stories on the road and beyond

Story from Harry Stoneham re Erroll Garner

This was told to me by the great organ player Harry Stoneham after a gig.  He went to watch Erroll Garner in London play concert, when Erroll Garner came on stage he would always bring a New York Yellow Pages and place it on the piano stool if it was too low, this gig he did. Harry told me he went to watch Erroll Garner play two consecutive nights, and on the second night the yellow pages came out again, Erroll played exaclty the same tunes as the previous night but totally different arrangements and his words were "god knows how the band knew what he was doing" as the arrangements were so full and complex and improvised, but the great news of the story is after this gig Erroll Garner forgot his New York Yellow Pages and Harry picked it up from the piano stool after the gig as a rememberence!

 

Cymbal Throwing In The Music Shop

This is a great story from Terry Sutton Murray (great guitar player), its is close as I can remember.
I used to work for a music shop as a saturday boy in bristol, in the showroom we had cymbal rack stand at the top of the showroom full of brand new cymbals. The show room was a long rectangular style showroom with organs packed downboth sides facing towards the main shop window.
It was well known that russell and terry were always playing tricks on each other.

 On this day russell who worked there walked past the cymbal stand at the top of the showroom picked one off threw it down the show room like a frizby at low level at Terry, Terry managed to jump just in time whilst the cymbal just embedded its self like an arrow with a kind of 'dooiiinngggg' sound in to an object just near terrys leg, a true near miss.
 Terry was also know as the milk and mars bar man as that was his favourite snak at that time!
 

Mucky Business on tour

I was on a tour of europe with a well known guitar player, at one of the venues it stated not to use the toliet (and in particular do not flush) in the dressing room. 
Well all I remember is just before going on stage the guitar player was desperate to go (this is wise before playing a 1.5 hour set) he did not see the notice, any way as he left he pulled the flush and shut the door, we had a couple of minutes before we went on stage and apart from the smell all I could see was liquid coming from under the door, I think the guitar player saw it and suggested we go and wait by the stage which we did, nothing was said ever about the leaky toilet, in fact when we returned from our set, every thing was back to normal and cleaned up from a mystery cleaner,  like nothing ever happened!

 

On Tour With John Dalton

On of our tour dates all the roads were blocked to the venue and there was about a 30minute detour. we were already late, so we had to carry the gear over and under a bridge to get to the gig, it was pretty difficult with the full organ!

 

Dog Delivery

I was looking after a family house and the dog was going to have pups but not for a while, I was off to a gig when all of a sudden I saw a baby pup on the floor yes another 5 arrived just as I was leaving, so I can say im a dog doctor too!

 

Use your loaf

Danny Sheppard the great sax player,  had a great story regarding a gig with jazz and poetry, he said he had to come on stage with a loaf of bread stuck on the end of his shoe, the poetry then read, 'Great hairy balls hanging from the ceiling' the entire audience got up and shouded in there loudest voice with there hands in the air  'YYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSS'

UNPLEASANT STORIES AND ADVICE ON THE ROAD