Transcript of interview with George Pollak by Claytee White, May 25, 2010

i An Interview with George Pollak An Oral History Conducted by Lisa Gioia - Acres May 25, 2010 All That Jazz Oral History Project Oral History Research Center at UNLV University Libraries University of Nevada Las Vegas ii ©All That Jazz Oral History Project University of Nevada Las Vegas, 2008 Produced by: The Oral History Research Center at UNLV – University Libraries Director: Claytee D. White Editors: Barbara Tabach, Melissa Robinson, Angela Ayers Transcribers: Kristin Hicks Interviewers and Project Assistants: Lisa Gioia-Acres and Claytee D. White iii The recorded interview and transcript have been made possible through the generosity of Harold L. Boyer Charitable Foundation. The Oral History Research Center enables students and staff to work together with community members to generate this selection of first-person narratives. The participants in this project thank University of Nevada Las Vegas for the support given that allowed an idea the opportunity to flourish. The transcript received minimal editing that includes the elimination of fragments, false starts, and repetitions in order to enhance the reader’s understanding of the material. All measures have been taken to preserve the style and language of the narrator. In several cases photographic sources accompany the individual interviews. The following interview is part of a series of interviews conducted under the auspices of the All That Jazz Oral History Project. Claytee D. White Director, Oral History Research Center University Libraries University Nevada Las Vegas iv Table of Contents Interview with George Pollak May 25, 2010 in Las Vegas, Nevada Conducted by Lisa Gioia - Acres Preface………………………………………………………………………………………..…..v George talks about being raised in a suburb of Boston; one of five children. George recalls the schools he attended. George talks about the musical abilities of his siblings. George discusses Boston Latin School. George recalls several jobs he had growing up before actually working in the music business……………………………………………………………………………1 – 5 George recalls breaking into the music industry. George talks about doing shows with his brother………………………………………………………………………………………..5 – 7 George talks about meeting his wife. George remembers attending accounting school and working as an accountant while still performing in clubs. George recalls coming to Las Vegas in 1958 to work at El Rancho………………………………………………………………….8 – 10 George talks about playing with the band at Caesars Palace and the Tropicana. George recalls things being different when the mob ran things, and when Howard Hughes came to town things changing……………………………………………………………………………………11 – 16 George recalls working for the Barbary Coast beginning in 1979. George recalls the Barbary not being union. George remembers playing for the Gold Coast once it opened. George talks about going to St. Louis for the opening of the Casino Queen for two weeks……………………17 – 19 George discusses blacks in the music industry during his career. George recalls his band playing music festivals over holiday weekends. George discusses his own albums………………..20 – 23 George talks about how Las Vegas changed; the types of music which were popular changed. George recommends what music students should be listening to now……………………..24 – 27 George talks about drug use among musicians. George speculates on the future of music in Las Vegas. George discusses musicians currently in Las Vegas. George tells stories of working in Las Vegas. George’s wife, Florence, shares some of her history…………………………..28 – 32 Index………………………………………………………………………………………..33 – 36 v Preface George was raised in Mattapan, a suburb of Boston, by his mother and father. George had four siblings and was the second youngest. George shares fond memories of growing up and playing softball and tennis in the neighborhood park with his numerous friends. George could listen to a song on the radio and play it on the piano by ear when he was as young as four years old. George had several jobs to earn money growing up, including working in a record store and as a busboy. Eventually George and his brother joined a trio with Steve Harrington and performed in clubs. In 1958, George joined his brother and Paulette Richards in Las Vegas where they had a contract to play at El Rancho Hotel & Casino where they played until it was destroyed by fire. Following the fire, George and his brother parted ways and each did their own thing. In the 1960s, George began playing with the band at Caesars Palace. George used his background in accounting to do some bookkeeping and payroll for some of the bands as well as income taxes for the guys. The year 1968 was a happy time for George who was working for three shows and barely had time to get from one to the next on time. George stated the best times to work in Las Vegas were when the mob ran things. After the corporations took over, things changed. In 1979, George began working at the Barbary Coast which was a non-union casino at the time. He and fellow band members felt secure with Michael Gaughan in charge. When the Gold Coast Hotel & Casino opened, their band began playing there and did so for the next 23 years. The music trends of today scare George. He believes that students today would have to go back and listen to what was popular when he started playing. The names of bands and lyrics