Practical Jokes
Apart from his impressive playing style, Joe Venuti was almost as well known for his amusing practical jokes. He was well known to play inexpensive violins, since many of his former band members have said that he had been known to crack these over the heads of his players on occasion. There are many anecdotes of his humorous pranks fondly told by his associates. One of the best known tales was one in which he filled a tuba player’s horn with flour during a break in a rehearsal. Another involved sending a well-known one-armed trumpet player, Wingy Manone, a single cufflink for Christmas several years in a row. He was also well known for calling up every bass player in the New York phonebook and asking them to meet with him on a street corner. When over 50 bass players arrived with their instruments it created a minor roadblock. He then subsequently had to pay the players for their time as mandated by the AMF.
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Famous quotes containing the words practical and/or jokes:
“As for Clothing, to come at once to the practical part of the question, perhaps we are led oftener by the love of novelty and a regard for the opinions of men, in procuring it, than by a true utility.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Both gossip and joking are intrinsically valuable activities. Both are essentially social activities that strengthen interpersonal bonds—we do not tell jokes and gossip to ourselves. As popular activities that evade social restrictions, they often refer to topics that are inaccessible to serious public discussion. Gossip and joking often appear together: when we gossip we usually tell jokes and when we are joking we often gossip as well.”
—Aaron Ben-Ze’Ev, Israeli philosopher. “The Vindication of Gossip,” Good Gossip, University Press of Kansas (1994)