Year: 2008

Live Party Music from the Fabulous 1950’s

The Fabulous Fifties…from MGM to “American Bandstand.”

Now that’s entertainment!

Along with the great sounds of the 1920’s, 1930’s and 1940’s, the diverse and highly danceable music of the 1950’s offers a rich treasure trove for the musical score of a very hip Cinema Noir or Old Hollywood wedding.

By the time Elvis Presley took America and the rest of the world by storm with his 1956 cover of Big Mama Thornton’s 1953 hit, “Hound Dog,” swing, blues, jive, C&W and rockabilly had already converged into a musical explosion known as “rock and roll.”

Jazz, romance and Broadway went to Hollywood during those years, as well. Some of the best songs ever written, recorded or featured on a Broadway stage or in a musical production number came out of — or passed through — the 1950’s, truly the golden age of American music.

The 1950’s featured re-creations of romantic and swinging standards from the 1920’s and 1930’s, augmented by a colorful explosion of highly danceable music that crossed over from C&W (that’s country and western, folks), blues and rockabilly in the late 1940’s and turned into rock and roll (in about 1954, with the use of the rockabilly crossover “Rock Around The Clock” in the movie Blackboard Jungle.)

Add to this prolific and highly danceable body of work the music from the movies and Broadway shows of the era, and America’s airwaves were fairly bursting with a conglomeration of heady new sounds.

Soul, blues and big band shared playlist space with “crooners” like Rosemary Clooney, Bing Crosby, Tony Bennett, Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin, Frank Sinatra and their rocking and rolling counterparts, Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, Fats Domino and Elvis.

Nat King Cole, King Pleasure, Patti Page, Peggy Lee, Harry Belafonte and Louis Armstrong were heard on the same radio stations — usually one to a town, not 50 or 60 like we have today — as Hank Williams, The Drifters, The Platters, The Spaniels, Big Mama Thornton, Johnny Cash, James Brown, The Coasters, Richie Valens and B.B. King? You’d better believe it!

Huey Piano Smith, Jerry Lee Lewis and the Everly Brothers along with Bobby Darin, Patti Page, Theresa Brewer, Doris Day, Frankie Avalon, Connie Francis ..and the music from Hollywood musicals and the best of the Broadway stage.

Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Rogers & Hammerstein and Julie Styne …Johnny Mercer, Harold Arlen…it just doesn’t get any better than the panoply of musical creativity America heard on the radio and played on home phonographs during the 1950’s.

The 1950s offered a combination of sounds for everyone. Rock ‘n roll, rhythm and blues, love songs, jazz, calypso and musicals were all popular. Record sales, more than air play, determined the song’s popularity. Home stereo systems and the corner soda fountain with its jukeboxes became focal points. Everybody danced!

Broadway hits included Guys and Dolls, The King and I, Pajama Game, Singin’ in the Rain, Bye Bye Birdie, My Fair Lady, Wonderful Town, Gigi and The Sound of Music.

Hollywood made movies of 1940’s Broadway gems like Annie Get Your Gun, Oklahoma, Carousel, South Pacific and Kiss Me, Kate.

More Hollywood: An American In Paris, That’s Entertainment, The Bandwagon and Funny Face brought standards of an earlier era to life on the silver screen with the singing and dancing of Fred Astaire, Gene Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant and MGM’s talented vocal coach — who almost single-handedly brought American jazz into play in the 1950’s movie musical.

In no particular order, here are some of my favorite 1950’s musical memories:

Howard Keel and Kathryn Grayson in “Kiss Me Kate”

Oscar Levant in “An American In Paris”

Johnny Mercer singing “Accentuate The Positive”

Polly Bergen, with the Jackie Gleason orchestra, singing “Bill” as a medley with “Why Was I Born?”

Fred Astaire “Dancing In The Dark” in Central Park with Cyd Charisse in “The Bandwagon”

Paul Anka’s “Put Your Head On My Shoulder,” Bobby Darin reinventing “Mack The Knife,” The Skyliners recording of the soaring “Since I Don’t Have You” and The Flamingos re-make of the Harry Warren & Al Dubin 1934 classic, ” I Only Have Eyes For You” and Peggy Lee’s “Fever”…all hits of 1959…

The 1950’s truly were an amazing decade.