singing about drugs are bothersome to George who was never involved in that throughout his career. George credits the beginning of his career to Barbara Carroll, and he hopes to see her perform again soon on an upcoming trip to New York. Florence, George’s wife of 59 years, joined him on the interview and shared additional memories. vi 1 This is Claytee White. I am with Mr. George Pollak in his home here in Las Vegas. It is May 25, 2010. So how are you today? I'm doing well. Thank you. Great. Could you spell your last name, please, for the recorder? Right. That's P-O-L-L-A-K. Thank you so very much. Now, George, could you please just start by telling me something about your early life? You may talk about brothers, sisters, what your parents did for a living, where you grew up. Well, I'll try to get back as early as I can. Grew up in a suburb of Boston, which is called Mattapan. I think I can go back -- I think I started living there around four years old. I remember being in the same house on the same street for -- let me see. We got 1928. That would be until 1951. I would say we've been in the same house for that length of time. The great part of that street being a playground right across the street, which I spent most of my early life playing softball and tennis and stuff like that pretty much as I can remember it. My family consisted of three brothers and one sister. I was the second youngest. So as far as early life I guess it was mostly playing with the kids around and growing up and playing a lot of ball. I spent a lot of time in the playground. It was a joyful childhood. I didn't have any problems that I can remember. The siblings were all very, very nice. I enjoyed all the time. What was school like? School as I remember -- okay. I remember Tileston was probably from kindergarten to the sixth grade I think. Then they call it junior high I guess is the seventh and eighth grade. That was in a school called Solomon Lewenberg. And then I think I went to Boston Latin maybe a little early. You probably had to pass some kind of an exam. I'm not even positive. But I went in there in the ninth grade, which would have been 1939. And I did get through school, which I'm kind of fortunate that it was done in four years. So I did get out of there in 1942. So what did your parents do for a living? Well, my mother was pretty much a housewife all the time. And my father I would say was a salesman. It was kind of tough to pin down what he was doing most of the time. I think he was on the phone a lot sometimes and then he'd just disappear and come home at night. I don't even know where he was most of 2 the time. So that pretty much tells about the childhood. I had a lot of pretty good friends. It was mostly just running around when we were young, doing whatever most kids do. Any music lessons? Can I interrupt? Yes, please. Tell her about Latin School. Have you ever heard of it? No. I was going to ask about Boston Latin. Give me your first name, please. Florence. Florence is also in the room, George's wife. Of 59 years. Okay. All right. Let's go. Now, as far as the music I guess the lucky part of it was having a piano in the house. For some strange reason when I was four years old I was playing with two hands. And I can't really understand the reason, but I must have had something going with my ears because that's strictly ears. I must have just picked it up early. And I could probably listen to something on the radio and pretty much follow it. So that turned out pretty good. So at about six I think, maybe six or seven my parents figured that we better start me out somewhere. I had kind of a nice teacher I remember. I remember how much it did cost for a lesson, which I know was a dollar and a half. But she kind of liked me or liked what I was doing, and sometimes I ended up getting a whole week for the same money, which was a pretty good deal. So how often were the lessons? Well, once a week at first and then maybe a couple or few times a week depending on what she wanted me to do. I guess after a while, maybe I could have been eight or nine, they start you with recitals and stuff like that. I'll tell you one thing that I do remember. And this is kind of related to jazz and the orchestras and the bigwigs, as I go back through my early days being a pretty good jazz fan. At about nine, maybe it was nine years old and it was kind of I would call it -- I don't know. It's a recital. It was a competition of a sort, but there were only two of us. I think that I'd have to call him a boy because I must have been nine and he might have been ten. His name was Serge Chaloff. His parents were both teachers I believe, piano teachers. We both played the same thing. I think it was a Mozart Sonata in C major. I don't know what the 3 result was. I'm not sure who they said was better. But what I remember about Serge -- of course, I didn't know him personally. I was too young at that time to know. But he ended up being a fairly famous baritone saxophone player for Woody Herman. He was very talented guy. The only problem was he died very young. I think he was 33 years old. And I'm pretty sure that drugs were a problem. So that was the sad part of that. But I do have a lot of stuff since I have a lot of jazz records and he's on quite a few of them. Wow. Yes. And these were probably all in the ‘40s I should imagine when the big bands were in their prime. So that pretty much sums up my early life. Wonderful. Did any of the other brothers and sisters play? Okay. There was some talent in the family. My older brother played piano pretty much by ear. I don't think he had to read anything. And my second oldest, he probably liked to sing a little bit. I can't remember my sister doing a lot. But pretty much that was it. The key was my youngest brother and myself as far as really into the music part of what it was. I would think that that goes back to around 1939. What we had downstairs was a little rumpus kind of a room with a ping-pong table. And my second oldest brother, Carl, he was in like -- I won't say it's the jukebox business. But he used to work for somebody and maybe they'd distribute jukeboxes around and stuff. So naturally, we had one and we brought it down to our little rec room and we put in the records that were out at the time. And so we're talking about '38 and '39, we got hooked on Glenn Miller because that was the beginning of the end for us. So he'd bring home like "In The Mood" and "Little Brown Jug" and we were putting it on. My brother's got his little drum set there and we had a piano down there, and we'd be playing with the record. And it got to the point where we started getting a few more of those. We got hooked in so bad that you could take any one of those records and I could play probably all the solos and he'd just play the drums or whatever. That's, I would say, the way that I can remember the music part started. Oh, that's excellent. Now, tell me about Boston Latin. Okay. Boston Latin, I guess we picked on that because it was the place to go if you could get in. It had the most prestige maybe of any school that I ever heard of, and maybe my parents. I don't know if I was thrilled about going there, but they figured it was a good idea. So I did get in, in the ninth grade. And I wasn't a great student and I didn't get involved in too much there. 4 Was it known for its musical program? There was music there, but I never got involved at all. I never got involved really in any of the activities. I wasn't thrilled to go to school. Let's put it that way. Tell her who was in Latin School. Okay. Well, it's very famous that way. In fact, I have my little piece of paper in my wallet that shows Benjamin Franklin and I were in the same school. So we do have a connection. Oh, my God. That is wonderful. It's the oldest -- Yes. I guess 1635 is the key because that's the oldest public school in the country. Of course, when he went -- I don't know what kinds of buildings they had at the time. Then Joseph Kennedy Senior went there, Leonard Bernstein and maybe some others. Redstone. Oh, Redstone. Well, we don't talk about him. He just owned a lot of stuff here in town. Yes, I think he was a year ahead of me. And somebody else that went there who was very influential, I may have known him. I don't know. I may have met him or I may not. He was one year ahead of me. And that was Nat Hentoff, who was maybe one of the great jazz critics in the country, plus very knowledgeable in politics and stuff like that. So we had a few pretty well-known people that went there. It may have a lot more than that, too. But I hated history for one thing. I wish I could have got out of that for sure. See, this is why we do oral histories now. People really, really love history now because they can use -- Yes. I might have liked it more now than I did then. Yes. But it could also have to do with the teacher. You know, you don't get thrilled about some of them. And that's the way pretty much it went. So I did graduate without any big problems. After that I don't think I did much as far as school after high school. Okay. So this being 1942, I would say then I might have got a few little jobs around town. Probably hanging up coats in I.J. Fox, which is a place that I hardly remember, but some people may remember it. So what is I.J. Fox? 5 I.J. Fox is like a furrier. I was probably in the stockroom or whatever it is. And I kind of remember that. And that would be 1944. I kind of remember that. Now, from there my older brother had a very -- I also worked with him and eventually married my sister. He might have got me the connection with -- you could say it was Decker Records. He knew the boss. And they hired me. I was probably twirling up albums. You know, you take out the album and you put the records in and stuff like that and pulling the things off the truck, the big records and stuff like that. So I was a stock boy or whatever it was. I remember being there for maybe a year, something like that. But the interesting thing is I'm remembering the prices a little bit on the albums. Now, Count Basie was on Decker Records I'm pretty sure at that time. And I kind of remember one of his albums. And there were like six records on an album, you know, the old bake and like, whatever they called them. If you threw them down, you'd break them in a hurry. Yes. Yes. And I remember a Count Basie album, which might have been one of the best because the key stuff for him was like "One O'clock Jump" and "Jumpin’ at the Woodside." That may have been pretty much most of them in there. And you could get an album like that for like a dollar and a half. Can you imagine with six records in it? But I kind of remember that. I did that for maybe about a year and then I couldn't make up my mind. They kept telling me you should be maybe playing piano. And I'm doing this and I'm busboy in a restaurant and stuff like that. Finally I started to get into it a little bit. They had two or three orchestra leaders around for commercial stuff in Boston. So I figured I would go up. You're supposed to sort of audition. And what I do remember -- and this is around 1944 or '45. You were talking about maybe getting into the piano. So they had a couple of big-time -- well, I suppose you call them club dates. They did all pretty much commercial music around town and they got their guys. That's what you did, one-nighters or for a wedding or a bar mitzvah or anything. And they'd hire the guys that they liked to work them. So it was kind of an audition. This guy's name I think was Billy Kroner or whatever. I'm trying to remember. He was one of the big orchestras. They had a couple of fairly big ones that they called. And I remember going up and I remember the song that I played. It was called "Waiting for the Train to Come in." I played it. They probably had the rhythm section or something. After I finished he came up to me 6 and said why don't you go into another business? And I thought that was kind of cute. Not too complimentary. He said try something else. And that was the end of that I remember. However, I used to go down to the union. A lot of the guys would hang around there, 369 in Boston. I started to get some jobs. They called you and you do a thing. I was doing that, started to do that. At the same time I was still working for Decker Records. Did you join the union? I did join the union, yes. Okay. Now, I finally decided I had enough of the records. I was going to give the piano a try. And I remember the boss of Decker saying -- I said I'm going to leave. And he said you'll be back, you'll be back. And I said I hope not. I was doing club dates as I recall. This was 1945. I think that my first job was -- they had a little club in Everett, Massachusetts. I can't remember too much about it. But that was the first one that I remember. That was probably 1945. That's when I was officially a musician in the union. And from then -- Before you tell me your next one after 1945, so World War II didn't interfere? I got rejected because -- it was a couple of things. I think they thought I was a little too skinny. I think I weighed 110 pounds when I went up there. They figured I wasn't going to be -- I probably couldn't lift a gun or whatever it was that I had to do. So I did flunk that part. So I was still able to do a little music. Okay, good. Now, could you read music? I could read. Now, here's how I remember my early lessons. I could read okay but very slowly. I was very good at memorizing it after I learned it. But reading wasn't my thing. My ear was the key. And I would always try to play my little tunes in between, you know. I wasn't thrilled about the classical part of it. And I did that for a few years. This was probably -- well, I was still young then. Then I started to play a little and I did club dates. I'm not sure that my brother -- my brother was probably still playing drums. He was three years younger than me. I don't know if he did too much of the stuff that I did. I did a few of those here and there. That worked out okay. Did you enjoy that? I liked it okay. Yes. I knew I was doing the thing I should be doing. So that worked out okay. Then I guess we got -- we went into -- let me see, ’46, ’47, ’48, ’49. Okay. I'm trying to get into '45 to '50. By the time we got to, say, 1948, I was working with my brother. He was playing drums at the time and we'd have little groups and do some jobs around. Okay. 1948. 7 Now, before that I forgot. 1946, there was a contractor around town. I got to work with him a little. I got my first summer job, which was in Bethlehem, New Hampshire in '46 and '47. I did that for two summers in a row. That was kind of nice. It was all right. Sometimes you'd get asked -- they'd throw the music in front of you. And I wasn't thrilled about that because you're supposed to be able to read that stuff in a hurry and I didn't read it in a hurry. So I'd have to give it a little extra work. But I managed okay. I did that for a couple of years and that was '47. After that I sort of got hooked in with my brother a little bit and we were playing together with little things around town. We might have worked a place like Salisbury, Massachusetts, '48-‘49. Okay. And then we got a little trio. I could call it little. It wasn't that little. It was called the Harrington Paul Trio. It was my brother and myself and this Steve Harrington. He sort of was the main guy. He played bass and he also sang and he was a very good singer. I think he might have sung with Glen Gray for a while. So we kind of worked around town and did a couple of things like the Darby Room, which was in Copley Square, which was fairly classy. We did that for a while. And then in 1950 I remember probably the first time we went out of town. Whether we had an agent or not, I can't even remember. But somebody booked us in Toronto, Ontario. This was 1951. Now, my wife being with me -- okay. I'm not sure if she was with me because we hadn't gotten married because this is February 1951 and we didn't get married till April. She probably knows better than I. But I'm pretty sure that she was there. We worked two weeks in a club and that was it. That was '51 I think. All right. The year before, 1950, we had a summer job on the Cape. It was called the Popponesset Inn with the trio. It was still the Harrington Paul Trio. So you were there all summer? Yes. So tell me what that's like. Do you have a place to stay included? Yes. You always get room and board. Pretty much you don't go too far because it was on the water. But I can't remember whether we swam or not and stuff like that. But it was very nice. And we were a pretty good trio. And you played every night? Yes, I would say so; something like that. So that worked out pretty good. That was 1950. And people danced? 