like a God. I've seen this happen. You wear, you lose. You lose yourself because you think you're something special. I guess, Right, I mean, he was treated like royalty.
Speaker 2:He grew up. At three years old. He was playing drums.
Speaker 1:I understand he was a three years old.
Speaker 2:He was a phenomenon.
Speaker 1:He was. He was right, he was a freak. He was what he was he was a freak.
Speaker 2:And uh, you know, I guess it went to his head. You know cause? You could. You could be that great and be a great person.
Speaker 1:You could, you know, is it plenty of them? There's plenty of guys like that, I know, yeah, so but what are you going to do? I went to school with guys that were you know, weckel and Joel. I mean, they were you know, the guys were like freaks. They were you know and and I thought that was normal, I thought, I mean, I thought, when you go to college, that's the kind of way people play, and I realized I was in the midst of that.
Speaker 1:You know, really, it's true, it's true, I, I cause I went from being the best drummer in Iceland to the worst drummer in Connecticut, well competing with Dave Wacke. Well, yeah, I go, I went to the first. My roommate was a drummer.
Speaker 2:What school was that?
Speaker 1:University of Bridgeport. Oh, okay, 1979. So they had a good jazz program there, yeah.
Speaker 2:And Neil Slater was there, yeah.
Speaker 1:I mean, those guys were all players and some of the. The first week of school in September of 79, my roommate and I said, okay, let's go check out the jazz edition. There was an A band and a B band. We walked down. I only looked through the glass of the Bernhardt Center where there were guys were starting to assemble.
Speaker 1:It was a million horn players, a million Trump, whatever, like I would say 12 drummers and Wackel was playing and we sat there for a minute and we and I we turned around and went back to I said I'm not even auditioning.
Speaker 1:That's right and the file and this is what's what's crazier is the following semester. So this was like September. The following semester, which was, I guess, february or something, was the same school year. I'm pretty sure Dave left and now so Joel was the other A-band drummer. Wait, I'm sorry, I got that wrong. Something happened mid-semester where, okay, so Dave was in the A-band, joel was in the B-band. That's what happened. Two guys out of 12 made it Dave Wekle and Joel was in black, so I think there were maybe two drummers in the B-band and something happened. That guy left.
Speaker 1:they re-auditioned and I made the B-band, so now it was Wekle in the A-band and me and Joel in the B-band and we had a routine we had to go. So the A-band rehearsed it like eight o'clock or something. B-band rehearsed six. So you had to meet Dave at the B-band rehearsal at six, set up his drums with him because he had to use a method for the B-band.
Speaker 1:We had to go there, help him set up and then he'd leave and he'd come back at eight and his shit was set up already. That was the routine.
Speaker 2:Do you stand touch with him at all? Who, dave Wekle? Yeah, well, once in a while, that's cool. He was supposed to.
Speaker 1:I asked him through this podcast, but he's still too busy man.
Speaker 1:You know what's funny. He went and he had something funny. Well, he's really in his own class, like you know what I mean. It's funny, dave is. He's a certain way like he's born for this. He says this in an interview with Dom Familaro. My friend, frank, called me one night and said hey, listen, man, I just listened to this interview with Dave Wekle and he mentioned you and your podcast, that he knew you. So I called Frank back and would answer I go on, I download the interview. It was a joke, he didn't mention me but, I, happened to.
Speaker 1:Of course, it was funny but, I happened to watch the whole thing and Dave and I see eye to eye in a lot of stuff. Dave's like no shit. He's like look man, if this is not happening, don't just go elsewhere. If you're not, if you're not getting what this is, you know it's like drums chose me, I didn't choose drums. If you chose drums or chose something because you think it's some other thing, or you want to be famous or you want the attention, that's not the way it works. It's supposed to be something that's in you, that falls out of you. That's music, you know what I mean, and that's him.
Speaker 2:That's definitely him. That's cool man. Yeah, that's good.
