SEATTLE, WA (KPLU) – Grammy Award winning trumpeter Doc Severinsen comes to the Pacific Northwest for a concert next weekend. Probably best known as the flashy dressed bandleader for Johnny Carson’s “Tonight Show” Orchestra, Severinsen had a career that spanned sixty-five years, and is back on the road after a very brief retirement. KPLU’s Kevin Kniestedt caught up with the eighty-three year old musician while on tour.

 Full Interview

Kevin: For 25 years, Doc Severinsen was the best known trumpet player in America, as his band played the theme song that brought Johnny Carson out on stage to begin The Tonight Show. But Doc’s career began long before he was on television. In fact he still remembers his first paid music job.

 Doc: It was during the depression the Great Depression. I played at the Blaylock Grange Hall out in the middle of a bunch of wheat fields. They had what they called then a Hard Times Dance. I got fifty cents for it, and I thought to myself, “wow”.

Kevin: Severinsen never looked back, touring with some of the best bandleaders ever, including Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, and Charlie Barnet.

Doc: It was sort of like being in a rock band sort of is today. You know, you go to a ballroom or a concert hall, and they were always jam packed. They knew everybody in the band, they knew every song we were going to play. It was like riding a huge wave. It was wonderful.

Kevin: In the early fifties, Doc decided it was time to settle down.

Doc: I had a wife and a daughter. It was time to get off the road, and I had a life long love affair with New York. So I settled there, and pretty soon through some things that occurred, I got some notice, and was hired to work at NBC as a staff musician.

Kevin: That staff musician job led to being hired as a trumpet player for the Tonight Show band when Steve Allen was hosting the show. Jack Parr became the host after Steve Allen left, and the NBC decided to hire a new host by the name of Johnny Carson.

Doc: After about a year, the producer of the show came to me (he also produced Johnny’s road shows) and he said “You know, Johnny wants you to come in and take over the band on the show. He’s not happy with the way things are going, and he’d like you to come in and try it and just see how it goes”. I said “Absolutely.” And it was the single biggest break of my life.

Kevin: Doc offered more than leading the band. He would fill in as an announcer when Ed McMahon was off, and he and Johnny Carson would often take part in some quick-witted banter: 

Johnny: Get that Mickey Mouse outfit together and have them sit down. What are you going to do tonight, doctor?

Doc: Well we are going to stand around and wait for you to decide whether we are a band or an orchestra.

Johnny: What would you prefer to be called?

Doc: Sweetheart.

Kevin: Severinsen was also known for his loud wardrobe.

Doc: My first night on the show, I thought “Wow. What am I going to wear?” So I was walking down a street in New York, and passed a place that sold ties. And they had some really wild ties. And (I) wore one on the show that night. And I come out, and it was like throwing raw meat to a lion. He just went right for it. And I would come out every night in something that was pretty far out. And after I had been on the show for a lot of years, one night I just said “Aw, the heck with it. I am just going to wear a blue suit tonight.” Well, I gave a cutoff to the band, and went up to my dressing room, and there was an immediate message from Johnny: “What in the hell was wrong with your outfit tonight?” And it never happened again.

Kevin: When Johnny Carson retired from the Tonight Show, Severinsen left NBC as well. He took a good portion of the Tonight Show Band on the road, recorded a few albums, was a guest conductor for a few symphony orchestras, and then headed to Mexico to retire or so he thought.

Doc: I had been told by a next door neighbor “You’ve got to go hear these guys play at the so-and-so restaurant.

Kevin: “These guys” were guitarist Gil Gutierrez and violinist Pedro Cartas, who make up the band El Ritmo de la Vida, or “the rhythm of life”.

Doc: I think I dropped my cutlery and looked up and thought “Holy Cow! These guys are great. They’re not just good, these are world class musicians.”

Doc: So I made some calls to the states to see if we could get some dates up here for them. And they said “Yeah, but you’ve got to play with them too.” That hadn’t really occurred to me. So after a couple of months of trying to integrate the trumpet in with the guitar and violin, it worked. 

