THE FUNNIEST PEOPLE IN MUSIC: 250 ANECDOTES

By David Bruce

Dedicated with love to Dad and Tiffany

SMASHWORDS EDITION

Copyright 2010 by Bruce D. Bruce

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

***

The Funniest People in Music: 250 Anecdotes

Chapter 1: Activism to Critics

Activism

• Jazz musician Duke Ellington was active in the civil rights movement. In Baltimore, he performed at a concert. Afterward, he presented himself at a restaurant where African-American students had protested segregation. Like the students, Mr. Ellington was not permitted to eat at the restaurant, but his action succeeded in giving lots of publicity to the civil rights struggle in Baltimore. In addition, Mr. Ellington declined to perform a concert in Little Rock, Arkansas, after learning that the audience would be segregated. A short time later, he did perform in Dallas and Houston—but only after he was promised that blacks and whites in the audience could sit together.

• Because African-American actor/singer Paul Robeson used his right of free speech to criticize prejudice and injustice in America, the United States government revoked his passport. In 1952, he attempted to cross the border into Canada—which is normally permitted even when one doesn’t have a passport—but he was stopped at the border. It looked as if the concert he had planned to give to benefit Canadian union workers would have to be cancelled, but the workers traveled to the border, and Mr. Robeson sang to them from across the border in the United States.

• World-famous cellist Pablo Casals often took a stand for his beliefs. In Brussels, Belgium, he once declined to perform unless the musicians were paid for their rehearsal time. Tickets had been sold to the rehearsals, and Mr. Casals believed that the musicians ought to be paid when they performed at any event that people paid to attend. In addition, when Francisco Franco took control of Spain, Mr. Casals opposed him, and he declined to perform in countries that recognized Francisco Franco’s fascist government.

• On a trip to Southern Rhodesia, which was then part of the British empire but is now the self-ruled country of Zimbabwe, jazz musician Louis Armstrong insisted that he play only in front of integrated audiences. For the opening concert, 25,000 people showed up and the seats were filled with both blacks and whites. During his concert, Mr. Armstrong looked out over the audience and said, “I gotta tell y’all something—it’s very nice to see this.”

• Pianist Artur Rubinstein cancelled a tour in Italy because of the then-government’s anti-Semitism; he also returned a prestigious award—the Order of the Commander of the Crown. Although people talked about how much money Mr. Rubinstein would lose, he talked about how many hearts he would win. He signed the letter with which he returned the award, “Artur Rubinstein, Jewish pianist.”

• World-renowned conductor Pierre Monteux was once denied a room at a hotel, but when the manager discovered that Mr. Monteux was famous, he said that he could arrange a room for him because Mr. Monteux was “somebody.” Mr. Monteux refused the room and departed, saying, “Everybody is somebody.”

Age

• The aged conductor Serge Koussevitsky disliked the spiritless playing of a musician, so he told him, “Don’t play like an old man.” The musician responded, “You are an old man yourself.” Maestro Koussevitsky replied, “I know that. But when I conduct like an old man, I will give up the job.” The musician thereafter played with spirit.

• For decades, Sir Thomas Beecham conducted from memory. However, in his old age he sometimes used a score while conducting. When Neville Cardus asked him about this, Sir Thomas replied, “I have been going through my scores recently, and I find that they hold my interest from the first page to the last.”

• Latin singer Ricky Martin, famous especially for the huge hit “Livin’ la Vida Loca” (“Living the Crazy Life”), sang when he was a teenager as a member of the Latin boy band Menudo, but he left the group before he turned 18. He had to—the group’s mandatory retirement age is 17.

Alcohol

• During the early part of the 20th century, dancer Anna Pavlova toured in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, which is famous for its beer. There, Ms. Pavlova’s music director, Theodore Stier, asked a traffic officer where he could find a place in Milwaukee that sold really good German beer. The traffic officer looked Mr. Stier over for a moment, then he said, “Brother, there’s a place on every block—thank God!”