Speaker 1:We were doing. I remember we were doing a small group thing one time we were doing a small group jazz and they recorded it and me and Joel were playing in one of the small group jazz things. And I'm playing in the thing and my hi-hat stand breaks in the middle of it.
Speaker 1:It's like, and on the tape you can hear like metallic click. We had breaks and there's no more hi-hat. So it was funny. So we came back to the dorm we played it for Dave and he listened. Then he laughed, but then he whipped out like floor recordings hey, here's a guy playing jazz with no hi-hat. Here's a guy playing jazz with all hi-hats on the we had all the yeah.
Speaker 2:He was like the guy. He was liking everything about the hi-hat. He just knew everything about everything. He was that guy. That's cool. Yeah, those people come along once in a lifetime. Yeah, it was a great experience, man, but he really I would say Weckels really was the guy that created that style almost to play. I mean, you got like. You got like your Steve Gad, or something.
Speaker 1:Yeah well, we all listened to Steve Gad and Bridgeport. That's why I heard about it. I mean Elvin Jones.
Speaker 2:it's another whole style of drumming, just as great but very different. Buddy Rich was another style, I mean, but Weckel almost created that style that he has.
Speaker 1:He was ahead of his time in a lot of ways. I mean just even with everything. They was like all encompassing. He didn't just play drums, he was like the equipment. He had a tune drums, he was experimenting in sizes. He's the first guy to do an X-hat. You know that happened at Bridgeport. I'm not sure what the X-hat is.
Speaker 2:This is an X-hat, the right-handed hi-hat. Oh.
Speaker 1:So he was doing a gig at the school and he said you guys want to come check out this new thing I'm doing. And we went there and it was two hi-hats. I was like, wow, two hi-hats. That started in 1979 at Bridgeport. Man, wow, dude.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure how would you use that, because now you're not relegated to just kind of the crossover thing.
Speaker 1:when you play in hi-hat Now, you can open up to your right side if you're ready, but now you don't have a bass drum, right?
Speaker 2:I don't know.
Speaker 1:No, this stays closed. Oh, and now they have double paddles where?
Speaker 2:you can work. It's an hi-hat. Oh really, oh my god, yeah. Did I remember when I started with the double bass drums? I'm like, oh my god, one's not enough, you know, yeah now it's not.
Speaker 1:You have to have all those other shit going on. Yeah, it's amazing. I think one bass drum's too much.
Speaker 2:I'm like I want to bring a snare drum and that's it, man.
Speaker 1:One snare drum, one cymbal. Oh gee, but it's great.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so you know, trying to think any more funny buddy stories. That's about it, as far as I can remember, With the tapes I still got recordings of those tapes, those buddy tapes Tapes. And you know about the Seinfeld episodes with the there's three Seinfeld episodes that they use a quote from Buddy Rich, Did you?
Speaker 1:know that? No, you didn't know this.
Speaker 2:No, oh, you got to Google it. It's great. Jerry Seinfeld is a big Buddy Rich. I don't know Not a fan, I would say, but he was into Buddy Rich's stuff and there's three quotes in the Seinfeld series that was directly taken because it was Buddy Rich's quote. What are the quotes? I don't remember what.
Speaker 1:One of them is like how did he know Buddy Rich quotes these quotes? Because of the tapes, the Buddy Rich tapes.
Speaker 2:He had listened to the if you Google Jerry Seinfeld, buddy Rich is an interview with him and he's talking about. He heard these tapes of Buddy Rich and everything.
Speaker 1:Is that the one where he's yelling at the bear On?
Speaker 2:the bus? No, but one of them is like when, george, is you seen Seinfeld? Yeah, there's an episode where George is in the theater and the guys are behind him talking stuff and he turns around, he says hey. He says my, my buddy, take it outside, I'll take it outside. And that's exactly Buddy.
Speaker 1:Rich's quote.
Speaker 2:And there's another one, there's just two more. I have my memory.
Speaker 1:That's great. I didn't have any idea.
