Doc Severinsen - Kim Michael %

THE GREATEST HORN PLAYER OF OUR TIME

Kim Michael is an American Author, Novelist, Award Winning Songwriter & Composer, creative consultant and founder of the popular “In Search of Wonder” Website/Blog, and the “Kim Michael YouTube Channel.”

Sometime ago a man named Ed Barr approached me about writing a piece for a tribute book about Doc Severinsen, the Tonight Show/Hollywood celebrity who I had worked with for several years in the late seventies. To my knowledge the book has not been released yet, but here is the part that I contributed.

Admittedly, in the beginning, I was a little reluctant. It's not often that books about celebrities end up being very kind and Doc was, and still is, a very special person to me. He is one of the few universally loved people in the entertainment industry; by people who know him, and by the millions of Tonight Show fans who knew him only as the outrageously dressed trumpet player who led the Tonight Show Orchestra. All that aside, I believe him to be the greatest trumpet player of our age, and perhaps, of all time, along with being one of the nicest people in Hollywood. And so, I decided to do it.

So, who am I? I was one of the many people working behind the scenes that you never really see but who are critical in making the magic happen. For a little over two years, I worked as Doc’s stage manager dealing with the technical aspects of moving and setting up his shows across the country-- including twelve weeks a year in Las Vegas.

I first saw Doc perform years before, while a student at Bradley University in Peoria Illinois, where I eventually went on to get a degree in music, never realizing that roughly five years later, I would be working for him. I came to Los Angeles one rainy February night in 1976 on a bus, my suitcase and guitar in hand, just one of the many aspiring musicians to make that journey in search of the “magic” of Hollywood.

Now, I had a lot of experience even by then. I fronted local bands in Peoria, Illinois all through high school and college. I worked as an actor in professional summer-stock theater, I’d won several regional talent contests sponsored by local radio stations, I even did a syndicated TV special while performing in Peoria area nightclubs. I mention all of this because I know what it’s like to stand center stage, in front of an audience, see that spotlight coming at you like a freight train, blocking out everything except the music and the performance, experiencing the rush of it, all the while knowing it can go south in a moment. How many have tried and failed to reach that golden ring of fame? I have often thought, in Doc’s case, it was his talent and his skill that pre-destined him for greatness, though destiny may have altered his path a bit along the way.

Even so, I probably understand more than most the kind of discipline and dedication it takes to do what Doc achieved in his career, and no tribute would be complete without acknowledging those long years of hard work and effort.

I’ve often wondered what possessed Doc to wear that first, loud tie that caught Johnny Carson’s attention, the moment that launched a totally unanticipated career path: the odd ties, the outrageous outfits, and then the endearing persona that would follow, all of which would become his trademark to millions. From that moment on Doc was no longer just a trumpet player, or orchestra leader. From Hollywood’s perspective, he became the total package, and that made him marketable on so many different levels.

But the serious side of Doc’s life, the side that most people would never see, revolved around his dedication to his talent and his music. He was a well-known musician even before the Tonight Show, something I don’t think many people really knew.

I still remember seeing him when we played Las Vegas, coming in, covered in sweat, after running several miles in the brutal Las Vegas heat. He did it every day as part of his routine, which he did religiously to keep his breathing strong. He usually stayed in an isolated location somewhere on the hotel grounds not because of his celebrity, but because much of his day was spent practicing, often more than five hours, which, if you happen to be staying in a room next to him, you would likely not be happy.

How I ended up with Doc is an interesting story. A well-connected friend had arranged for me to sing for a wonderful lady named Mary Markham, a talent coordinator for a number of television shows including Hollywood Squares, and ten other top shows of the time. She had worked extensively with Wayne Newton at the start of his career and though she, herself, was not an entertainer or musician, she had a unique eye for talent and an amazing understanding of what it takes to become successful in Hollywood. I sang for her, and she liked me. A friend of both Doc and his manager Bud Robinson, she arranged for me to audition to be one of Doc’s background singers known as “Today’s Children”.

As it turned out, a position wasn’t open, but Bud liked me and asked if I might be interested in a job moving amplifiers, essentially a “roady” job. I had nothing better, and I reasoned, at the very least, it would put me closer to people who might be able to help me with my career later on, so I joined Doc Severinsen’s group in May of that year.