Doc: Somebody asked us what kind of music we called it. I said “I don’t know.” They said “Well it sounds like world music.” I said “Good, then it’s world music”. 

Doc Severinsen & El Ritmo de la Vida
Pioneer Press

By Dan Emerson

Few musicians retire willingly. Most prefer to keep playing their music as long as they can, if their performances are up to snuff.

Former “Tonight Show” bandleader Doc Severinsen, who led his Mexico-based quintet Monday night at the Dakota Jazz Club in Minneapolis, is a prime example.

The trumpeter, who will turn 83 on July 7, ended his 25-year run with Johnny Carson in 1992. In 2007, he retired as principal pops conductor for several symphony orchestras, including the Minnesota Orchestra, and moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.

There, he met a group of local jazz musicians in a cafe and eventually formed his current ensemble, El Ritmo de la Vida (“The Rhythm of Life”).

The group’s repertoire is a heady blend of traditional Mexican music, Argentine tango, Spanish flamenco and gypsy jazz.

Severinsen’s group on the current tour includes one other fairly well-known U.S. musician — violinist Sid Page, who was a stalwart of the popular ’70s swing band, Dan Hicks and His Hot Licks.

Monday’s opening set included an unidentified flamenco piece (with a trumpet part evocative of Miles Davis’ “Sketches of Spain”) and two pieces by the great Argentine composer Astor Piazzolla.

One was “Libertango,” with the melody played in unison by Severinsen, Page and guitarist Gil Gutierrez. Cuban-born percussionist Jimmy Branly laid down a brisk beat with brushes on his snare drum, supported by upright bassist Kevin Thomas.

Along with various strains of Latin music, Severinsen’s group also plays some gypsy jazz in the style of the great Django Reinhardt. In that vein, the opening set included a brisk run through violinist Joe Venuti’s “Minor Swing,” with Page taking the lead.

Gutierrez, who spends most of his time finger-picking his nylon-string guitar, did some virtuoso flat-picking on his solo.

The set-closer was a lengthy, complicated tango by Piazzolla, with many shifts of tempo, rhythm and dynamics along the way.

Based on Severinsen’s solos on this and other tunes, he doesn’t seem to have lost much of his power and control over his instrument, whether blowing open or muted horn.

When he wasn’t playing, he did some conducting from his chair on the right side of the stage.

He certainly seems to be enjoying his current project.

“If this is retirement, I can recommend it highly,” he told the Dakota audience.

Severinsen and El Ritmo de la Vida will perform again tonight at the Dakota at 7:30 and 9:30.

Dan Emerson is a freelance writer and musician in Minneapolis.

Doc Severinsen & the Boston Pops
Boston Herald

By Keith Powers

Celebrating popular culture has made the Boston Pops what it is, and so it’s no surprise that opening its 125th anniversary season on Tuesday evening at Symphony Hall included a nod to favorites from Gershwin to “Glee.”

For the bulk of the century and a quarter, the Pops has had three just directors: Arthur Fiedler, John Williams and current maestro Keith Lockhart. Each has left his own stamp on the orchestra, and the splashy three-part program honored all of them.

The survey of Fiedler’s distinctive taste was all American, including some things patriotic (“National Emblem March”), and some things kitschy (Leroy Anderson’s idiosyncratic and enjoyable “Typewriter,” which served as a soundtrack to a video retrospective of the colorful Fiedler years). But it also had some real substance: Gershwin’s great “Rhapsody in Blue,” turned nicely (albeit in a bowdlerized version) by Pops regular Michael Chertock, as well as the most eloquent tribute of the night, featuring concertmaster Tamara Smirnova, who soloed gracefully in a timeless Pops favorite, “Jalousie,” the first million-selling recording of any kind, as Lockhart pointed out.

