Let the Chips Fall…

There’s often an uneasy relationship between a jazz band leader (and the members of their band) and clients. The simplest illustration is the steady gig, whether it be nightly, weekly, or monthly. If the talent and management have a good working rapport, the band is always on time, dresses well (whatever that means these days) and causes no fuss with the patrons, while the fee is always what’s agreed upon (the too-often-used dodges like “We don’t have enough to pay you tonight; the crowd was too small” or “Is that really what we worked out?” have no place here).

Far more nuanced—and fraught with peril—are the private parties, picnics, wedding receptions, divorces, or brissim a jazz band might play. Expectations and realities can clash for myriad reasons, including stylistic disconnect, compensation for requested overtime, the mohel arriving late, whatever. It doesn’t take much to sink a soiree if the musicians and the mother-of-the-bride, or the management, or the masses, are not in sync.

There are stories of famous jazz musicians clashing with clientele. Many of you might remember when Wild Bill Davison quoted a New York socialite the—for the time—outlandish figure of $3000 to bring his band (she’d invited them on his night at Eddie Condon’s as leader) to her Penthouse home overlooking Central Park to entertain a couple hundred of her closest friends. The Midtown Duchess agreed without batting a $400 eyelash and proceeded to share the caveats that came with the booking, such as not entering through the front entrance of the building, taking the staff elevator located in the kitchen to the top floor, entering her suite via the outside emergency exit located next to the sixth pissoir, and, should any band members need to relieve themselves, using the bogger in the basement. All of this Davison agreed to, but it was the opulently-dressed dowager’s directive that the band in no way speak to or interact with any of her well-heeled guests that prompted his response, “In THAT case, lady, the fee just went down to $2500!”

A lesser known incident

Not everyone has Wild Bill Davison’s gonads. For most band leaders, asking for anything beyond a fee can be uncomfortable, and they’re often caught in the middle. The client is expecting the band to be heard and not seen; they assume the musicians will simply disappear in-between sets. Conversely, the band is always asking the leader when they’ll be fed and if there will be an open—rather than cash—bar.

One occasion involved reed-player Sherman Kahn and banjoist/guitarist/bassist/bandleader Charlie Salerno, two musicians who were very prominent in my high school years (and beyond) as a performing pianist in Connecticut.

I first met Sherman Kahn when I was twelve. My school band from Hamden, CT went to the school in the neighboring town of North Haven—where Sherm was the band director—to perform a joint evening concert. My band director asked Sherm if I could play a solo piano piece in the middle of the show. He reluctantly agreed. Apparently I did OK on my version of “The Entertainer,” because he’d bring it up to me on every one of the hundreds of gigs we’d play together from my 20s to my 40s. He was a versatile journeyman who’d played with, among others, Vaughn Monroe and Sammy Kaye (“You know,” he’d demur, “the sweet shit…”) and I was in awe of him. You wanted Goodman, Shaw or Herman on the clarinet, or Prez or Getz on the tenor? Sherman Kahn was your man.

Charlie was the first musician to hire me to play with him at a different club during my Yankee Silversmith (YS) days. Since I often had Saturday nights off, he’d invite me to join him at 500 Blake Street Cafe in New Haven, the “in-place” where Walter Cronkite would rub elbows with Jodie Foster and Alan Alda while discussing post-game analytics with Roger Staubach. It was an honor; I remembered having seen Charlie lead his “Clam Diggers” Dixieland Band at a summer outdoor concert when I was only nine. As I started freelancing between nights at the YS our paths increasingly crossed. At the Blake Street gig, he had an instrument with one body and a double-neck—one to play electric bass and one to play electric guitar. This clientele wasn’t into the sing-along fare we offered at the YS, so I began to learn the swing hits of the 1930s-’40s comprising the Great American Songbook. Trial by fire, as per usual, but I relished every moment.

It was about two decades later that I learned Sherm and Charlie had been playing off-and-on together since the 1950s and were close friends…until one fateful gig.

