bandman

Doc goes pops for last time in Valley
Kerry Lengel
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 26, 2006 12:00 AM

When Doc Severinsen plays Memories next Sunday, it will probably be his final performance with the Phoenix Symphony. But don't call it the trumpeter's swan song.

"This is at a time when most people are looking for a good retirement community, and I'm not cut out that way. I'm not the retiring sort," says Severinsen, the flamboyant virtuoso who served as Johnny Carson's bandleader for 25 years and is signing off as the Phoenix Symphony's principal pops conductor after 22 seasons.

Severinsen says he'll be devoting more energy to his business, Severinsen Custom Trumpets, and to working on a new homestead in Mexico with his wife, TV producer Emily Marshall. Although he isn't retiring from performing, he doesn't plan to return to the Phoenix Symphony.

"They did ask if I would be the pops director emeritus, and I said, 'You know, I'm not anything emeritus. For a guy 78, that doesn't have a good sound,' " he says.

"I've been there 22 years. I think that's long enough. I feel like, well, I've played all the tunes I know, so maybe it's time to move on."

Born Carl H. Severinsen in the small Oregon town of Arlington, he was nicknamed "Little Doc" after his father, a dentist. He picked up the trumpet as a child and was touring with a jazz band by the time he reached high school.

After a stint with the Army during World War II, he played with the Tommy Dorsey and Benny Goodman bands in the late 1940s. He joined The Tonight Show band in 1962 and became music director five years later.

Severinsen left the show with Carson in 1992 but hardly slowed down. In addition to touring with his band, he had a thriving career as a pops conductor with orchestras across the country, which began with the Phoenix Symphony.

When he was asked to become principal pops conductor, "I kind of laughed and I said, 'No, I don't think you understand,' " he recalls. " 'I have a show that I do with orchestras, and if I gave the impression that I knew what I was doing, it was only by accident.' . . . I tried my best to talk them out of it."

He failed, of course, and that was the start of a beautiful friendship.

"This is more than a great group of musicians for me," he says. "This is part of my family, and I really mean that, not just musically, but in a very personal way. I've had a great time with them. I've seen them go through some really, really rough times, and there was never once that they would come out on the stage and give a performance that would indicate that anything was other than perfect."

The musicians also admire Severinsen's professionalism, says flutist Joe Corral. In rehearsals, he moves quickly without sacrificing the little details that make a performance sparkle.

"When he's up there just conducting, he really knows how to do it," Corral says. "He has a great sense of rhythm. . . . And he has helped the orchestra respond like jazz players. He allows the orchestra to really follow along with the chord structure, so it's more like the way it would be in a jazz group. He relies on the individuals to keep the pulse."

For any skills he has picked up as a conductor, Severinsen credits the symphony.

"The guys in the orchestra, the men and the women, all took me under their wing," he says. "I learned more from those people than I ever would have learned in school."

However, unlike celebrity pops conductors, such as Jack Everly or Keith Lockhart, it's not Severinsen's baton that keep patrons coming back.

"He's a virtuoso," says Maryellen Gleason, president and CEO of the symphony. "I think it's amazing that he can still play the trumpet that well, and the audience is just captivated by his virtuosity. . . .

"He's a good conductor, he's OK at that, but when he starts to play the trumpet, they go bananas. They whistle and they yell and they cheer."

"As an ex-trumpet player myself, I really have come to appreciate the way he performs," says Scottsdale businessman Herman Chanen, a longtime friend of Severinsen.

"Few people would believe that every day of his life, wherever he may be, he practices a minimum of two to three hours a day. It never fails."

Although there's no denying the wow factor of Severinsen's technique - he hits notes other players can only dream about - his personality is just as important to his appeal.

"He just has a great joie de vivre," Corral says. "He loves to play, he loves to eat. And he loves people, and people respond to that right away."

Famously, he also loves clothes, and he manages to show off two outfits - from shiny sequins to macho snakeskin - at each concert.

"He must have the most incredible wardrobe," Chanen says, "because he never wears the same thing twice."

Asked whether he has picked out his clothes for his farewell gigs, Severinsen replies with typical self-deprecating humor.

"No, I haven't," he says. "But I look at it this way: I go in the closet with my eyes shut, and I can't go right."

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