My friend Karoli posted a link today announcing that the great drummer Max Roach has died.
I'm not a huge jazz fan, but the news triggered one of my Hollywood memories, anyway. And as it's Friday, and I haven't had one of these to post in a very long while, I'm gonna give it to you now.
A lot of people don't know this, but Johnny Carson was a pretty fair amateur drummer. The 60 Minutes interview he did in the 70's showed him letting off a little steam with his drum kit -- which was a gift from one of his closest friends, Buddy Rich.
The day Buddy Rich died, we were supposed to go on the air with one of Johnny's popular Reagan sketches. I don't know how many people who see this blog were old enough to see the show in the 80's -- but I can tell you that Johnny Carson did a really good Reagan imitation. The head writer (my boss) had White House connections. He told me that Nancy Reagan, ever protective of her husband's image, once asked him to stop writing the sketches. He then found out that the President himself enjoyed them so much, he kept a reel of them on Air Force One to entertain his guests.
So the monologue was finished, the Oval Office set was on the stage, and Johnny came out in his Reagan suit, makeup and wig. The sketch began. He said his first line, but no sound came out. For some reason, his microphone was not properly set up.
And then I -- and the studio audience -- saw something that few people ever got to see.
The usually polite, quiet Johnny Carson blew up. He uttered a curse word and went straight to Fred de Cordova. He wanted to know who was responsible for setting up the mike. And he wanted that person fired.
Our sound guy (who incidentally, was an Emmy winner), scurried on the set to fix the problem, while Fred tried to calm Johnny down. After several uncomfortable minutes, the sketch began anew, without a hitch (but perhaps without as many laughs as it would have had).
The explanation, of course, was that Johnny was distraught after learning just a couple of hours before air time that his friend Rich had passed away.
The next day, the Tonight Show was dark. We ran a "Best of Carson" on Friday night, and Johnny was on vacation the following week (I do not recall if that was one of his scheduled weeks off; at that time, Johnny hosted the show live on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and took one week off every month -- except during sweeps, when he would be on four days a week for the entire sweeps period).
The sound guy kept his job.
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