June-July 1973 The Laurels Hotel Monticello NY

I'm not a person who ever  kept a journalor a diary of any sort at any time so, please bear with me as I exercise some of my personal stash of unused brain.

     After the dues gigs at Gilbert's and Grossinger's, Sammy booked us for a longer house gig in the Bavanda Lounge at the Laurel's Hotel.

     Dig this ... at The Laurels there was a whole wing at the hotel given over to housing for the summer staff. No green mold basement rooms or communal bathrooms on this gig. We got two rooms on the second floor. Weber being the "band leader",  got his own room right off the bat but, after our first week I was able to sweet talk the assistant staff Director into giving me my own room. Now, all three of us were living large.

The Bavanda Lounge

     Compared to Grossinger's, this gig was going to be a piece of cake. We set up in the Bavanda Lounge and didn't move any equipment for the whole two months we were booked!

     We played a light jazz set for cocktail hour, something like 4 to 5 pm and then we would head off to the staff dining room and get some dinner. after that we were back in the lounge for dance sets from 8 pm to 2 am. If my memory is correct we worked Monday through Saturday and our drinks were on the house!

     The bar was usually closed during the day until cocktail hour and the manger was cool with us going in there to jam and work on new songs. So it was a life of music all day long!

     Now, for a little icing on that cake. Staff workers were allowed to use the pool and sit anywhere! I got the best tan of my life at that pool! I took this a bit further and finagled my way into the Sauna and Steam Rooms.

I love sitting in a Steam Room. To this day my hair looks great after 20 minutes in a steam bath!

     All this and I got paid $125 per week plus room and board ... and like I said, the drinks were free.

     Like all the other big hotels in the Borscht Belt, The Laurels had a big showroom. Comics were a mainstay along with magicians and Broadway performers.

     During the busy summer season the show room bands were mostly made up of players from the jazz scene in NYC. These players had the same pay and room and board deal as we had but, they only had to play the shows which were usually an hour and a half to two hours. It was a great gig because they could stash away quite a bit of rent money to get through the rest of the year.

         Let me tell you a funny Showroom story.

     When we got to the laurels the saxplayer in the show band was a cat thatTommy and I knew from back home. This fine young fellow had been teaching sax at our favorite music store in Edison, Lou Rose Music. When I first met said player, at LouRose, he came out of a teaching room wearing his sax and decorating it with the lettuce that was falling out of the sub sandwich he was eating. Man there was lettuce all over that Selmer! Ok,  that's enough back story.

                                        Some names have been witheld to protect the innocent.

     One of the comics was a guy named, London Lee. I'd seen him on The Ed Sullivan Show. His act was billed as "The Poor Little Rich kid" and I'd say at his best he was almost funny. So, he's up doing his thing and  once in awhile he'd get a chuckle out of the audience.

     Now about 20 minutes into his set the audience starts spontaneously laughing and in a couple of minutes, they're really laughing but, laughing in the wrong spots.

    Technical note ... Comics never got stage monitors so they couldn't hear what was coming out of the house main speakers.

     Back to the story ...

     London knows something's up and he starts looking around. To his surprise he sees the sax player Dave Schnitter slumped forward, asleep and snoring into the sax mic and Dave's snoring  is coming out loud and clear into the house so, London strolls over and taps his mic on his head and yells at this cat at the top of his lungs "Excuse me ... Excuse me!".

     Dave picks his head up only slightly and says " Oh man is this cat done yet?" right into

his mic. Now the whole place is howling laughing. London drops his mic and walks off to thunderous

laughter and applause!

Showroom at the Laurels

Dave went on to become a first call cat on the NYC Jazz scene. He spent a few years in Art Blakey's band.

I don't know what happened to London.