Trumpet player Doc Severinsen was the bandleader for The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson for nearly three decades before stepping down after Carson’s retirement. He thought he’d retire himself; even moved to Mexico to do it. But life sometimes has other plans.
He’s on the road again with the San Miguel 5, trading big band for a Latin sound. They will perform July 17 at 8 p.m. at Robert Z. Hawkins Amphitheater.
You’re known by most people as the band leader of The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. That was nearly 20 years ago. What are you up to now?
I’m enthralled with this musical group, the San Miguel 5. That’s the group I’m coming there to play with. … How I met these guys—when I moved to Mexico, I wanted some guys I could just play some jazz with, get acquainted musically and enjoy my retirement. Instead, I met these guys. They didn’t even have a name. They played in an Italian restaurant. Somebody heard them and they were so insistent that I thought I better go and get this over with or I’ll never hear the end of it. They played eight bars after I sat down—they didn’t even know who I was, by the way, or care—and I thought, ‘By god, these guys are world class players.’ We made different changes as we went along, and they let me into the group, which was a very nice feeling. I thought, “I’ve got to call people in the States and see if I can get some dates.” And we did, and we’ve been working ever since.
The group now is [guitarist] Gil [Gutierrez] and myself. We have a marvelous violinist named Charlie Bisharat, and his headquarters are in L.A. We have a drummer from Cuba whose headquarters are in L.A.; his name is Jimmy Branly. You probably wonder, how could you have a Cuban drummer named Branly? … I’ve known a lot of Cubans in my time, but he’s the most authentic I’ve ever met. He is Cuban to the core. And then we have a bass player, who lives in Brooklyn. He worked with me with the Big Band after The Tonight Show was over. I liked him so much that when we needed a bass player for this group, I called him. He came to Mexico and played with us a while until we were sure he was thoroughly indoctrinated. His name is Kevin Thomas. And the effect of the group—here I went to retire and wasn’t thoroughly convinced that’s what I should do. I thought I wouldn’t retire from playing the horn—I’ll do that every day; that’s what I do; that’s who I am. I just wanted some guys to play some jazz with. What’s the old saying? Be careful what you wish for, you may get it. I’m glad I wished for these guys. I have a whole new life now.
People associate me with big bands and symphonic orchestras, pops. That’s all well and good. But midway through the first time, you can see people looking at each other, saying, “Wait a minute, these guys are serious.” When it concludes, there’s a silence, and then it just explodes with applause. The guys are all very attractive except for me. It’s a sexy-looking bunch. These guys aren’t in it because, ‘Hey, this is a nice way to make living.’ They never ask where we’re going, how much it pays. It’s more, ‘We’re just here to make music.” Which is how it should be.
The kind of music we do play is Latino, though not necessarily Mexico. We play Cuban, quite a bit of Argentinian music written by Astor Piazzolla, and we’ve just adapted those in our own style. We play a lot of French gypsy jazz music from Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli, and some of the music has a Spanish, Moorish, Jewish kind of a feel to it. It’s all pretty much music of the people. It’s very basic. We play our share of American tunes.
So people coming to hear you now should not expect the Doc Severinsen of The Tonight Show.
No, that they can have. That’s me. I look pretty much the same, maybe 20 years younger. And I’ve found new music that I like to play. I’ve got the same old clothes.
I wondered about that.
Oh yeah. Not the exact same ones—I buy new ones every once in awhile.
Where did the outlandish outfit idea come from?
When I became leader of the band on The Tonight Show, I’d been a member of it before, and like all the other guys, I wore a blue suit with shirt and tie. As a leader, this goes back to days of big bands, the leader would wear something different. I went out and wondered, what will I wear? I really went back to my roots. I was pretty much a rebel—that’s how I was, how I grew up. I’m still a rebel. I found that I’d put something on, and it kind of got under Johnny’s skin a little bit in a good way. He started really laying it on me about a particular tie I was wearing. So I thought I’d see how much else he could take. At that time, you had the Beatles, the clothing revolution, so I just jumped right in to it and was part of that whole—like what happened on college campuses and all that. It was a time of change in America. Of course, people want it to go back the way it used to be, and it never will.
How did you get the Johnny Carson gig?
It was quite simple. I was playing in a band on The Tonight Show. They needed a band leader, and I was touring with Johnny doing concerts around the country. I had six unretouched photos of Johnny coming out of a small motel in the north of Mexico, and I threatened to make them public if he didn’t hire me. So the way I got the job was I had six unretouched photos of Johnny. … That’s about how things work today, right? Maybe Anthony Weiner needs to get a good television show. …
What was it like to work with Johnny? You bantered a lot with him on television. Was that just for the stage, or was it just like that between you two?
No, it was real. Ed [McMahon] was who he was, Johnny was who he was, and I was who I was. Nothing ever changed. It’s like any family—slightly dysfunctional, but it was wonderful. It was a family, and I found out how much of a family it was when the last show was over, and then Monday it was no trip back to NBC. It took me about six months to get used to that idea. I’m still not used to it. I miss Johnny, I miss Ed. I miss guys in the band that are no longer with us. Not that I’m living in yesteryear at all. You’ve gotta move on.
But a member of Johnny said, a guy at NBC, one of the top executives—Dick Ebersol—when Dick had the plane crash and lost his son, Johnny phones and said, “Dick, you know it’s never going to be the same. You aren’t going to get over this.” This was after Johnny lost his son, Ricky, so he had a right to say that. He wanted to prepare him for the way things were going to be, not how they wished they would be. But he’s that kind of a guy. He could be aloof or preoccupied. But if something happened in the family, to people who really worked on the show, he was there for him immediately.
You helped set the tone for what a band leader on a late night show does. Who did you look to for inspiration when you were figuring out how to do it?
First of all Skitch Henderson, who was the band leader on the show. I worked for him and was there every day to see what he did. Then my time with Tommy Dorsey and playing in his band gave me some direction of how I wanted the band to sound, what I wanted it to be like. But Johnny, without saying a word, kind of set the parameters of what he wanted the relationship to be like. He had a certain relationship with Ed—old drinking buddies, you know, and the broken marriages and all that. I fit into that mold a little bit, as far as broken marriages, and I don’t say that lightly. It’s nothing too funny, but it’s a bonding kind of a thing. And I just played off Johnny. He let me know when he could find something he could talk to me about, and I could in turn be sort of offended or irreverent. He liked that. If you were sucking up to Johnny, he didn’t have anything to work with there. But in the long run, Johnny was who he was as a person, Ed was the same way, and I was who I was. Can’t change that. We didn’t rehearse that. No, no, that just happened.
For that job, you had to not only be a solid band leader and musician, but a comedic performer, as well.
Actually, the performer part was more important to the equation than the music. We had great musicians in that band, so that was easily taken care of. But you’re on your own when you step out there, and he starts talking to you, and you think, “My god, there’s probably a million people listening right now! How’s this going over?” And you learn pretty soon you can’t think that way. It’s just a dialogue back and forth between two people.
As a musician, was it frustrating not to be able to play a full song?
Sometimes. It was tough on the guys that they’d just get started playing something and then, bam, they had to cut off. But I explained to them, hey, there are times when we’re going to have things to play, so you have to be ready every moment. The guys in the band had to listen to everything going on in the show. Johnny could shoot a question over to [a band member], and if he wasn’t paying attention, it looked terrible. So without seeming to be a part of it, we really were.
What do you think of late night television shows today?
Well, you know, I don’t really watch them. I found that early on, Johnny pretty much did it all, said it all, and they’re not really going to come up with anything any better than he did. I can find it mildly entertaining, I guess. But I like to go to bed earlier now. I like Letterman. I think all these guys are doing a good job or they wouldn’t still be there. But there was only one Johnny Carson, and all those guys doing talk shows today know it, and they’d be the first ones to tell you that he was the guy that set the road map they needed to follow.
When did you first know you wanted to be a musician?
I’m not just sure about that. As a little kid, I wanted to be a jockey. I was interested in horses. I love horses, and I thought—through an unusual set of circumstances, I got to be around the race track quite a bit in the summer times—I wanted to be a jockey. But then when I was just getting into my teens or a bit before, I was working at a clothing store, sweeping up and putting stuff on shelves and all that, and the boss one day asked me, “Doc, what do you want to be when you grow up?” And I said, “I want to be a band leader.” And he laughed and said, “You want to be band leader? That’s a joke!” I often wonder if he’s still laughing, because I am.
So you’ve been “Doc” ever since you were young?
Since the day I was born. My dad had gotten his degree as a doctor of dentistry. He never liked it that I could be called Doc, and I certainly was not a doc. But that was a name I grew up with. I was always uncomfortable with my real name, I don’t even want to talk about that. To my teachers and my contemporaries in school, I was Doc. I was never anything else.
It’s a good band leader name.
It came in handy for me when I had a small clinic in Puerto Rico.
[Laughs.] I hope that’s a joke.
It’s whatever you think it is.
Going back to Carson, out of all those years, was there any show that was particularly memorable for you?
All of them. Every night, I’d go into the Johnny theme music; the curtain would open; Johnny would pull back the curtain; Johnny would walk out. That was always a thrill for me. That’s when I realized I was a part of it, and I loved what it was, and I didn’t get tired of seeing him coming out of there, ever. When the show goes on now, it’s not really The Tonight Show anymore. Never was, never will be. It was Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. I don’t want to sound like the old guy who doesn’t give up. But anyone who doesn’t think it was Johnny Carson’s show just isn’t letting the reality in. For six months after that show went off, every night around a certain time, I’d have that feeling: “It’s about time for the theme.” And I said, “Nooo, it isn’t.”
One more thing: You’ll be 84 in July. You’ve tried it before, do you think you’ll ever retire?
I’m doing what I want to do. I’m where I want to be. And I expect that I’m going to live to about 105. And at some point, it will be inappropriate to continue going out, then I don’t know what I’ll do. I think I’ll become a cowboy. A friend of mine took me to Idaho a few years ago. We worked on cattle ranches herding cattle, and it was great. It wasn’t very easy, but I loved it. I thought, “Yeah, I could do this for a long time.”
I’m at the point in life where I realize that planning anything beyond today is ridiculous, and it always was. I don’t care what age you are, you don’t know if you’re going to be around tomorrow or the next day or the day after. If you’re waiting for 20 years from now to be happy or doing something productive, it’s a terrible waste of time. My goal now is to get the most out of this day, but above all it’s to be happy every minute of this day. Not just happy, but joyous. ’Cause if you do that, and you know what it is you want, you’re probably going to get it. … I firmly believe anything is possible if you put your mind to it, and you really, really want it, and if you’re living a happy life where you’re not envious of what other people have, you’re not critical of what they think, say or do, you’re on your own, and that’s enough to take care of right there.