• Shortly after Edwin McArthur had become the accompanist for soprano Kirsten Flagstad, he struggled as he attempted to open a champagne bottle in her dressing room. She watched him for a moment, then told him, “Here, Edwin—this is more important for you to learn than all the songs we will do together.” She then taught him how to open a champagne bottle.

Animals

• While overseas entertaining troops in the Middle East during the Second World War, Joyce Grenfell was singing when a mouse ran over her foot. Because she was occupied, she didn’t even notice the mouse, but her accompanist did—and played the rest of the concert without using the piano’s pedals because she kept her feet off the floor. While in the Middle East, they were warned to shake out their shoes each morning before putting them on in case snakes or scorpions were curled up inside.

• In Giuseppe Verdi’s opera Rigoletto is a scene in which the title character throws into a river a sack containing what is supposed to be the dead body of his enemy. Unfortunately, at a 1950 performance at Sadler’s Wells Theatre in London, a kitten wandered on stage during the scene and was fascinated with the sack. The kitten kept digging its claws into the sack, and the “dead body” inside the sack kept squirming. Finally, the singer playing Rigoletto noticed the kitten and removed it from the stage.

• Katheryn Bloodgood, a mezzo-soprano, was singing at Oberlin College when a bat flew into the recital hall. While she was finishing singing a Henschel lullaby that was supposed to end with the word “shu” sung very quietly, the bat flew directly at her. Instead of singing “shu” very quietly, she shrieked the word, then ran offstage to escape from the bat.

• During a New Orleans production of the opera Nabucco, a horse committed a large indiscretion on stage. The producer, Jim Lucas, ordered the stagehands to clean up the mess, only to find out that they didn’t have a shovel. Angrily, he shouted, “Don’t you know you never hire a horse without a shovel?”

• The conductor Artur Nikisch was very popular and received many letters from women who asked him for a lock of his hair. A friend told him that he would soon go bald because he always responded to these letters. Mr. Nikisch smiled, then said, “I won’t go bald—but my dog might.”

• Tenor Gilbert Louis Duprez once sang a high C in Gioacchino Rossini’s apartment. Mr. Rossini checked to see if any of his glassware had shattered; later, he said that the tone of the high C had been like “the squawk of a capon whose throat is being cut.”

Audiences

• In Vienna, Alfred Piccaver and Elizabeth Schumann gave a joint recital, the program of which promised that they would sing a duet from La Boheme. Unfortunately, the pianist brought the wrong music, so they sang a duet from Madama Butterfly instead. Nevertheless, the audience declined to go home until they had heard the Boheme duet, so the house manager asked the audience, “Is there a Boheme [score] in the house?” A person in the gallery answered, “I’ve got one.” Borrowing the score, the pianist played the duet and the audience was able to hear Mr. Piccaver and Ms. Schumann sing it.

• Leopold Stokowski, conductor of the Philadelphia Orchestra, was so distressed by the lack of manners displayed by audiences that he decided to do something about it. At a concert, he had many musicians arrive late and noisily make their way to their seats. He also had some musicians talk noisily throughout the concert. Finally, he had some of the musicians leave the concert in a hurry a few minutes before the performance was finished. The audience laughed at the actions of the musicians, but the audience continued to act the same way it had been acting.

• Celebrities are adored everywhere, but are they adored for their talents or for the hype surrounding them? Enrico Caruso—a gifted tenor—once decided to find out. During a performance of Leoncavallo’s Pagliacci, he stood off stage and sang Beppe’s Act II serenade. Had he been onstage, he would have caused a sensation, but after he had sung out of the sight of the audience (without his presence having been announced), no one applauded his singing.

• Sir Rudolf Bing enjoyed telling the story of an incompetent tenor from Chemnitz who went to Bremen for an audition. Although the tenor was terrible, many people in the audience applauded and shouted such encouragement as “Wonderful! Wonderful! Stay here! Stay here!” Why? Because many of the members of the audience were from Chemnitz.

