It was in the winter of 1962-63. A big-time Milwaukee promoter had booked Brian Hyland (Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini, Sealed With a Kiss, Gypsy Woman) to play a gig at the Y.W.C.A. in Rockford, Illinois.

The same promoter was handling my band, the Tremolos (no, not the English Tremoloes with Brian Poole). Since Hyland needed a backup band for the gig, we got the call – which came several months in advance of the gig.

We went out and purchased all three of his albums released up until that time, and spent the next 10 or 12 of our weekly rehearsals learning every tune on those albums, anticipating that those songs would form the meat and potatoes of his show.

When the big night came, he arrived shortly after we did (we’d never met or even spoken to him before), and he handed us a song list. Not a single one of his own songs was on the list… just a variety of recent pop tunes by other performers (mostly Elvis’ material). The band knew all the stuff, and everyone got through the night sounding as though we’d rehearsed with him for months. But it was a tremendous waste of time and effort on our part.

Moral of the story: Had we made the effort to obtain his song list when we first got the call, we could have avoided a lot of needless work. Or, put simply, “What we have here is a failure to communicate”.

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On another occasion in the winter of 1965-66, I was playing with a different jazz quartet at Sardino’s Surf Lounge (go figure) in Milwaukee. The sub-zero temperature and high winds created grim conditions that forced most folks to stay hunkered down indoors. But, as musicians, we had to be there.

We were playing to an almost-empty house that night (maybe six couples who lacked the common sense to stay home). Sometime during the second set, the bartender came up to the bandstand and whispered “We’re dyin’ in here – we gotta pick this crowd up! Why don’t you hold a dance contest, and I’ll give a bottle of Jack to the winners!”

Well, we made the announcement and every couple immediately got up from their tables and headed for the dance floor. Just about that time, we broke into the intro of Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. Two of the couples were hip to what was about to happen, and instantly returned to their tables (musicians, perhaps?)

The remaining unsuspecting couples came onto the dance floor and began to dance – or at least attempted. About a minute into the song, two of the couples sensed that something wasn’t quite right (they weren’t sure exactly what), and returned to their tables. The two surviving couples – oblivious to their situation – continued dancing through the tune, and the winning couple was declared… not as a testament to their fine dancing, but rather as a tribute to their perseverance when confronted by a problem that has no solution – and they didn’t even know it.

Jon