Former NBC percussionist dies at 82

Bobby Rosengarden, a versatile drummer and percussionist who recorded such with musicians as Duke Ellington and Jay and the Americans and who spent many years as an NBC staff musician before moving to ABC in the late 1960s as the bandleader for “The Dick Cavett Show,” has died.

Rosengarden, 82, died of kidney failure Tuesday in a hospice in Sarasota, Fla.

In the early 1950s, Rosengarden was a staff musician at NBC, where, among other things, he played drums with the NBC Symphony Orchestra and in the band on the “Tonight” show with Steve Allen, “The Ernie Kovacs Show,” “Sing Along With Mitch” and “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

During this period, Rosengarden also was a studio musician. As a percussionist, he played the triangle on the Ben E. King hit “Stand By Me” and played bongos on Harry Belafonte songs. He later played conga on Jay and the Americans’ “She Cried” and finger cymbals, triangle and tambourine on an Arlo Guthrie album.

In 1968, Rosengarden moved to ABC as the bandleader on Cavett’s daytime talk show and then, beginning in 1969, Cavett’s late-night show.

Rosengarden became known for providing amusing entrance music for Cavett’s diverse guests – so-called “play-ons.”

There was, for example, the time a sex therapist walked onstage and the band played “I Can’t Get Started.”

When artist Salvador Dali appeared, the band launched into “Hello, Dolly!” And transsexual Christine Jorgensen was welcomed with “Is You Is or Is You Ain’t My Baby?”

In the mid-1970s, Rosengarden had a stint as the bandleader in the Empire Room at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel.