American Masters: Doc Severinsen

The NEA better hurry the heck up and recognize 93-year-old Doc Severinsen as a NEA Jazz Master. His jazz credentials are impeccable, having played and recorded with the likes of Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Barnett, Chris Connor, Dizzy Gillespie, Tito Puente, Toshiko Akiyoshi, Milt Jackson, and Stan Getz. Of course, he is best known for leading the Tonight Show Orchestra, but perversely, that level of success and exposure always generates jealousy and skepticism in the jazz world. Doubters should hear the active Severinsen continue to hit his high notes in Kevin Bright & Jeff Consiglio’s Never Too Late: The Doc Severinsen Story, which premieres this Friday as part of the current season of American Masters on PBS.

Severinsen became famous when he was promoted from first chair of the Tonight Show band to the leader, but he had already played on legions of studio sessions and dozens of legit jazz records. “Stump the band” developed as a regular thing during his tenure. Thanks to his outgoing personality and flamboyant wardrobe, he was as recognizable as Johnny Carson or his co-host sidekick, Ed McMahon. He and Carson could also humorously commiserate over their multiple divorces.

Severinsen also toured regularly with the Tonight Show band. Again, jazz fans might have forgotten how talented they were. Even irregular watchers should remember Ed Shaughnessy on drums, but the ranks also included musicians like Ernie Watts (who appears in Never Too Late) and Bill Perkins. (If you insist on associating Severinsen with some of the lounge-ish sessions he played on, keep in mind fellow trumpeter Arturo Sandoval pays tribute to him throughout the doc.) It will sort of blow the minds of Gen X’ers and older, but it has nearly been thirty years since Carson (and Severinsen) left the tonight show—almost as long as their run on the late-night staple. Yet, Severinsen never stopped touring and conducting master classes.

In fact, one of the coolest aspects of Bright & Consiglio’s film is the attention they give to the commitment required to play trumpet at a professional level. We see the hours the ninetysomething Severinsen still puts in at the gym strengthening his core. Of course, that is on top of the hours he dutifully spends woodshedding.

Tribeca ’17: There’s . . . Johnny

In this polarized era of Samantha Bees playing to one end of the political divide by demonizing the other, it is hard to remember a time when late night television was an equal opportunity offender that refused to take sides. Of course, late night television of the 1970s was a fiefdom where Johnny Carson was king. If you weren’t nostalgic for the real Tonight Show already, you will be after watching Seeso’s new scripted series, There’s . . . Johnny, created and written by Paul Reiser and David Steven Simon, which premiered at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

Whether you were on the right or left, everybody loved Johnny in 1972. This is particularly true of Andy Klavin and his parents, who happen to live in Carson’s native Nebraska. Knowing they are concerned about his older brother serving in Vietnam, Klavin writes the show asking for an autographed picture. On impulse, the nineteen-year-old also inquires about job opportunities. Misunderstanding the form letter response, Klavin takes the bus all the way to California thinking he had been hired. He hadn’t, but hot mess producer Joy Greenfield likes him better than her slacker runner, so she basically decides to keep him. Obviously, the kid is in for a real education, about show business and life.

Judging from the first two episodes, There’s Johnny will build the scripted drama around a vintage episode. It seems Carson and Ed McMahon only appear in the archival footage or as disembodied voices coming from “of-stage.” However, Tony Danza plays executive producer Freddie de Cordova—and he is shockingly terrific. Frankly, this could be his career defining television role rather than Taxi or that other show that he played the domestic servant on. Danza just oozes confident attitude and casual sarcasm. He reminds us Rip Torn’s character in The Larry Sanders Show was inspired by de Cordova, not vice versa.

Jane Levy is also a wonderfully neurotic force to be reckoned with as Klavin’s boss, Greenfield. Obviously, there will be some sexual tension there, which she makes completely believable, but she also delivers some deliciously tart barbs. David Paymer plays off her nicely as the analyst she really needs to see more often in the second episode. Frankly, Ian Nelson’s Klavin is somewhat dull compared to the colorful characters orbiting around him, but you could argue his job is to facilitate their chaos.

In the first two episodes, feature directors David Gordon Green and Andrew Bujalski cleverly integrate the vintage show footage with the new backstage drama, while Reiser and Simon have good ears for era-appropriate comedy. However, the second episode’s downer ending highlights the challenges film festivals will face as they increase their television programming.

Regardless, the first two episodes will make you want to binge the entire first season. There’s … Johnny is not just pop culture nostalgia, but it certainly delivers that in spades. Highly recommended (so far), There’s … Johnny is scheduled to start streaming on NBC Universal’s Seeso in August, following its premiere at this year’s Tribeca Film Festival.

King Carson

Remember when people on television were expected to have a little class?  It’s been a while, since about May 21^st, 1992.  On that night, Johnny Carson retired as the host of The Tonight Show, after 4,531 episodes and 23,000 guests.  Granted access to the Carson archives, Peter Jones profiles the definitive American talk show host in Johnny Carson: King of Late Night (promo here), which airs on PBS’s American Masters this Monday.

A product of the Midwest, Carson never talked down to his audience or forgot where he came from.  Taking more than a bit of a pop-psychology approach, Jones attributes great significance to Carson’s need to impress his aloof mother and the attention he received as a teen-aged magician.  Carson got into television more or less on spec, making little money in what was then a new and relatively unseen medium.  Needless to say, television caught on and eventually so did Carson, though his early career trajectory was decidedly erratic.  In fact, when Carson was offered The Tonight Show after Jack Paar’s departure, many industry analysts were incredulous.

For children of the 1980’s, King of Late Night is a dramatic reminder how much media has changed in our lifetimes.  There was a time we vaguely remember when Carson’s show was invariably the number one topic of conversation the next day.  His monologue was considered a bellwether gauge of the national mood on current controversies in a way that has no analog today.  Unlike his successors, Carson maintained a scrupulous political balance on his show, gaining a reputation for tweaking both sides with equal playfulness.  He also regularly booked classical and jazz artists programming his show for the widest possible spectrum of the country.  Nobody does that anymore.

Jones addresses Carson’s wider cultural significance, but also opens a window into the very private public figure’s personal life.  At times, King feels slightly more tabloidy than was probably intended, but given his three famous divorces and a documented weakness for drink, it is impossible to ignore the dark side behind his carefully crafted persona.  Still, Carson employed some rather deft jujitsu with the frequent divorce jokes that shrewdly cast him as the beleaguered victim.  Indeed, Carson was a master of rhetoric, capable of milking masochistic humor from jokes that ignobly died.

Perhaps King is strongest documenting Carson’s role as a comedy king-maker, featuring extensive recollections from comedians and eventual Tonight Show guest hosts, such as David Letterman, Jay Leno, Joan Rivers, Gary Shandling, Dick Cavett, and Bob Newhart.  Wife number two also speaks quite affectionately about the man she claims to have pushed into accepting the Tonight Show gig.  Jones also well illustrates Carson’s career with rare archival footage.  However, the one scene everyone wants to see—the supposedly apocryphal night he asked Zsa Zsa Gabor to lift her cat—is never mentioned, not even to debunk it.

Many viewers will be surprised how good it is to see Carson on television again.  Brisk but authoritative, King of Carson is an entertaining television biography.  Fulfilling your recommended weekly nostalgia fix, it airs this Monday (5/14) on most PBS outlets as part of the current season of American Masters.

(Photo: Carson Entertainment Group)