Jazz & Swing Band Holiday Entertainment

Holiday parties! Our trios, quartets, jazz bands and swing combos play the best holiday music:

The Christmas Song (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire)
I’ll Be Home For Christmas
White Christmas
Winter Wonderland
Let It Snow! Let It Snow! Let It Snow!
Blue Christmas
Santa Baby
Baby It’s Cold Outside
Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas
All I Want For Christmas Is You
Jingle Bell Rock
It’s Beginning To Look A Lot Like Christmas
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus
Oh Holy Night
Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
Silver Bells
Silent Night
Christmas Waltz

All done in rousing jazz and swing style, of course!

Palm Springs Wedding Entertainment: Mid-Century Moderne Jazz & Swing!

Live entertainment for Palm Springs weddings and events!

Our live trios, quartets and bands play the best music in the world, that of the 1920’s, 1930’s, 1940’s and the mid-century moderne 1950’s! It’s perfect entertainment for Old Hollywood style vintage, retro weddings, which we do all over California.

Glamorous Old Hollywood style is a great theme for weddings and events in Palm Springs, a special place that’s long been associated with Hollywood at play.

Turn off the 10 Freeway onto Highway 111 in Palm Springs, and the desert air envelops you like a sultry siren.

First popularized in the 1920’s by the movie crowd, Palm Springs is one of those magical places where times seems to have stood still.

Drive thru town, and on to Cathedral City, Rancho Mirage, Indian Wells and Palm Desert.

The sense of history is rich and textured. You can almost reach out and touch it.

Especially in old Palm Spring.

Palm Springs means 1920’s, 1930’s and 1950’s swing and 1960’s Rat Pack, movie music and the best of Broadway.

It’s all right up our musical alley, of course.

From Cole Porter and the Gershwins to Jules Styne, Harold Arlen, Johnny Mercer, Comden and Green — and the entire Great American Songbook — hooray for Hollywood!

Old Hollywood Weddings: Dancing Like The Stars

Fred Astaire, Ginger Rogers, Gene Kelly, Judy Garland…singing in the rain, dancing in the dark and being captured on film at the height of their beauty and talent.

A glamorous Old Hollywood wedding means live music, with a live band.

And a stunning, eloquent and elegant first dance.

For the cameras, of course.

I tend to encourage people to take real dance lessons from a real dance instructor rather than one who concentrates on perfecting a complicated dance routine taught for the purpose of that one dance on that one night.

Especially when the students have never danced before!

Step two three, turn two three….learn to really dance and you’ll be dancing together for the rest of your lives.

A simple, elegant and romantic first dance is a perfect time for some of the best photo opportunities that happen at a wedding.

Guests gathered around the dance floor, cameras flashing — it’s your moment to shine!

I like to work with brides and grooms to choose a song for the first dance that they will actually be able to dance to. We discuss their level of dance experience and try out dance patterns that fit into the style of their wedding and can be done to various songs that they like. I’m an experienced ballroom dancer myself, which helps.

Dance lessons instill confidence, especially if you are able to find a real dance teacher who teaches you to actually dance rather than just going through the motions of a choreographed song with intricate steps you’ll forget as soon as the wedding is over.

Basic steps are easy to learn, and when someone learns how to lead and the other learns how to follow, dancing becomes as easy as walking.

A great place to start is with the box step, a basic 1-2-3-hesitate pattern that will take you a long way in a variety of rhythms. Foxtrots, waltzes and rhumbas begin with the box step.

Once you’ve mastered the box step, your instructor will teach you simple turns. You walk…you glide…two hearts beating as one.

Dancing is a form of communication. It’s a conversation, with non-verbal communication between two people, one of whom is leading while the other follows. It’s the ultimate love scene. Fred Astaire didn’t need to kiss Ginger Rogers onscreen. He merely took her in his arms… and danced with her.

Simple swing steps are also easily mastered when the art of leading, following and working together as a team is perfected.

This can be a lot of fun!

Because our bands are completely live, we can slow the song down, lengthen it, change the tempo, create a dramatic musical introduction and the ultimate big ending.

Or play the whole song over again, if neccessary!

Example: A “junior groomsman” ran across the dance floor between the photographer and the couple just as their dance was ending and the groom was dramatically dipping the bride. I knew how inmportant that moment was to them for the sake of their pictures; they’d practiced the dance and the big ending with me several times before the wedding.

