Advertisement - Click to support our sponsors.
Doc plans to put down
By Tim Ryan
roots, despite lure
of the road
Star-BulletinNOT many performers can wear pink leather pants and a lime green sports coat on stage and get away with it. Imagine a vintner checking his grapes in the same outfit.
Doc Severinsen, who performs with the Honolulu Pops Saturday night at the Waikiki Shell, could get way with it.
Severinsen, who lives with his wife of 20 years, television producer/writer Emily Marshall, and Peaches the parrot on 20 acres in the same Santa Barbara County neighborhood as Michael Jackson and Bo Derek, plans on planting grapes.
"My goodness, everyone (in the Santa Ynez Valley) is planting grapes, even a neighbor with only five acres," Severinsen said in an interview from Denver where he's performing with his big band. The group includes many of the "Tonight Show's best: Ed Shaughnessy on drums, and Snooky Young and Conte Candoli on trumpets.
ON STAGE
What: Doc Severinsen performs with the Honolulu Symphony; also with Matt Catingub's Big Kahuna and The Copa Cat Pack
"Heck, grape plants look pretty good in those tidy rows even if they never produce."
Though best known for his quick-witted banter with Johnny Carson during his years as musical director of "The Tonight Show," this top-level trumpet player has collected many awards and accolades in his 40 years in show business: Top Brass Player 10 times in Playboy's annual music poll; a 1987 Grammy for "Best Jazz Instrumental Performance -- Big Band" for his recording "Doc Severinsen and The Tonight Show Band-Volume 1"; and he's principal Pops conductor of the Phoenix Symphony, Buffalo Philharmonic, Minnesota Orchestra and the Milwaukee Symphony.
As a youth, Severinsen was known as Little Doc in Arlington, Ore., because his father, Carl, a dentist, was the real doctor. The younger Severinsen wanted to play a horn after hearing big band sounds on the jukebox in a local cafe. The family had no record player and radio reception in Arlington was very poor.
"We would go to a country dance, the music of the day, and I loved it," he said.
But dad, a violinist, pushed the violin. Little Doc won out but settled for a trumpet, the only horn available in town.
With help from dad and an instruction book, the 7-year-old was asked to join the high school band. At 12, he won the Music Educator's National Contest; in high school he was hired to go on the road with the Ted Fio Rito Orchestra.
Recalling this, Severinsen talks about music education in schools.
"Music and the arts are not just something to make people feel good," he says. "They elevate the soul and broaden the entire personality.
"It's easy to say they aren't needed because culture seems intangible. But not having it deprives young people of a cultural heritage."
Leaving the "Tonight Show" was "very traumatic," Severinsen said. "It provided structure, a place to go, friends to be with. When it was over I wasn't quite sure what to do with myself."
What he did was move 100 miles north to the country.
"Now I'm having the time of my life being on the road with one of the world's all-time great big bands, and performing with symphonies," said Severinsen who now travels 46 weeks a year. "I wouldn't trade it for anything."
Except for a month vacation annually to Italy.
"I'm a Swede who loves Italian food; it's the culture I identify with mostly," he said. "I love the people and everything about them."
In his Honolulu performance, Severinsen and company will play Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" as a gospel band would, as well as "Here's That Rainy Day," the song Bette Midler sang to Johnny Carson his last night on "The Tonight Show."
"Television is so influential that when an audience sees you day-in and day-out there's a certain acceptance that sets in; you're no longer a threatening personality," he said. "They become more willing to accept whatever you present."
Click for online
calendars and events.
