No doubt Severinsen was a little more conservatively dressed in 1949 when he showed up at NBC looking for work. He hung around the network, in addition to doing concerts and cutting records, and when Johnny Carson took over the Tonight show in 1962, he was the assistant musical director to Skitch Henderson. But when Skitch left in 1966, Doc didn’t get the top job. Veteran bandleader Milton DeLugg did. Then DeLugg left to work on films and Doc was handed the baton on October 9, 1967. He kept it until Carson went off the air on May 22, 1992.
Let’s give you some insight into Doc’s career from his pre-Tonight leading days. First up is this story from June 17, 1961.
Busy Trumpeter Finds HimselfThis story appeared in papers starting August 13, 1966. Severinsen explains why he never got into rock music.
By DICK KLEINER
Newspaper Enterprise Assn.
New York—There's a problem when a musician gets to be too successful these days. Exhibit A is Carl (Doc) Severinsen, perhaps the busiest trumpet this side of Gabriel.
Around New York, if a musician is well thought of, he'll play several times a day in several different groups for several types of recordings.
"Sometimes," says Doc, "I play four sessions a day. One may be jazz, another is sweet, a third will be symphonicized and the last will be Latin. You learn to go from one style to the other without any trouble."
• • •
THE TROUBLE came when Enoch Light, the head of Command Records, asked Doc to front a band and make his own album.
"I was suddenly confronted with the realization," Doc says, "that I had no distinctive style of my own. I could play anybody's style, on order, but I hadn't worked out my own. So I just played the way I felt."
The result, an album called Tempestuous Trumpet, is a lovely thing — and Severinsen's sudden style makes fine listening. He's appeared on more than 500 records, but this is the first in which he's featured. He's played on TV, in movie and theater bands, in jazz bands, symphonies and concerts, but this is the first time he's lost his anonymity.
• • •
SO MEET Carl Severinsen. He's from Arlington, Ore. His father was a dentist, known as Big Doc, hence the boy automatically was Little Doc. When Little Doc said he'd like to play the trumpet, Big Doc bought him the only one in town—"We bought it from ol' Ernie Clark, I remember." A week later, the boy soloed for the Ladies' Aid Society. By the time he was 9, he was well-known in western Oregon.
"My father liked music with a beat," Doc says. "I preferred the smoother style. So I'd imitate Harry James. Dad would leave his patients waiting in the chair to chase me and get me to quit playing so sweet."
When he was 14, he went to Portland, auditioned for Tommy Dorsey's band. He didn't get the job, but Dorsey, Jo Stafford and the others were kind to the young boy, let him hang around. It was the first time he'd ever heard a band in person, and he knew he'd found his life's work.
He's still happy with it. Especially now that he has been forced to develop his own style.
FORMS FIRST COMBO AT 38Severinsen turned out to be the perfect bandleader for Johnny Carson. He’s a skilled musician, but on camera he was also able to get off a wisecrack without upstaging Carson. We’ll look at an earlier era of Tonight next week.
Music Makers Prescription
By MARY CAMPBELL
— AP Newsfeatures —
Doc Severinsen, respected trumpet sideman, age 38, has formed his first combo.
"It was an idea that was lying dormant for a long time," he says. "I think every kid has the eventual aim of being a leader. I lost sight of that along the line. Now I've recaptured a desire to do this.
"I think it's an ideal time to start it. By the time you're 38 you've gotten your lumps and should have learned something.
"I've often felt that a small group could be used as concert vehicle and really do a well-turned program. That is what I'd like to be able to do."
So far, the Doc Severinsen Sextet has appeared at Basin Street East in New York, in Hardin; Ky., Dallas and Houston, and has cut a record for Command.
At Basin Street, the sextet was on the bill with a rock 'n' roll group and was playing a variety of music, trying to please an audience with varying tastes.
"After, this we'll play 'Watermelon Man' for half an hour and let it go," Severinsen says. "Actually one weekend I just sat down and reexamined what I'm trying to do. I made up my mind if I'm going to have a sextet, I don't need to do anything besides concerts and be a soloist on the Tonight Show."
SEVERINSEN said he decided neither to compete with nor join the rock scene. "I'm going to play music that I enjoy. I want to be happy when I come on stage and be happier when I go off and I want the audience to know I'm having a good time."
Severinsen says it's difficult to judge the market for jazz — but nobody would consider it one of today's most in demand sounds.
He says, "We do 'Summertime'; it starts with trumpet and drum. I'm playing the melody to 'Summertime.' We build into a peak and at the top comes pure jazz. Commercial sounds are going on around it.
"I can play five-six choruses of pure jazz in 'Summertime' and they don't know they've heard a note of jazz. You do play melody. You're playing your very best. "The trouble with so many jazz people is that they want it to be an exclusive, esoteric item. But the psychology of a group like this is to take into consideration the feelings of the people we're playing for. Give them something to relate to. I don't mean it as a compromise — as a challenge."
SEVERINSEN has been a member of the NBC Orchestra for the past 15 years and TV's "Tonight Show" band since Johnny Carson has had the show.
Also, he has been making serious music appearances with symphonies — Amarillo, Minneapolis and Baltimore last year and Pittsburgh Houston and probably Seattle this year. And for the past five years he has been holding music clinics around the country in high schools and colleges, for a musical instrument company. "I rehearse with the band or orchestra. I do a lecture on music and life, and then we play a concert in the evening."
The likeable trumpeter is well-known among musicians and among those who collect trumpet recordings. He has made five LPs for Command; the newest is "Fever." "And we're doing an album now. We added two guitars and percussion to the sextet. It's the best record session I've ever had.
"You know if you want to get an intimate feeling in records, the machines are doing too good a job of picking you up sometimes. At times they almost add a dimension to your playing you don't want."
Severinsen started playing professionally in 1949 on the Kate Smith Show. He has played with Tommy Dorsey, Benny Goodman, Vaughn Monroe, Charlie Barnet, Ted Fiorito.
Asked whose trumpet style he likes, he names Harry James, Bunny Berrigan, Billy Butterfield, Clark Terry, Roy Eldridge, Dizzy Gillespie.
"But the influence on me was my father." Severinsen's father, "Big Doc," an Arlington, Ore., dentist (still practicing), played violin and was a member of a large family which included a family string quartet.
"I was brought up on classical music but I heard jazz and said, 'Why, that's for me. ' "
So he learned the trumpet instead of the violin, and entered a statewide contest run by the Music Educators National Conference at 9. Herbert L. Clark, famed cornet soloist, was the judge. Severinsen, who won the national championship at 12, was the winner.
He recalls, "I was just two trumpet lengths high. Somebody gave me a shove and I was out in the middle of the stage. I played 'The Gaity Polka' — without a mistake."
Got to attend a jazz clinic in 1973 featuring Doc Severinsen. It was an incredible night to remember. Doc was approachable, and the wise cracks were flowing.
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