I was pretty sure from the disappointed look on the photographer’s look that the shot had been ruined, and he nodded to me to confirm that he had not gotten it.

“OK,” I announced from the stage. “We’re going to take that scene over!”

And we did.

By then, the bride and groom were so comfortable dancing together that their second “big ending” was even better than the first.

Perfection is so cool.

Los Angeles Wedding Bands: The Art of Wedding Entertainment

Live music, played by the best musicians in the world, is a thing of great beauty.

What we do doesn’t really exist anymore.

The best musicians in the world play in our bands.

However — and this is important for anyone considering hiring a live band to play music for their wedding — we are not just there to play some music!

We’re there to provide a pink cloud for the bride and groom, their family and friends to float on.

It’s magical, live music. And very real. Charming, dramatic, exciting, passionate, stirring, romantic and joyful. But most of all, engaging. Brides and grooms are getting hip to that word: engaging. They’re calling and telling us that’s what they want.

You bet they do!

When I started singing for events years ago on the East Coast, there were no synthesizers. The piano players played piano!

There were also no wedding coordinators. The upper classes had social secretaries; everyone else got help from their family, the caterer, or the banquet department at the hotel.

Centerpiece games, who’s been married longest and is left standing on the dance floor games, insult the groom and then kneecap him with a paddle games — these had yet to be discovered.

The bridal industry was a gracious tour de force made up of fine florists, caterers, photographers, hotel staffers and bandleaders who knew what it takes to put on a thoroughly enjoyable wedding. On nearly any budget, I might add.

DJ’s had yet to appear on the scene.

Can you imagine, no DJ’s?

The bandleader was the M/C, musical director, family confidante and sometimes wedding director.

And we learned the art of doing weddings.

We learned that it’s as important it is to know what we can’t do as well as what we can do.

Helping our clients set up a pace that works, rather than getting caught up in the crammed-to-the-brim timeline of of extraneous activities today’s bridal websites and magazines are suggesting — they of the meaningless song lists — in an effort to capitalize on advertising dollars.

Along the way, we have watched simplicity, elegance and the love and support of family and friends take a back seat to one-upsmanship.

Hopefully, that is changing for the better.

More and more, brides and grooms are looking for the engaging simplicity vintage music, for tradition and glamour.

And that’s a good thing.

They want to acknowledge friends and relatives who will be with them on their special day, and also those who cannot be.

They want to have fun, and they want glamour and elegance — and to hire a band that will engage and entertain their guests.

Yes!

No amount of recorded music — or a template of unimaginative tunes pulled off a list on some wedding website — can take the place of a fabulous, experienced, intuitive and versatile live band.

We love flowers. Cake is great. Event designers, wow — another very cool trend. A Hollywood set for our Old Hollywood music. Weddings are supposed to be glamorous!

The evolution of the wedding industry has made so much of the “good stuff” rise to the top. Glamour is in, cheese is out.

What a concept!

A Memorable First Dance at a California Wedding

Heather and Bill, you had one heck of a wedding!

Heather’s backless gown was divine, Bill looked so handsome… and the soul food, as promised, was beyond delicious.

The vintage private estate was a perfect setting for a fantastic group of family and friends.

Everyone loves “The Rainbow Connection,” but we never would have thought of it for a first dance if you hadn’t come up with the idea.

They cheered when you danced to it. They screamed with glee. And they told us: That was so Bill and Heather!

Of course that’s exactly what we’re there for.

I can’t wait to see the pictures.

Rainbow Connection, yup.

It’s a keeper.

Swing, R&B & Ballroom at an Asian Wedding for 600!

Asian brides and grooms are often afraid that the guests at their weddings won’t dance, but that never happens to our bands!

Why? Because we set tempos people can dance to. The guests realize immediately that they can trust us, and before long they are gliding around the floor like pros. And some of the guests at a recent Asian wedding for 600 we performed for actually were pros.

They especially enjoyed ballroom dancing: rhumbas, cha cha’s, waltzes, foxtrots and lindys. Some were really accomplished swing dancers.

Right before the DJ was to take over, the crowd decided our little jazz quartet to play “The Chicken Dance” instead of waiting for the DJ to play it.

Huh?

So of course the band played it. For twenty minutes. BIG hit!

