[Dixielandjazz] Embarrassing moment on stage

[John Wilder]

Katie Cavera spoke of frozen fingers.  I've not had that problem, living in
warm Sacramento, but it did remind me of an embarrassing situation.  When I
was 13 years old, I was hired to play in a minstrel show.  We all sat in a
semi-circle on stage while each person did his act, so we were always on
stage.  I played banjo as a specialty act, and I had special effects during
my number.  I played wearing white cotton gloves (I did not cut off the
finger tips, I learned to play wearing the full glove) because for part of
the song they would turn out all of the stage lights and turn on black
lights.  The only things you could see were my hands, my shirt and my teeth!
Then they'd turn on twinkling multi-colored Christmas lights inside the head
of my banjo.  It always got lots of applause, and quite often I got a
standing ovation for it.

 

Well, one night I caught the tip of the third (middle) finger of my glove on
part of a fret that stuck out slightly from the neck and tore the glove
pretty badly.  After my act I went back to the circle to sit down, and
people in the house were still applauding.  I innocently decided to show the
audience that I had ripped my glove while playing.  (Perhaps some of you can
see where I'm going with this.)  I stood up and held out my middle finger
toward the audience to show them the ripped glove, but the audience started
booing.  Maybe they couldn't see the rip???  I showed it again, and more
booing.  Finally I overheard someone who leaned over to the director of the
show (who was seated next to me) and whispered, "Tell Johnny to quit
flipping off the audience!"

 

At that very moment I realized that the message I was attempting to send to
them was quite different than the message they were receiving.  I worked at
that theatre for 13 years, but at the last show I played there, someone was
still recalling "when Johnny flipped off the audience."