The highlight of the John Williams section was an appearance by 82-year-old Doc Severinsen. Doc, looking outrageously fit – and outrageously attired in a floral shirt and sequined tux – caught most of the notes in a Beethoven-inspired arrangement written especially for him. The Williams tribute filled out with several selections from his substantial repertory, including the Olympic theme and the unforgettable music from “E.T.” and “Star Wars.”

Anticipating public taste is how Lockhart described Fiedler in his introductory remarks, and the inclusion of Broadway star Idina Menzel made it seem like Lockhart fills that description pretty well himself. The Tony-Award-winning singer, well known already for roles in “Rent” and “Wicked,” and soon to join the irrepressible cast of “Glee,” belted out a selection of show tunes, showing she knew her way around a mike, and building anticipation for concert-length appearances with the Pops tonight and tomorrow.

Pops being Pops, there was a steady fill of extra-musical activity, including a Beatles karaoke singalong and a birthday cake especially created by celebrity chef Duff Goldman, who got to conduct “Stars and Stripes” for his baking troubles. The high profile anniversary season runs through June 20 at Symphony Hall and continues with a July Tanglewood appearance featuring Alec Baldwin narrating a world premiere and a free September concert on Boston Common. Happy birthday, and many happy returns, to America’s orchestra.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
By Tom Strini

Doc Severinsen moved to San Miguel de Allende, Mexico, in 2007 to retire. Then he had dinner at an Italian restaurant, where violinist Pedro Cartas and guitarist Gil Gutierrez were playing.

“I dropped my fork and my spoon and everything else,” Severinsen said, from the site of a second home he’s building just outside San Miguel de Allende. “I couldn’t believe what these guys were doing.”

Thus began a chain of events leading to a concert set for Friday at Milwaukee’s Pabst Theater. Trumpeter Severinsen, Cartas, Gutierrez, percussionist Miguel Favero and bassist Gilberto Gonzalez will play a benefit for the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music’s new Jazz Institute.

They call the band El Ritmo de la Vida. They were here in September, as a featured act with the Milwaukee Symphony Pops. Severinsen, of course, was the MSO’s principal pops conductor from 1994 to 2007. By all accounts, that show went very well.

But the Pops show, with a full orchestra in tow, required arrangements and constricted the band somewhat. The Pabst concert will be closer to the group’s Italian restaurant show.

Yes, Doc – who will turn 82 on July 7, who became a household name after decades on the “The Tonight Show” – plays three or four nights a week in a restaurant in Mexico.

“I’m the only one who doesn’t get paid,” he said.

From the name (“The Rhythm of Life”) and the makeup of the band, you might think they specialize in Latin jazz. Actually, they’re eclectic. A lot of jazz standards are in their repertoire, and the influence of French gypsy guitarist Django Reinhardt and violinist Stephane Grappelli is apparent in the playing o  Gutierrez and Cartas. You can hear a wonderful, and very Hot Club of France, treatment of “Sweet Georgia Brown” at the Ritmo Web site.

“Almost everything we do has some sort of a gypsy feel,” Severinsen said. “We never write anything down. We just play, and it takes us a long time to settle on how the music will go. We just kind of arrive there.”

Severinsen’s connections got the band the Pops jobs and North American tours, but he is a band member, not the star of the show. That’s the way he wants it.

“Gil and Pedro – they’re the originals,” he said. “They’ve played together for 22 years, and they have their own following. They don’t speak much English, and when I first went up to them all I got were blank stares. They had no idea who I was.”

One of them is married to an American, who filled them in on Doc’s history. That quickly led to an invitation to sit in on an album that was in progress at the time. The fellow who owns the tiny recording studio in Mexico where they made that album is now the sound technician on their tours.

The recording session led to a standing invitation to play at the restaurant.

“It took me six months to get up the nerve to do that,” Severinsen said. “I’ve been practicing more than I have in years, just to get ready for these guys. You’d be surprised at how often it hits me, when I’m sitting there playing, that I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had in my life. I still can’t get over it.”