There isn’t a recording in the world that can keep “The Chicken Dance” going for twenty minutes — or speed it up as fast as we did at the end. We do the same thing with the hora…more about that another time….

After that, there was no going back to standards, jazz, ballroom or even swing.

They wanted “YMCA.” The DJ didn’t have it. So the band played that, too. For about a half hour – or at least it seemed like a half hour.

I’ve added “The Chicken Dance” to our song list.

And I think we are now qualified to perform “YMCA “better than The Village People.

Hey, we’re real musicians! We can do things CD’s can’t.

And no, we don’t have a video of it.

Because you’re supposed to get rid of something when you add something, I decided to remove “Brick House” and “Celebration” from our list. So cheesy.

I did leave “I Will Survive” and “Copacabana” on the list. I love those tunes!

Just, please….don’t ask us to play “The Macarena.”

We don’t know the words!

Bandleader Judy Chamberlain once played “YMCA” three times in the same night for revelers at a New Year’s Eve party who claimed the song was their ‘club anthem.’

Old Hollywood Wedding Music

“Live and Judy are always better in my book!”

My Champagne flute runneth over….

Here are excerpts from my mailbox:

Message:
I am looking for a great variety of music. As i looked over the list of sounds and musical eras you have managed to expertly and gracefully cover, this is something I have dreamed of at my wedding reception. If you can email with the necessary information, availability and the cost of your services it would be much appreciated. Thank you and have a wonderful day.

Alexis

And another…..

Message:
Judy, I hope that you remember us; Alina and I were privileged enough to
have you and your band perform at our wedding and reception in Long Beach
in May of last year. Since then (as you knew) I deployed to Iraq, and have returned with a little
less hearing in my right ear, but otherwise unscathed.

We have pictures! And I would love to send you a series of pictures for
your office, and also any e-pictures that you would like for your website.
Please send me an address, so I can send you a set of thank you pictures
for you. You were the best!

Very respectfully,

Rob Peters

And another……

Hi Judy,

Bill & I finally decided on ceremony music. I am including some youtube links to the music as we liked it–tempo-wise. Of course, we are interested in your version of the songs beyond the clips we are sending!!

Beyond these three songs, if you would like to sprinkle era/stylistically supportive tunes leading up to the ceremony, that would be wonderful…

I will compile a big list of songs we are thinking of burning to cd so we can see if you were planning to play some of them instead. Live and Judy is always better in my book!

🙂
So excited,
Heather

And an interesting phone conversation:

BRIDE: Hi Judy. I’m calling to talk about our first dance. You know the song we’re doing.
ME: I sure do.
BRIDE: We just aren’t dancers. Can you make the song shorter, maybe find a way to keep it at around a minute?
ME: Of course. We’re a live band. We can do anything.
BRIDE: The dance instructor said to tell you she thinks the right tempo is about 36 measures a minute. Can we stop after a minute or so? Can you find a way to end the song after a minute?
ME: OK, let’s work on that. How about if I sing the song right now for you at a few different tempos and we time the different versions with a stop watch?
BRIDE: Great!
ME: I get 30 measures per minute if we slow it down a bit and about 34 at the tempo of the original recording. And one time through — using just one chorus of the song — brings you to about a minute and a half. We can stop there if you like. Not do a cheesy DJ ‘fade out,’ but a nice ending. Are you learning a ‘routine’ or ballroom ‘moves.’
BRIDE: We thought it would be better to learn some steps, so that’s what we’re doing.
ME: Good.
BRIDE: I keep thinking I am going to fall or something.
ME: I hear this all the time, you know. Everyone is scared, especially during the first chorus. And after that most people stop grimacing and looking tense and whispering instructions to each other, and really start dancing. Because they have figured out that the ‘worst’ is over and by then they’re actually having fun!
BRIDE: After the first chorus, you mean?
ME: Exactly. But if you’re not enjoying yourself and you don’t want to go on, we’ll end the song after one chorus.
BRIDE: I can just throw you a look, right?
ME: Absolutely. I’ll be watching your every move. We can slow down in the middle of the song, speed up in the middle of the song, or just end the thing. But best case scenario, you’ll end up having a blast and the photgrapher will get some wonderful pictures.
BRIDE: I really like that.
ME: Do you feel better now? Not so scared?
BRIDE: I do.
ME: You should have a big ending, too. Maybe a dip.
BRIDE: I think we can do that!
ME: Have fun with the rest of your lessons, and please let me know how you’re doing.
BRIDE: I will. And I really do feel better. I think it will be a lot of fun, actually.