• Hans von Bülow once played piano in front of a very appreciative audience, and even after he had played several encores, the audience showed no signs of going home. Therefore, Von Bülow threatened, “If you don’t stop this applause, I will play all of Bach’s 48 preludes and fugues, from beginning to end!” The threat worked, and the audience went home.

• Audiences tend to like happy endings. Gioacchino Rossini wrote the opera Otello, based of course on William Shakespeare’s Othello, but the audience hated the ending, and kept trying to warn Desdemona that Othello was going to murder her. Eventually, Rossini was forced to change the ending to a happy one where Othello and Desdemona reconcile.

• In 1949, before Victoria de los Angeles had become a famous soprano, she traveled to Oslo for two concerts. At the first concert, barely 30 people attended. However, news of good singers travels fast. At the second concert only two days later, over 1,000 people tried to attend the concert but couldn’t because the concert hall was full.

Auditions

• James Morris’ voice teacher, Nicola Moscona, helped him greatly during his audition with the Metropolitan Opera. On the morning of the audition, Mr. Morris was understandably nervous, and he vomited. He telephoned Mr. Moscona, who took him—and a bag—to the Met. During the audition, Mr. Morris sang one aria, but when he was asked to sing another, his mind went blank. Fortunately, Mr. Moscona hissed at him, “Simone, stupido, Simone.” Mr. Morris sang the Simone Boccanegra bass aria and the Met offered him a contract.

• Early in her career, Moravian soprano Maria Jeritza auditioned for the director of the Vienna Volksoper, Rainer Simons. Halfway through her first song, Micaeli’s aria from Carmen, he shouted, “Stop! That’s enough!” Ms. Jeritza complained that he hadn’t allowed her to finish even one song, but he explained, “I didn’t need any more—I’m engaging you.”

Autographs

• The great Norwegian soprano Kirsten Flagstad used to enjoy giving autographs to fans who wrote to her for them, but she was surprised when several fans complained that the autographs weren’t genuine, but were instead written by her secretary. After investigating, she discovered what the problem was. Not only did Ms. Flagstad write the autograph, but she also wrote the names and addresses on the envelopes she used to send her autograph to her fans. Fans compared the writing, noticed that it was done by the same hand, and incorrectly concluded that a secretary had written the autographs.

• Irish tenor John McCormack adored Italian tenor Enrico Caruso, and early in his career he bought a photograph of Mr. Caruso and forged on it an inscription from Mr. Caruso to himself. Later, he met Mr. Caruso and told him about the forgery. Amused, Mr. Caruso produced another photograph of himself and wrote this real inscription on it: “To McCormack, very friendly, Enrico Caruso.”

Awards

• As a teenager, Ella Fitzgerald lived on the streets of Harlem. One day, although she was wearing ragged clothing and had gone without a bath for weeks, she entered a talent contest at the Apollo Theater. The audience loved her, and she won first place, but she never received her prize. The prize was the opportunity to sing at the Apollo Theater for a week, but theater management thought that Ella was too physically dirty to be an entertainer. Soon afterward, Ella became recognized as a great jazz vocalist.

• The theme song of the United States Navy is “Anchors Aweigh,” whose music was composed by Navy Academy bandmaster Charles A. Zimmerman. Every year, bandmaster Zimmerman was given a medal by the graduating class in recognition of the excellence of “Anchors Aweigh.” According to the official Annapolis history, because of his many medals bandmaster Zimmerman would have drowned instantly if he had ever fallen overboard.

Bathrooms

• Singing at outdoor concerts while wearing fabulous, elegant gowns does have a downside. In 1995, at Radley College, soprano Leslie Garrett discovered that her dress, because of its width, would not permit her to use a portaloo (in America, the term is “portapotty”). For the first half of the concert, she sang with her legs crossed. In the meantime, the concert organizers set up a tent, complete with a bucket, for her use during the interval (in America, the term is “intermission”).