Now, for a newly graduated kid from the Midwest, arriving at the famed Tonight Show Bungalow was kind of a mind-boggling experience. Stopping at the main gates, I had to wait as the guard called for a clearance from Doc’s office. As I sat there, a Jaguar pulled in behind me, then went in around me. I glimpsed the driver for just a second as it passed- Burt Reynolds. Finally cleared, I drove to the back of the property and then parked. To my amazement, the Tonight Show Bungalow really was a “bungalow.” I thought all those years listening to Johnny make fun of it, he was just joking…turns out, it really was just a bungalow. I sat in the car for a moment just looking at it, unassuming and modest at best, the building was clearly not what I expected. Still, this was where Doc’s and Ed McMahon’s offices were, along with many of the Tonight Show staff writers.

It felt almost surreal being there. Typically, I am not impressed with celebrity, but I grew up watching the Tonight Show and Johnny Carson…and Doc, so this was different in my mind. As I opened the door to go in, and a man and woman stepped out. I paused to hold the door for them. Darren McGavin glanced back at me smiled, said “Thanks,” and then the lady he was with smiled but said nothing. Linda Evans, the beautiful blond from the show Big Valley. As I stepped inside, I murmured under my breath, “Toto…I don’t think we are in Kansas anymore.”

My new office was Doc’s office which I shared with Bud Robinson (Doc’s manager). Bud’s claim to fame was that he had been the male part of the dance duo called “Bud and Cece Robinson,” popular in the early days of television. It’s interesting, in all the time I worked for Doc, I never saw him in that office, still that was my home from 1pm to 5pm every day when we weren’t on the road.

I also shared the office with Rick Olson (who functioned as Doc’s personal assistant and valet). Doc’s office was next to Ed McMahon’s who rarely spoke to me when we passed in the hall and there was a chair just outside my office door where I would often find the little known (at least then) Jay Leno or David Letterman sitting, joking with the Tonight Show staff.

At 5 pm I would close up shop and occasionally walk over to STAGE 1 where the Tonight Show had already begun taping. I would hang around the “Green Room” which, by the way, is really green. I’d see Johnny come in, as well as the other guests appearing on the show that night. I saw Johnny often, but really only talked to him once, and then it was just in passing.

The first time I sat in on a practice session with Doc and the Tonight Show Orchestra was in, of all places, that famed STUDIO 1 where the Tonight Show was taped. Again, it was a surreal moment seeing the set, dark and empty, of a show I had watched or years. While Doc and the band rehearsed, I walked around. I stood on the star in the floor where Johnny stood each night, doing his monologue. I looked up at the empty seats, amazed at how big the audience area was. Most live television shows, even popular ones, have fairly small seating areas because it is difficult to consistently get enough people to make up an audience, but that was never a problem for the Tonight Show. Even when I would drive by earlier in the day on my way to the back lot, there would be people already lining up, waiting to get in.

I even sat at Johnny’s desk. You don’t realize it, but if you watch any of the reruns, Johnny actually looks tall, and Ed looks absolutely huge. It’s not a camera trick, the entire set, including the furniture, were downsized to make everyone look bigger—an old Hollywood movie trick.

Not long after that I did my first concert with Doc—THE SAHARA TAHOE. Doc opened for believe it or not, Ed McMahon. I still remember the volume bordering on being painful. It was before the days of ear bud monitors and musicians had to rely on stage monitors. Just so Doc could hear himself play, two large monitor speakers were placed at his feet and up aimed directly at him. He often complained that he couldn’t hear himself, and so, the sound guys kept raising the volume on his monitors, which in turn resulted in them having to raise everything else to balance it all out, and that back and forth continued until the sound levels became almost unbearable.

After doing several concerts I decided to address the problem. I met with the sound guys and asked them to do something that at first, they were reluctant to do. I had them change the settings on the mix going into Doc’s monitors. I had had a lot of experience with sound systems, enough to know that the problem wasn’t Doc’s hearing as they kept telling me. The changes were almost instantaneous. Doc could suddenly hear his horn exactly the way he heard it without amplification, and I made sure those changes were always in place from that moment on. I don’t know if Doc ever knew it was me working with the sound guys that made the difference, but his manager Bud Robinson did. Soon he had me overseeing the sound on both the stage and the “house” mixers. At one point Bud even asked me if I would be interested in mixing the sound, but that required more technical skill than I had at the time. Still, I knew how every mike, every instrument, every line and circuit had to sound, and I could get that sound by working with the sound guys, without having to do it myself. And besides, there was another reason why I couldn’t be tied down to a mixing board.