Speaker 2:You got to look at that. That's really cool. It's good stuff. It's good stuff.
Speaker 1:Well, ok, you got anything else, man, that's it.
Speaker 2:No, I mean, that's pretty much All right. That's a lot so yeah.
Speaker 1:You got your clip notes. Everything, Everything covered there. Oh, I know you got your resume out.
Speaker 2:Well, we only covered my first 30-hour years and my music, music performances. My other 30 years in the music administration is another whole hour.
Speaker 1:I'll have to do the AD version of Saturday.
Speaker 2:But one more just quick story. This is a good Glen Drew story because Glen's a good friend of mine. Yeah, Glen's great you know, when I got off the road with Buddy he talked. Well, he didn't talk me into it, but we talked about it. He says, yeah, I'm going to get into the Broadway scene.
Speaker 1:So I got an important Glen did yeah, because Glen was getting into the Broadway scene.
Speaker 2:Because we were on Buddy's band together. We were on Ham's band together. So I get an apartment on the Upper West Side and I want to break into the Broadway scene. So I get this apartment like $200 a month.
Speaker 1:cockroaches all over the place $200 a month, huh.
Speaker 2:Yeah, cockroaches, the cockroaches are free.
Speaker 1:They're part of the event.
Speaker 2:It was part of utilities. So he tells me OK, here's what you got to do. He said you got to get your name out there. So back then I don't know if they still do it the Rose Land Ballroom, the musicians on a Wednesday afternoon. All the 802 players and musicians would all meet there On a Wednesday afternoon and they would walk around with their little black books and say you got anything for Friday night, you got a Saturday, I'm looking for Saturday night To get to play gigs and people would network. And that's how we would do it, because back then there wasn't the internet.
Speaker 2:You didn't have an internet, so that was the internet, was the Rose Land Ballroom.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he's not a book. He's not a book for musicians.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so Glen, and to this day Glen's still doing Chicago. It's one of the longest running shows ever on Broadway and he's got a great page. He's got the opening lead solo on stage.
Speaker 2:He's great man and Glen's been doing Broadway since 50 years now. But so he shows me the ropes and he says here's what we're going to do. He says we're getting the Rose Land. He said there was a front desk and you would ask for people. You would say Bill Hacker Black, come to the front desk please. And so he would go up there and he'd ask for me. Because he said, if you get your name out there on the PA, he says people get to know you.
Speaker 2:So we'd go there, and so we'd be there for a couple hours and every 20, 30 minutes he'd go up to and say could you page Sauron Dazo, please? Sauron Dazo to the front desk. And so people, oh, he must be a busy guy.
Speaker 1:Everybody's asking for Sauron Dazo. That's a great idea.
Speaker 2:So that's what we did, but I got very disillusioned. I think I might have subbed once on some show.
Speaker 1:That's a whole other thing, or Broadway show.
Speaker 2:But I'm not a city guy To this day. I like going into the city just for the visit. But first of all I had a horrible apartment. I wasn't into it and that's when I decided to go back onto Long Island.
Speaker 1:And I went into education Plus the shows, the shows they could teeties after a while. Yeah, it's not my thing.
Speaker 2:But so that was it and that's how I got into education. From that disillusionment to go and I went to it was now the defunct Dowling College. I went and got my music ed degree and I started teaching and. I went through all that stuff in the administration and that's another whole podcast. And now you're getting a pension.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's it, and now I'm retired.
Speaker 2:And I'm having the best time of my life.
Speaker 1:Well, thanks for doing a sale. It's. Those are good stories, man.
Speaker 2:Thank you for having me, this is Gribbs. And honor to have me and had the podcast and I look forward to just sitting to more of your podcast. You got a great thing. It's a great service you do.
Speaker 1:Oh, thanks.
Speaker 2:Let's couple people.
Speaker 1:It's fine, it's fine, it's fine. All right, cool, all right, take it easy Bye bye, bye bye.