• Famous violinist Szymon Goldberg had some unusual talents. Once, he was disturbed during a concert by some background noise, so he stopped playing and requested a wrench. He went backstage, fixed a continuously running toilet, then resumed playing.

Big Breaks

• Movie clichés sometimes come to life. Opera singer Mary Garden started her career at the top. She was in Paris studying singing, and she attended an Opera-Comique rehearsal of Louise and fell in love with it. She acquired a copy of the score, and began studying it intensively. She attended performances of the opera, and she took notes on where the singers stood on stage and all the details of acting she could jot down. On Friday, April 13, 1900, she received a note telling her to go to the Opéra-Comique, where she received the news that the woman who regularly sang the title role of Louise was ill and might not be able to perform, and so she was given a ticket and asked to sit in the audience that night just in case she were needed. Act 1 passed well, as the title character sang little in it, but during the intermission the star singer rushed out of the opera house. Ms. Garden took her place, made a huge hit, and signed a well-paying contract at the Opéra-Comique.

• Buffy Sainte-Marie became a professional folk musician by accident. She had learned to play a second-hand guitar as a child, and in 1963, during a visit to New York City, she sang and played for fun at a coffeehouse in Greenwich Village. A music critic for The New York Times happened to be in the audience, and he gave her a glowing review. Soon she was performing concerts and making records. Despite her long-term success, Ms. Sainte-Marie says, “I never expected to last more than a year or two.”

Chamber Music

• Not everyone likes chamber music. Arthur Catterall used to lead the BBC Symphony. One day, he was in a taxi when the driver looked at his violin and asked if he ever played on the radio. When Mr. Catterall replied that he did, the cabbie asked, “Do you ever take part in those Sunday afternoons of chamber music?” Mr. Catterall replied in the affirmative, so the cabbie stopped his taxi, opened the door, and said, “Well, you can jolly well walk!”

• Chamber music can be very expensive. Thomas Beecham spent much of his own money on music. Once, a gentleman from the United States who had been donating much money to an orchestra compared notes with him. After their talk, the American gentleman said, “Well, sir, I guess that every time some guy draws a bow across a fiddle, you or I sign a check for a thousand dollars.”

Children

• When he was an old man, Sir Thomas Beecham conducted a Sir Robert Mayer Children’s Concert. He slowly walked to the conductor’s chair, then spoke to the audience of children, saying, “Ladies and gentlemen, my slow progress to the conductor’s desk was due not to any reluctance on my part to conduct before so distinguished an audience. My slow progress was due entirely to the infirmity of old age. Our first piece is by Mozart. It was composed when he was at the age of …”—here Sir Thomas pointed to a small boy in the audience—“at your age, sir.”

• As a very young child, soprano Geraldine Farrar started taking piano lessons, but she played only the black keys. Asked why she didn’t play the white keys, she replied, “Because the white keys seem like angels and the black keys like devils, and I like devils best.” In an early autobiography, she wrote, “It was the soft half-tones of the black keys which fascinated me, and to this day I prefer their sensuous harmony to that of the more brilliant ‘angels.’”

• When English entertainer Joyce Grenfell was a young girl, her father took her to hear some Bach at the Victoria and Albert Museum. She tried to beat time with the music with her head, but was unable to—the boy in the seat behind her had fallen asleep and his knees had trapped her ponytail! Because she was polite, she waited until the music had ended and the applause had wakened the boy, thus freeing her ponytail.

• In 1909, when tenor Leo Slezak sang the part of Tamino in Mozart’s Magic Flute at the Metropolitan Opera, Walter, his little son, was in the audience. Little Walter had been told the plot of the opera, and he knew that a snake would be chasing Tamino at his entrance. Out of excitement, when little Walter saw his father make his entrance, he shouted, “Watch out, Papa! There is a snake!”