I love helping people plan special things.
Welcome home, Rob. I can’t wait to see the pictures.

A California Beach Wedding with Live Music!

A recent wedding celebration at a distinctive California beach venue made good use of live music. Vintage, Old Hollywood swing and jazz, some Motown and a hefty side order of anything that was ever played in an Audrey Hepburn movie were the order of the day and evening.

I LOVED this wedding! Lots of humor and wit, a bride and groom with delightful taste in music and all-around superb communication despite time constraints….it was a great collaboration!

“No Macarena,” the bride had told me.

“Sinatra. And lots of swing music. And some Elvis, Beatles…and ‘Sweet Caroline’ as a surprise for my fiance, who is a Boston Red Sox fan.”

They would do their first dance after dinner. They wanted a gracious pace, but most of all they wanted their guests to have a lot of fun.

Both from traditional Asian families, they would be making two costume changes during dinner, and visiting with each table in the large ballroom. The music would be vintage, but also upbeat and entertaining.

With an Alice In Wonderland theme, a Mad Hatter Tea Party candy station and a lovely California beach setting, we could have gone in a lot of directions with the music.

Which is exactly what the band did!

The bride thought the guests would be dancers – and they were!

Sometimes, a vital part of our job as musicians is to “provide cover.” If the costume changes take longer than expected — or the ceremony is an hour late in starting, for instance, which has happened — nobody knows the difference because we’re there playing this great live music…..

But this wedding was smooth and flawless, from beginning to end.

The ceremony was especially gorgeous, and made wonderful use of the couple’s mutual love of old movies.

Because I knew that the bride loved Audrey Hepburn, I had suggested that they might like the theme from a movie Hepburn made in the late 1960’s with Albert Finney, “Two For The Road.”

They liked it so well that they decided to use the words from the song for their wedding vows!

More Audrey Hepburn: the bride came down the aisle to “Funny Face.”

It was fabulous!

“I was watching the whole thing,” one of the florists told me.

“It was amazing,” she said “The bride and groom and the band seemed to be working as one.”

I liked that, because it so captured the essence of what we do.

Since everything we play is completely live, we can “time” a walk down the aisle for maximum drama.

For their first dance, the copule waltzed to another Audrey Hepburn movie tune, “Moon River.”

And then “Besame Mucho” — and a bunch of swing and rock and even some old “doo-wop” like “Since I Don’t Have You.”

There was a lot of dancing, and the costume changes were a big hit.

“Sweet Caroline” was an interactive hit, just as the bride had planned it – and a big surprise to the groom. also as planned.

The band reprised “Two For The Road” for the last dance.

I can’t wait to see the pictures.

Some things are priceless.

Al Viola: Guitarist Hitched His Wagon to a Star Named Sinatra. Can we be Frank?

When my great good friend and musical colleague Al Viola — who played guitar on every album Frank Sinatra recorded from 1956 to 1980 — passed away last year, the jazz world lost one of its greatest musicians

At 87, his nimble fingers were as fast as ever. His “chops” were so strong that you could hardly see his hands move.

I worked with him several weeks before he died, and he never missed a note. He played as well that night as he had when he’d been at the top of his career, a Los Angeles studio musician in a small league that barely exists anymore — when music was real, and real musicians played it.

Al took good care of himself, drank a lot of red wine and never developed arthritis. His fabulous late wife Glenna took good care of him, too. And he took good care of us, the lucky ones who got to work closely with him.

He cared so much, and he gave so much of himself.

Bobby Troup, the pianist and composer best known for writing “Route 66,” used to say that if Al was your friend you really didn’t need any others.

Al mostly played rhythm guitar in the Sinatra band, because that was the sound that Sinatra liked. But he could play anything. Melodies, bossa novas, his own version of flamenco; he was a chameleon. He could sound like anyone or anything the job called for. Years after playing many of the tracks on the Sinatra/Jobim albums that were credited to Antonio Carlos Jobim, Al was given formal credit for his work.