8 I would say that they did, but maybe listened a lot too because we did -- I'm going to think of a guy's name that we probably copied. And I will. He worked around with a trio the same way and what we did with these kind of quiet vocals. I'll think of the guy. And that kind of stuff. A little singing solo and stuff like that. Did you ever sing? Oh, yes. Singing was a big part of it. We sang with the trio. Steve was the real singer. He was a real ballad singer. And then we'd do these little things, hip-hop stuff, but all on the good music, which is the standards, you know, all the stuff that we grew up with. So we were doing that. It worked out okay. I'm trying to think now. That was probably in the early ‘50s. We probably did club dates and stuff like that. And I probably did my dates by myself with the orchestras. And we did that during the ‘50s. How did you meet Florence? Okay. Probably at a party or something. That obviously was in the early ‘50s or late ‘40s. We got married in '51. Okay. I'm remembering that part. Now, ‘50s, I think that -- okay. How I figured to come into accounting, I'm not positive. But I did. I went to -- it's called Bentley's. And it was a day school. I went two years and I got probably a degree. I started to look for a bookkeeper. And I did find a place that I remember the most, which was called -- it was an army auto parts kind of a thing. And I did whatever it was that has to do with the books. And I didn't mind doing it. It was okay. And this is 1955. Okay. 1955 maybe and '56, I still probably did club dates and stuff like that. I'm trying to remember just before -- I still was probably doing the same thing until 1958. Okay. Now, I'm going to go to 1957. And this has a little bearing on what I'm going to tell you later. Good. My brother got hooked with a jazz trio. And her name was Barbara Carroll and she was a jazz piano player. Her husband was the bass player. It was Joe Schulman*. And my brother Ralph was the drummer. They came out to Las Vegas in 1957. I'm not positive where they worked, but I'm sure they worked in town here. They might have done it for a year or so and then whether they broke up or she went off on her own. And he might have had something going by himself. But he kept writing to me. He says you have to come out, he says, because they don't have any musicians and they can use guys and we can do stuff and whatever. 9 So I kept thinking about it and thinking about it. And all of sudden in the mail I get a contract that he sent to me. We had a job at El Rancho in 1958. So I just packed up my stuff and I came out by myself first. I think Florence came out maybe a couple of weeks later. My two boys were at the time probably four and five. So we all came out together; something like that. And we went right into El Rancho. There was a bass player and a lady singer, Paulette Richards, who was a very good singer. And that was it. We had a trio and a girl vocalist. And it worked out very well. I think the hours were something like nine to three in the morning, which was most of the action. There weren't a lot of hotels at the time. Desert Inn was there, Tropicana, probably the old Frontier. The Flamingo. And the Flamingo naturally, which was probably the first one. So this would have been 1958. The big acts coming in would be like Milton Berle and Joe E. Lewis and stuff like that. What I do remember is this. Eddie Gomez was sort of the band -- there were two bands in the lounge. Ed was a Latin American kind of thing, and us, which was our kind of music. So we probably alternate. And the showroom -- like I say the shows might have been eight o'clock and midnight. And they come out of a show at 9:30 and that's when the band better be on their toes. We had to be swinging away when they come out because a whole bunch of people are coming out at the same time. And that was what the boss told us you have to do. To keep your job you better be doing your stuff. And it worked out pretty much that way with the two bands. At the time I guess most of the hotels, they weren't anything like the coop stuff that they had later on. They had individual owners. And they were like the dictators. So were they good dictators? That's a good question. The word came out -- our boss' name was Beldon Katleman. The word was out to everybody in the place -- do not talk to the boss and just go about, do your work, don't ever go near him. That's the thing. Just do your job. And it was always that way. So I guess it was just a fact that that was off limits. You don't have anything to say to him. You had a job and you had to do your job. And that's all that. I'll give you one little humorous incident that happened. There was also a strolling accordion trio. So they'd walk away and play whatever it was. The leader with the accordion got a little bit cocky and he went up to the boss, Beldon Katleman. He said how do you