[Dixielandjazz] Re: Jackie Gleason Show

[Will Connelly]

Bill Haesler wrote:

>>LRG4003 at aol.com
>>wrote:
>>
>>    
>>
>Bob Ringwald asked: > Am I wrong?  Or didn't Phil Napoleon have the
>Dixieland band on that show. Johnny Varro played piano in the band, on the
>show.<
>
>Dear Bob,
>The answer is yes.
>Johnny Varro was with Phil Napoleon's band, and the Jackie Gleason Show,
>in Miami during the mid 1960s.
>>From 1966 Phil Napoleon ran a club, 'Napoleon's Retreat', near Miami, at
>that time.
>I am sure that there are listmates who can expand on this.
>Kind regards,
>Bill. 
>
>  
>
     Jesus, Bill, you're phenomenal!  You're about a gazillion miles 
away and yet you know what was going on in South Florida in the 60s!
     Yes,  Johnny was on Phil's band and Phil's club was the back room 
in the Sinatra-owned Jilly's that I recall was on the 163rd Street 
Causeway in Miami Beach. Pianist Bobby Rosen was also on the Memphis 
Five (pre and post Johnny), as was bassist Al Mattucci, the incredible 
trombonist who wasn't Bill Allred and whose name will pop into my memory 
two seconds after I hit the 'sEND button, and clarinetist Bill Burns  
(who I worked with for months on Sunday mornings in a tatoo and 
urine-infested motorcycle bar on the western edge of Fort Lauderdale). 
Sometime in the early eighties, Phil was crowned emporer of the hot Jazz 
and Alligator Gumbo Society and I interviewed him on a radio show, in 
which he talked about how his band was hired to entertain Henry Ford, 
Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and I think Walter Chrysler as these 
titans of industry rode a private rail car from their vacation manses in 
South Florida to the north. Off air, he told me that that train ride was 
a model of propriet very much at odds with the Miami-New York train 
trips with Gleason, which were Baccunalian.
    Phil's band was tight, and he allowed hius guys full latitude 
although his own solos, once committed to memory, were cast in concrete 
and unvarying.
     Thanks for stirring the memories, my friend.
Will Commelly