He played on Sinatra’s Acadamy Award-winining song, “All The Way. And he also played the mandolin on “The Godfather” theme for that movie’s soundtrack, which won an Academy Award.

The mandolin is in a museum in Reseda. I was fond of joking onstage that while the museum might have had the mandolin, I still had Al.

It was always a thrill to hear him “comping” behind me, setting up the intros and outros, holding down the time, playing big fat passing chords and making music at such a high level that it could take your breath away.

We did concerts and shows and so many wonderful things together, and for the last ten years of his life he was a big part of mine. What Bobby Troup had said about his loyalty as a friend went for Al the musician, too. If Al was in your band, you didn’t need anybody else.

He could bail you out of any jam.

Sinatra turned to him one night at Royal Albert Hall in Paris and, with no other warning than saying a few words to the audience about a Cole Porter tune he was about to sing — and giving Al a “look” — indicated that he wanted guitar accompaniment instead of the usual piano backup on the song. It was as subtle as that. Al had never played the song alone with Sinatra before, had never rehearsed it with him and was racking his brain trying to come up with the right key to start setting it up in. Only a split second passed before he remembered hearing Sinatra do the song, “Night and Day” with Sinatra at Jilly’s in New York a few weeks earler.

Before Sinatra had finished his sentence, Al was well into the introduction — in the right key.

It was a very famous moment in the concert litany of Francis Albert Sinatra.

The Los Angeles Times writer who worked on Al’s obituary knew about the duet and asked me why, on that night in Paris in 1962, Sinatra had turned to Al instead of having Bill Miller play “Night and Day.”

The reason was simple. Sinatra had noticed during the set that the piano at Royal Albert Hall was out of tune.

Al, however, was playing a very IN tune guitar, an exquisite handmade gut string instrument that Sinatra had just commissioned in Spain and presented to him on the tour.

Of course, Sinatra knew that Al would have no trouble “faking” an introduction and accompaniment to that song — or any song. He knew literally thousands of them, in all sorts of genres including rock and roll, which he played with me often.

“Don’t tell nobody,” he would say.

“Learn tunes,” Al would tell anyone who asked him for the “best advice” he could give aspiring musicians.

Like me, he was the ultimate “tune geek.” He loved being out on a limb with me, loved the vast repertoire, and the suspense of not knowing what I was going to do next. If he’d ever heard something, he could play it. He had perfect pitch, perfect “time” — and he knew the history and the words to everything. It was impossible to “stump” him.

He could stay up all night, moving over to play the piano on an empty stage after everyone was gone and the “younger” members of the band had long deserted us. “Hey, Cookie.” he’d say. “Remember this one? Just one more….”

The consummate studio musician, Al turned up on everybody’s records. The notoriously difficult-to-record Julie London was putty in his accompanistic hands. Wierd Al Yankovich used Al on his albums, and Paul Simon had him sweeten guitar licks on “Bridge Over Troubled Water.” That’s Al on the “West Side Story” soundtrack. And “Blazing Saddles,” and so many more.

One night, yawning thru the umpteenth time I’d seen “Kiss Me Kate,” I sat bolt upright, realizing that one of the oddly-dressed musicians in the scene where Ann Miller sings and dances to “Too Darned Hot” was Al.

“I thought I knew about everything you’ve ever done, but I saw you in a movie I hadn’t known about last night,” I teased him the next day. “So you’ve been holding out on me.”

“Oh yeah?,” he shot back. “How did you know it was me?”

“You think I wouldn’t recognize you even with black hair, and in a matador suit?” I chided him.

“Don’t tell nobody,” he said.

People used to ask Al why he hadn’t more aggressively pursued a careed as a virtuoso guitarist, seeking fame and fortune for himself. He easily had the talent to have done so.

“I hitched my wagon to a star named Sinatra,” he would tell them.

“It took me all over the world, and I had a great career.”

Al never complained, never let on that he was losing his battle with cancer, even when the end was very near. He was a purist in all things, from love of the music and the homage and respect he paid to the composer and the melody to his loyalty and integrity …and his desire to make things easier for those around him, not harder.

The first thing he ever said to me, on the first gig we did together was: “Where do you want me to sit, Cookie?”

I can’t believe you’re gone, Al. I thought you’d be here forever.

Talk soon, ok?

Al Viola has left the building.

Don’t tell nobody.