like my trio? And Beldon said very good; you're fired. Exactly that way. That's something that everybody remembered. I guess what they told you 10 at the beginning made sense. But I always got a kick out of that. But the good thing about El Rancho was -- I think it might have been nine to three. Hard to believe if there were people in there, we went overtime. Sometimes we played till five or six in the morning, which was kind of hard to believe. So that worked out pretty good. Everything was okay. So describe to me what it was like to play at the El Rancho in the late ‘50s, ‘60s. Okay. We would probably do pretty much -- well, she was featured. She'd sing a lot of the stuff. And when we played we might come on first and just play some jazz trio tunes. That's all. But our kind of music, which was standards. That's what we grew up with. That was the only kind of music that was worth anything, you know. And now we're listening to all the great jazz that's coming out on records, which would have been anybody from Lester Young to Stan Getz to Dizzy and Charlie Parker. We got pretty much into it, but we kept playing the same. We weren't that modern and we just played the same kind of stuff. Did people who came to the show, did they dance? And how did they dress? They dressed pretty formally I think in those days. Everybody got dressed up as I remember. Whether they danced to our trio, it's a little tough for me to remember. It's possible they did. There might have been a dance floor. So now, were you in the lounge? Yes. There were lounge acts as opposed to the showrooms where the bigwigs would be there and they might have a 10-12-piece orchestra playing the shows. Okay. So that's the way it worked pretty much. So we did that for a couple of years. Then the fire came. Who knows what happened or whatever? What were the stories about what happened? Just sort of that it was accidental. And it was that kind of a place where I imagine -- they didn't have those brick whatever. I think there was a lot of wood, however they did that. And it went pretty quick. So there were a lot of unhappy people because everybody that worked there was now out of work. We pretty much had to look on our own and stuff like that. Then it became get what you can get. You know, you went down to the union and you knew people and it was pretty big at the time. And if something came up you might get a call. And you'd get a call and stuff like that. So what kinds of calls did you get? 11 Well, I got a call occasionally. Somebody might have called me early on, say, 1959 or so. I'm trying to remember. Maybe '60. I remember a couple of the acts that I worked with. One was The Four Aces. This was probably around 1959-60. I'm pretty sure it was the Stardust. I'll give you the history of the Stardust. It was as old as we were coming to Las Vegas because when we came in 1958 they were almost finished building it. So that gives you the year when the Stardust was completed. And that became a big place to play for a lot of the musicians. They had a lounge there with a revolving stage. And one band would come up. And then they'd finish and the stage would turn around. And then the next -- which was kind of interesting. And that was mostly during the ‘60s. So we did a lot of that. Either in between or around the same time I got to work at the Hacienda, which was "Doc" Bayley's place. It was like either before the Stardust, but it was around that time. And there was a lady singer called Cathie Ryan. I think she was the singer and we maybe had a trio behind her. Now, what I do remember is after that fire I don't know if I worked very seldom or not at all with my brother after that. He went on his own way and I went on my own way, and we probably never got in the same groups. So that was pretty much the way it was. And we worked at the Stardust during the ‘60s in and out with different headliners. So who were some of the headliners that you worked with? Well, there weren't any names. The one that I remember very well was -- they were called The Bernard Brothers. They were two guys and they were very good. We'd just have a group that happened to be -- you know, some guy might have come out of the union and he might have been a saxophone player and he'd call me. And they might have three or four guys. And we played for the act. There might have been a couple other acts, which I really can't put my finger on. But that was the format. And we did that pretty much during the ‘60s. So were you ever in any groups that played behind some of the named entertainers? Okay. Yes. Now, here's where we get into that. All right. Now, in the 60s I think the real start for me was Caesars Palace was built and completed in August of 1966. Okay. Now, how I got into the band, I'm not positive. But I do remember -- well, maybe. I was pretty friendly with -- he may have been president at the time. It was Jack Eglash. He was very well-known and he was a saxophone player and he was sort of a leader kind of a guy. He got the band at Caesars to open up Caesars Palace. It might have been 12. Who 12 knows how many guys in the band? I think you're going to enjoy this story. Well, we were rehearsing a show called Ladies Be Seated. There was a guy Benny something, Benny Fields or whatever. He was kind of a famous comedian that was around. He was I think a highlight of the show. So we were rehearsing. This is probably in the summer of