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.
Read more about this topic: Joe Venuti
Famous quotes containing the words practical and/or jokes:
“It is always a practical difficulty with clubs to regulate the laws of election so as to exclude peremptorily every social nuisance. Nobody wishes bad manners. We must have loyalty and character.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Wit is a weapon. Jokes are a masculine way of inflicting superiority. But humour is the pursuit of a gentle grin, usually in solitude.”
—Frank Muir (b. 1920)