• At age 13, Billie Holiday went to New York City to be rejoined with her mother, but she took a walk in Harlem and got lost. A social worker helped her out by finding her a place to stay until her mother could be located—a place that young Billie remembered as a beautiful hotel. After she grew up, Ms. Holiday went back to the “beautiful hotel” and discovered that it was a YWCA.

• One mother thought that her three-year-old daughter might be a musical genius because the little girl remembered where the middle C key was located on the piano keyboard after being shown it once. However, one day the mother cleaned the piano keys, and her little daughter couldn’t pick out middle C anymore—the middle C key had been the one with the egg stain.

• As a concert pianist, Denis Matthews had to practice long and hard. Following breakfast one day, he went to his music room and began practicing the Brahms B flat Concerto. Several hours later, when it was his young daughter’s bedtime, he was still practicing. As she was saying good night to her father, she said, “If ever I do music when I grow up, I’m going to do it for FUN!”

• Elizabeth Soderstrom brought her children to see her in the opera The Mines of Sulphur. Her two oldest children loved it—especially the part when her character opened her cloak to show the spots that indicated that she had the plague. Unfortunately, her youngest child was terrified and for a few weeks kept looking at people to see if they had spots.

• When he was 11 years old, Leonard Bernstein started taking piano lessons. He immediately loved the piano, and sometimes early in the morning, he would get out of bed and play. His father once told him, “Lenny, don’t you know it’s two o’clock?” Young Leonard replied, “I know. But the sounds are in my head and I just have to get them out.”

• Fritz, the brother of lieder singer Lotte Lehmann, was a terror when he and she were young, although he became very supportive of her and her career when they grew up. As a young boy, he used to pretend to be an Indian, kidnap her dolls, scalp them, paint the roots of the dolls’ hair red, and hang them dripping from his belt.

• As a young girl, comedian Beatrice Lillie got one of her first laughs while in church. She was singing in a choir, when a woman beside her passed gas loudly during a pause in the music. Young Beatrice turned to the woman and said, “Well, really!”

• Entertainer Terri Balash, a star of Godspell, enjoyed performing even as a youngster. When she was six years old, she sometimes walked into her parents’ parties and announced, “Okay, I’m going to entertain now, so everybody listen.”

Christmas

• When in grade school, future lieder singer Lotte Lehmann was insulted when one of her compositions was returned to her marked, “Judging from the accomplishments hitherto displayed in school, I doubt the authenticity of this work.” In other words, her teacher thought young Lotte was plagiarizing because the quality of the composition was so good. Therefore, young Lotte demanded that she be allowed to write another composition as the teacher watched her to make sure she was not plagiarizing. Her teacher told her to write about Christmas, she did so as he watched her, and she proved that she was capable of writing good, original compositions.

• Near Christmas, the Music Department of Colorado College in Colorado Springs performed Handel’s Messiah, which was simulcast on the radio by station KKTV. The radio announcer was daydreaming when he suddenly realized that The Messiah was coming to an end, and he needed to play a record—quickly. He grabbed the first record he came across and put it on a turntable. The radio audience heard the end of The Messiah, the announcer identifying the station, then a record playing “Happy Birthday to You.”

Clothing

• When he was a child, singer James Brown’s family was impoverished, and he was frequently sent home from school because his clothing was in such poor shape. In fact, one reason he began stealing was so he could have decent clothing. Of course, the stealing eventually led to his arrest. After being found guilty of stealing a car battery, he was sentenced to 8 to 16 years in prison.

• Pop singer Madonna was an original even as a schoolgirl. Like the other students, Madonna wore a uniform at school, but she kept her school locker stocked with colorful hair bows and socks so she could be different from her classmates.