SPOILER ALLERT!!

If you ask anyone who saw Doc’s show in those early days, they would tell you, hands down, the most spectacular part of the show was when Doc would ask for requests from the audience and invariably there would be one guy who would ask for (of all things) FLIGHT OF THE BUMBLE BEE by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. If you know the piece, you know it was not written for a trumpet, and I doubt that even Rimsky-Korsakov would have believed that it could be played on a trumpet. But Doc could do it. What seemingly appeared to be a random request, made on the spur of the moment, wasn’t really a “spur of the moment” request at all, because the guy in the audience requesting it, night after night…was me.

I ended up doing the ruse, because I was the only one whose voice could be heard, even in the largest auditorium (all those years of vocal training), and I didn’t need a microphone. One night Doc got tickled and stopped the show, after hearing my voice cut through the audience, he paused and looked up shielding his eyes from the lights, “Excuse me sir…but what do you do for a living?” Without hesitation I yelled back, “I’m a wallpaper hanger!” Everyone on stage not knowing what to expect suddenly broke up laughing… including Doc. He didn’t do that very often for fear I would come up with something that made him really laugh, and if you’re a trumpet player, you know, you can’t play a trumpet and laugh at the same time, especially if you are about to play “Flight of the Bumble Bee”.

I wondered, if at some point, people would actually catch on to the subterfuge when they could clearly see the guys in the band reading music on the stands in front of them! But no one did. The audience was always so mesmerized by Doc’s performance… no one ever noticed.

Back at the office it was not uncommon for me to occasionally run errands for Doc when we were in town, usually with Rick, but my main job was to move the Doc Severinsen show around the country. It turned out to be more than just moving amplifiers. I really did enjoy what I was doing, but it was a big responsibility for a kid just a few years out of college. The primary difficulty, as I soon learned, was that every location had its own set of challenges and no two were the same; and there were times, honestly, when I wondered how we would even be able to pull it off, and yet, it always worked out. I learned a lot from those experiences and much of it holds true today. I came to realize that whenever you do anything difficult, especially when it seems almost impossible, there will always come a time when you feel like you’re on the verge of failing, and it is at that moment… that you are the closest to succeeding.

I liked my work, and I was good at what I did, but that’s not to say I didn’t have a few tense moments with Doc. Doc is a “perfectionist” and I understood that, in fact, I would have expected nothing less. Even so, Doc was never difficult, or even unreasonable, but he always knew what he wanted and most of all, he never “settled.” I liked that about him. I had to learn that the hard way myself. I have constantly encountered people in my own life, who tried to convince me they knew more about what I wanted than I did, and yes, sometimes they were right. But I have yet to see an instance when I compromised, that I didn’t regret it later.

I think many people, even those who are familiar with Doc, may not know that he is also a prolific song writer. He wrote the opening theme for the television show Designing Women (Georgia on My Mind), and he cowrote a song that hit the top forty. What is interesting about that particular song, Doc had no idea he was the co-writer. I asked him about it once and he admitted he had only mentioned it to Mac Davis in passing. He told Mac, “Sometimes you just have to stop and smell the roses along the way.” Low and behold a short time later, Mac Davis’s new song- “Stop and Smell the Roses” hit the charts and reached the #9 spot and stayed there for 10 weeks. What’s funny about it, Doc told me, “People were congratulating me on my new hit song, and I had no idea what they were talking about.”

In all my time with Doc, I never encountered anyone who didn’t like him, much less love him. He had an innocent, genuine way about him, that seemed to shine through without any pretense, and I often thought that he never really thought of himself as a celebrity. He knew the silly clothes and quips back and forth with Johnny were what made him famous, but in some ways, deep down, I think he’d would have rather been known for his music and his talent. But that’s not how the entertainment business works; the public is fickle and choses what they like and what they don’t like, and I think he realized at some point, the funny clothes and the outrageous bandleader persona, were just a means to an end, and I think in time, he was ok with the tradeoff.

