What did Bernstein say to you?

He never knew. He was too busy playing. So I managed to sneak in on that one. There have been many things that have happened, mostly in the concerts with the Philharmonic. Oh the usual things when people are falling off the bandstand, more crazy than funny. Or we’d make these long trips and get there half asleep and try to play, fall asleep while you’re playing. We’d have to nudge people while we were playing to keep them awake. There are so many great musicians you play with, so many great people as well as great musicians. Sammy Davis had a conductor by the name of George Rhodes and I did show years ago and it was called Golden Boy. And the show had a good run on Broadway plus it ran close to a year and then they did a revival of it the following summer in New York State Theater and I went back. I was living in Texas at the time but I would go back to New York in the summers and play that show for eight weeks. And George was conducting it at the time, he didn’t conduct the original show but he conducted that one. He was a prince, one of the greatest guys I ever came across and a great musician, just a wonderful human being. But my daughter was twelve years old at the time. She’s now a violinist. She plays in the National Symphony, the principle second violinist. Anyway, she was about twelve years old and one Sunday afternoon we had a matinée and I took her into town with me and said go to the band room and do your homework, the show takes two hours or so and then we’ll go out and do something in New York. So we got to the theater and when we got there I said Gee, the New York Theater is a huge theater with a big pit so I don’t think anybody will mind if you sit back in the corner at the pit because that pit was designed for 90 players and we only had about a 30 piece band. So she got a chair and sat in the corner and I of course went to George and said George, my daughter is going to be in the pit do you have a problem with that? And he said oh no man, no problem at all just get her comfortable. I said great so I go in the pit and I’m warming up and pretty soon the lights go down and George comes in, he goes right over to my daughter, takes her by the hand and pulls her up to the podium with him, sits her down, has a stool all set for her and lets her watch the show right on stage right from the podium. And he conducted and all through the show Sammy Davis noticed her and he’s waving and we’re making little gestures here and there and here’s this awestruck kid. So there are a lot of little memories like that. There’s so many of them.