[Dixielandjazz] Dorseys

Steve Voce stevevoce at virginmedia.com
Tue Apr 19 00:53:40 PDT 2011


I was delighted that so many people liked the Dorsey stories. But they were the tip of the iceberg.
The real and hilarious ones are here:

Nat Pierce and I used to exchange
conversation tapes regularly and I have made two particular CDs from two cassettes that he sent
to me in the Seventies. This is how I described them for a firned.
The first track on the first CD is Nat's message to
me. You may find it interesting or not! If not, move on.
He had a cheap Sony recorder that he took everywhere with him and recorded
virtually everything. On this occasion he was on a tour of Canada in
a package that included Dizzy Gillespie's Quintet, George Shearing's
Quintet, Carmen McRae, Buddy De Franco's Quartet, Supersax and the Louie
Bellson Big Band.
The CDs are made up of a conversation in a hotel bedroom between Louie
Bellson, Buddy De Franco, Nick DiMaio and Nat. (Nat and Nick were in
Louie's big band). Before the conversation there's a brief conversation with
the members of Supersax, who had lost their sheet music. The conversation
in the hotel room is about the Dorseys.
De Franco, Bellson and lead trombonist Di Maio had been in Tommy's band, and
Nick had played with Tommy's and Jimmy's bands. The stories are hilarious.  Although badly
recorded it's well worth putting up with the sound for the high quality of
the anecdotes.
After that the tape switches to the next morning when Nat and Buddy are
joined at the hotel swimming pool by Dizzy Gillespie and Carmen McRae.
Not so funny now, but very absorbing.
Finally, to fill the second CD I put in a short interview I did with Jack
Sheldon at a television studio in LA in 1980. Among the hilarity he tells of sitting down on a
couch on top of Leo Sayer's wife, a tiny woman who was well pregnant at the time.
These stories have made me laugh so much that I feel they need a wider audience.
Yesterday I sent a dozen pairs of CDs of interviews that I had done to people in the States
who belong to another group. The mailing costs made my eyes water.
Is there anyone in the Dixieland group who would be prepared to make say ten or a dozen copies
of these two discs (that would be 20 or so discs in total) and mail them out to Dixieland group members
who might wish to hear them? It would be first come first served, and I had to put a pretty firm
block on the ones I sent out yesterday or the numbers would have got out of hand.
But there's nothing to stop people who get the CDs making
copies for their friends.
Steve Voce





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