I saw that level of affection for him play out again and again, particularly with other celebrities in Hollywood. I remember him running into Kenny Rogers before Kenny had become really famous, and they were like old friends, giving him a big hug. Celebrities would go out of their way to see Doc. Once, while the band was rehearsing in STUDIO 1, Susanne Somers came over from next door where they were taping Hollywood Squares to give him a hug and kiss. When Doc played Las Vegas, there was always a constant stream of famous people dropping by between or after shows to see him. I remember once he had to go back to his hotel room between shows, only to find a note taped to his dressing room door when he returned, “Love the show!” signed Richard Burton.

In my normal course of running back and forth during the show, one night I tripped over someone sitting in the dark, on a folding chair backstage. I didn’t have time to talk or even apologize. When I reached the other side, the stage manager glanced at me, “…do you know who you just tripped over?” I didn’t have a clue. “That’s Elvis.” By the time I looked back, the chair was empty and Elvis “had left the building.” The backstage crew told me they often saw him. He’d sneak in without his entourage to sit and listen to Doc’s show and then leave. Afterward, I felt bad. I realized that my only memory of a real encounter with Elvis would be me tripping over him in the dark, and not knowing it was him.

I mention all of this not because it was important to me, but I think it speaks volumes about how much Doc was loved, and not just by celebrities. I’d seen him sit and talk to almost anyone as if he knew them, and I never, ever saw him be rude to a fan—not ever.

Now, there is one story about Doc that I love to tell, and it has everything to do with having a bad night, but not about Doc having a bad night. The bad night belonged to Bob Newhart. Doc opened for Bob at the Copa Room in the Sands hotel. The hotel is no longer there today, but it was famous for being the smallest and most intimate showroom in Las Vegas, and in its day, it hosted some of the biggest names in show business. Stars like Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Danny Thomas, and at one time or another, the entire rat pack (as they were referred to).

But the room was small and the backstage even smaller, which created a problem for Bob. There was not enough room or time enough to switch out the Tonight Show Orchestra with the house orchestra to play Bob’s theme song as he came on and then off. It was finally decided that, at the end of Doc’s show, Doc’s band would stay in place, and with the curtain closed, they would play Bob both on and then off at the end of his show. Because the curtain remained closed during Bob’s show, the guys in the band would leave and go back to the dressing room to cool off because the backstage area, cramped as it was, would get extremely hot under the intense showroom lights. By the time the guys got to the end of Doc’s show they would literally be drenched in sweat. Ed Shaughnessy would come off stage looking like he had been dunked in a swimming pool. And there was not enough time to change clothes before they had to go back up, so they would go down to the dressing room, strip down, and sit in their underwear, in an effort to cool off.

Now Bob had a “cue,” a line in his show that indicated when he was getting ready to end, and the guys would listen for that line on the dressing room monitors. Usually there was enough time for them to get back in place before Bob would start to walk off and because the curtain remained closed no one in the audience would see them come and go.

On this particular night however, Bob was having a terrible night. Nobody laughed, everything he tried flopped. Finally, out of desperation, he suddenly threw up his hands and said— “Good night, everybody.” No cue phrase, no nothing. For the guys downstairs sitting in their underwear, it was a “deer in the headlights” moment. They jumped up half naked practically running over each other, trying to get back up to the stage, but only a couple of them made it. Now you would think that if only a couple guys made it, that at least one of them would think to actually play the melody of Bob’s theme song…but no one did. Instead, they played their parts, and what erupted from behind that closed curtain sounded like the worst version of a grade school band rehearsal. Bob stopped in his tracks, looked at the audience and then back at the closed curtain. “Sorry folks, but I just gotta see this.” He had them open the curtain and there sat the Tonight Show Orchestra, at least a few of them, in their underwear. Bob broke down laughing and the place literally roared. I bet it was one of the biggest laughs Bob ever had in his entire career.

Now Doc, the unrelenting perfectionist, had seen and heard everything, and I think it was the maddest I had ever seen him. He raced backstage, down the stairs to the dressing room, and he was…hot. Bob came in right behind him, took Doc aside and said, “this is all my fault. It wasn’t them. I didn’t say the cue and they were only doing the best they could under the circumstances.” In time Doc even laughed about it, and if I remember correctly, the next night a case of scotch arrived in the dressing for the guys… an apology from Bob.

