The following exchange showed up on the Jazz West Coast listserve today. It was attributed to Bill Crow’s book Jazz Anecdotes, although I couldn’t find it there. Wherever it’s from, it deserves wide exposure.
“How late does the band play?”
“About half a beat behind the drummer.”
You’ll find that quip on the first page of the Preface to Jazz Anecdotes.
(Well, no wonder I couldn’t find it. It was hidden in plain sight. — DR)
My favorite is still Paul Desmond quoting a stewardess: “How many of you are there in the quartet?”
(As chronicled in Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond*, that was to be the title of the book he never got around to writing — DR)
* http://www.parksidepublications.com/takefive.html