Doc meets Duke
Doc Severinsen had the privilege of playing with the great Duke Ellington one night in the 1950s. And Doc barely survived to tell the tale. “It was really the wildest experience,” said Severinsen, the former “Tonight” show bandleader and trumpeter, by phone from his home in California.
“Clark Terry (then a member of Ellington’s band) was a friend of mine and I went to see them play. One of the horn players was thrown in alimony jail that night. And Clark said, ‘You got your horn? Go get it.’ “
So Severinsen sat in at the bandstand and became immediately and thoroughly lost.
“I spent the whole night trying to figure out what song we were playing,” said Severinsen. “Duke never said a word. He would just make a little tinkling sound on his piano and they would all just romp into it. I never did figure out any of the songs until (damn) near the last note.”
Things should go much more smoothly on Saturday night when Severinsen joins the Spokane Symphony for an all-Ellington SuperPops concert.
Severinsen has always considered Ellington’s band the best big band ever, and he admitted to one further reason for programming an all-Ellington concert.
“Ellington’s music really lends itself to a symphonic setting,” said Severinsen. “He didn’t always use big-band textures.
“In fact, there’s this one tune, called ‘The Mooche,’ that has always been a favorite of mine. I always thought, ‘I’d love to hear this done with 100 instruments and everybody screaming at the top of their lungs.’ “
So he put together a symphony pops program, with the help of “Tonight” show collaborator Tommy Newsom, and finally got a chance to try a giant-sized version of “The Mooche.”
“I gave the downbeat and heard that first chord and I went, ‘Yes!’ ” said Severinsen.
There was one other song that was crucial to the success of an all-Ellington concert: the band’s signature tune, “Take the A-Train.”
“Tommy Newsom and I talked about that for months,” said Severinsen. “We did not just take the first version we came up with. I think on the third rewrite we finally got what we were looking for. We knew if we got ‘Take the A-Train’ right, everything would fall into place.”
Saturday’s concert will feature Severinsen conducting and playing on those and more of the best-loved Ellington tunes, including “Mood Indigo,” “Caravan,” “Perdido,” “Satin Doll” and “It Don’t Mean a Thing.”
Contributing to the Ellington sound will be vocalist Carmen Bradford, the daughter of trumpeter Bobby Bradford and singer Melba Joyce.
Severinsen grew up in Arlington, Ore., and has vivid memories of coming to Spokane and playing in the All-Northwest Concert Band at the Fox Theater when he was 14. He went on to play with Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman and the NBC studio orchestra.
He’s been specializing in symphony pops concerts since he retired from the “Tonight” show in 1992. Yet he’s not sure if he’ll be doing these symphony gigs much longer.
“I’m pretty tough and I carry my age well,” said Severinsen. “I could be out there doing this until well into my 80s. But that’s ridiculous; I don’t want to do that. I have a lovely wife and things I want to do with my life.”
For one thing, he wants to concentrate his energies on his own horn company and its signature product, a trumpet called the Destino. For another, he and his wife will soon be moving to the mountains of central Mexico.
“We went there to buy tiles and fixtures for our house in California and fell in love with it, the first day” said Severinsen. “It’s like when Europe was at its best, that’s the way Mexico is.”