Now there are many more stories that I could tell about Doc and the show, but my all-time favorite was one of the last shows I did for Doc before leaving. It happened in Cleveland Ohio just days before Christmas. Doc’s show had evolved by that time. He still traveled with The Tonight Show Orchestra, but now it had been expanded to include players from the local symphonies. We now traveled with a core group of additional musicians that included the first chair of each section of a true symphony orchestra. The rest of the spots were filled with musicians, usually from their own local symphony.

Doc’s new opening was the Star Wars Theme, with a new light show. The opening was spectacular, and Doc’s version of the Star Wars theme--absolutely amazing. The theater was an old Vaudeville venue called the Palace, which was under restoration.

I had never seen a true Vaudeville theater until that night and admittedly it was a haunting experience. It reminded me of “Phantom of the Opera.” A stairway at the back of the massive stage led down, deep underground, where old rotting cement pools were used to keep water animals like seals (a popular animal act in such theaters), along with stalls for other animal acts. Close by, old, aging dressing rooms that thankfully were no longer used. That whole area had the mystique of the ancient catacombs beneath the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Interconnecting them all were endless tunnels that, at one time, connected to all the other Vaudeville houses in Cleveland, allowing entertainers to appear at one theater and then use the tunnels to appear at another theater across town, on the same night. Now they were eerily boarded up making you wonder what might be lurking on the other side.

The day of the concert, our plane landed in a snowstorm. We were told that it would probably be one of the worst snowstorms to ever hit Cleveland. Looking at the snow drifts piling up outside, I wondered if the show would even go on. The roads were all closed and none of the local symphony players could get through. Only our own skeleton players were able to take to the stage that night, and only several hundred souls braved the storm to make finally it inside. For a moment I peered out from behind the curtain to see them, almost lost in that old, gargantuan theater that probably sat thousands.

With everything going wrong, to my amazement, Doc decided to do the concert regardless. Talk about courage, and an amazing sense of humor. The curtain opened to the Star Wars theme, one violin, one horn player (other than Doc), one drummer, and so on. The sound was crazy, and unbelievable, and impossible, and above it all, that magnificent trumpet of Doc Severinsen somehow carried it all.

The audience, captivated and mesmerized, watched in amazement, their awe so thick you could almost touch it. They saw something that night that few audiences will ever see, a moment of perfection and impromptu brilliance unlike any other. That night Doc played for well over three hours, at times jamming with other members of the Tonight Show orchestra, music legends like Snooky Young (a personal friend), who traveled with us and Doc played the kind of music that he loved, and he shared it with a few hundred souls who would likely never see another concert like it again, and to tell you the truth, I count myself lucky to have seen and heard it myself.

Today, nearly forty years later, Ed and Johnny, as well as many of the people behind the scenes, who made Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show famous, are just a memory. I did go out to see Doc performing in Nashville several years ago, and went backstage to see him. I said do you remember me? He looked at me for a minute-- "I used to work for you, Doc." Suddenly he smiled, "I KNOW YOU!" Just before I left Doc's show all those years ago, he said to me tongue-in-cheek, "Be kind to me when you write your book..." When I introduced him to Joann my wife, I said, "Doc...this is the girl I left you for." "And by the way, I've written two books and you aren't in either one of them." He laughed, and we laughed. We chatted a bit, and then it was over, and that was the last time I saw him.

Even now, I am surprised how many people don't remember who Johnny Carson or Ed McMahon are, and yet people still remember Doc Severinsen and I don't think it is just because of the outrageous clothes, or his leadership of the Tonight Show Orchestra, or even his reputation for being one of the kindest and gentlest men in Hollywood; it will be for his dedication to his art and his insistence on perfection that will stand the test of time.

It is true that no one thing determines success or greatness, it is often the intersection of many pathways, many aspirations, happening at the same moment in time; but for students, for musicians, for artists of all kinds; what Doc Severinsaen has taught us, is nothing of greatness can be achieved without great dedication, great commitment, and great inspiration. And in my estimation, that is where the timeless legacy of Doc Severinsen’s talent and inspiration... will live forever.

My Website: “In Search of Wonder” Kim Michael-https://kim-michael-author.com/

Kim Michael YouTube Channel: https://shorturl.at/ekyQ7