Charlie, while pretty adept at an engagement in procuring solid and liquid sustenance for him and his band during breaks, had made no leeway with one particularly intractable client. The band was to play light jazz in an anteroom facing a narrow room sporting a cocktail hour buffet table groaning with gourmet delicacies to gratify the wedding reception guests’ appetites, after which there would be a half-hour break so the band could move everything into the ballroom to play for the actual reception.

Sherm asked Charlie, “During that half-hour break can we have some food from that buffet table?”

Charlie shook his head. “Not this time. The guy was a real hard-nose about the band taking anything to eat.”

“They’re just going to throw it out,” Sherm wheedled. “What a shame for it to go into the trash!”

Charlie replied, “I know, but I don’t want to get in any trouble with tonight’s boss! So, no grabbing stuff from the buffet!”

“Stupid waste,” Sherm muttered, “I’m hungry…”

“That’s enough,” Charlie admonished. “Don’t think about it and it’ll go away.”

He turned to pack his gear and Sherm put his sax in the case. To access the ballroom, the band had to go through the narrow room housing the buffet. Sherm walked into the room and looked around. No-one was in there with him; all the guests and staff had already retired to the ballroom. As he passed the table he reached into a 5-gallon glass bowl filled with potato chips and snagged one, shoving it in his mouth as fast as lightening.

But not nimbly enough to elude Charlie’s hawk-like gaze as he too came into the room.

“Put that back,” he shouted. “Quick, before anyone sees what you did!”

Sherm munched and spluttered, “Are you kidding, I can’t put a soggy, half-eaten potato chip back in the bowl!”

“Then you’re fired,” Charlie bellowed. “This instant!”

Sherm stormed off, Charlie spewing invective after him. The two of them didn’t speak for years. I occasionally played with both of them and would endure hearing them trash each other. My pleas that they forget about that gig and start playing together were met with everything from a shrug to a snarl.

More years passed. These two prideful men wouldn’t accept a gig if they knew the other one had been hired to play it. Eventually, a booker got them together by lying to them that neither was on a particular gig. I wasn’t on this job, so I rely on testimony from eyewitnesses to finish this tale.

They arrived virtually at the same time, entering from two doorways opposite one another in a Vets’ hall. In recounting what next occurred to me, some said that Charlie and Sherm reenacted the lead-up to the gunfight at the OK Corral, while others avow they both performed their best Edgar Kennedy “slow burn” act. They played the first set, neither looking at or even acknowledging the other, and the band took its first break.

In the backroom, Sherm started to feel sorry for the wasted years without his old friend. For his part, Charlie was thinking about all the fun they’d had together when they were just starting out.

During the second set, they’d glance at one another from time to time and even offer a nod after one had soloed. The second break found them in the backroom hugging and slapping each other on the back.

“Charlie, it’s been so long!!”

“Yeah, Sherm…too long…Wow!”

“I can’t believe we haven’t been on any gigs together over so many years!”

“It sure has been a long time, Sherm, yeah…”

“You sound great.”

“No, you sound great! The years sure haven’t taken off your edge.”

“I’ve missed you.”

“Yeah, you too. We had some stupid spat, didn’t we?”

“I know,” said Sherm, shaking his head, “but I can’t remember what it was about…”

“Yeah, I have no clue.” Charlie wrinkled his brow. “Never mind, it sure is good to see you.”

“Likewise,” Sherm enthused, “and play with you again!”

“Hey, guys,” the band leader yelled into the room. “Come and get your sandwiches before the last set!”

Sherm turned toward the door. “C’mon pal,” Sherm called over his shoulder to Charlie, “I’m so hungry.”

“WAIT A MINUTE!!” Charlie thundered. “Now I know what our fight was about!”

Sherm turned back to his old friend, “You do? It was forever ago! What could’ve been such a big deal that we were so angry at each other for so long??”

Charlie wagged his finger at Sherm’s nose, barking, “Remember that potato chip?!?”

And THIS is only part one.