Comedians

• Will Rogers seldom hurt anyone with his jokes. However, in his vaudeville days, he once was preceded by a singing act called the Cherry Sisters. During his act, he said that they must have decided on their name before they learned about lemons. After making the joke, Will realized that it was hurtful, so he apologized to the Cherry Sisters.

• Jack Benny was not a virtuoso violinist, but neither was he as bad as he pretended to be to get laughs. After Mr. Benny played the violin well at a benefit, a friend said, “Jack, I didn’t know you played the violin so beautifully.” Mr. Benny replied, “When I was younger, they used to call me another Heifetz. Not Jascha—another Heifetz.”

Composers

• As a young boy, pianist Carl Czerny heard a family friend named Gelinek talk about how he was looking forward to meeting a pianist later that night at a party and how he and his friends were going to “thrash him” in a piano competition. The next day, however, Gelinek had to admit that he had been defeated: “That young man is possessed of the devil. Never have I heard such playing! He improvised on a theme I proposed like I never heard even Mozart improvise. Then he played compositions of his own, which are wonderful and grandiose to the highest degree.” Czerny’s father asked about the rival pianist’s name. “He is a short, ugly, swarthy, and obstinate-looking young man,” Gelinek replied, “and his name is Beethoven.”

• Composer Igor Stravinsky loved to have a good time with his friends. On his 80th birthday, several people threw parties for him—one person invited him over for cocktails, another person invited him over for dinner, and so on. When all the little parties were over, he said, “Well, that was marvelous. Thank you very much. I’m going home.” The other people said, “Very well,” so he asked, “Isn’t anyone else going home?” They said no, for they were going out again to get drinks and perhaps do some dancing. Mr. Stravinsky then said, “What? You think that I’m going home to bed when all the rest of you are going out on the town?”

• George Frideric Handel composed the Messiah, well known for its “Hallelujah” chorus. During a rehearsal for its premiere in Dublin, he became angry at a man named Janson, who was one of the basses. “I thought you told me that you could read music at sight,” complained Handel. “I can,” Janson replied, “but not at first sight.”

• Gioacchino Rossini was giving singing lessons to a girl whose sister asked him, “Why don’t you write any new music?” He replied, “A waste of time, my dear girl. It’s impossible for the singers to perform what I’ve already written.”

Conductors

• Meredith Willson, author of The Music Man, had a great respect for Arturo Toscanini, who was an invited guest at the symphony orchestra where Mr. Willson worked. While the orchestra was practicing a dissonant symphonic poem named “Feste Romane” by Ottorino Respighi, Maestro Toscanini stopped the orchestra and told Mr. Gerhardt, a clarinet player, “F sharp, F sharp, F sharp.” This happened five or six times, with Mr. Gerhardt protesting to Mr. Willson (no one protests to Maestro Toscanini!), “I am playing F sharp. I’ve been playing it since the beginning.” At this time, the clarinet player unconsciously—clarinet players do this occasionally by habit—held his instrument horizontally and blew some water out from under some of the very small keys. Once again, the orchestra launched into the piece and at its end, Maestro Toscanini said, “At last F sharp—grazie a Dio!” According to Mr. Willson, the water under the key had caused the note to sound F natural—and Maestro Toscanini heard the incorrect note through all the dissonance of the musical composition although the man who had actually played the note could not hear that it was incorrect!

• When he was young, Clemens Kraus was asked to be a guest conductor of the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, which the composer Johannes Brahms himself used to conduct. At the rehearsal of a Brahms symphony, the orchestra was perfect. The first three movements were over, and Mr. Kraus had thought of nothing to say to improve the orchestra’s performance. He kept thinking, “I’ve got to say something,” but he could think of nothing to say. Finally, he asked the first horn to stress a certain note. When the rehearsal was over, Mr. Kraus congratulated himself in his dressing room, but then a knock sounded on his door. It was the first horn, who said, “Maestro, you know that place you asked me to accent? When we used to do it for Dr. Brahms, he always made a point of telling us to play that bit as smoothly as possible.”