Inside the Studios, Part II

The heyday for the recording studios, especially in New York, was from the early 50’s through the 60’s. Musicians who were adept on their instruments and who had excellent sight reading skills found work plentiful, and often enjoyed up to four discrete sessions in a single day. Many interviewees spoke of their work in the studios at this time. In this part, I thought it would be interesting to outline the qualities that put musicians on the first-call list for session gigs.

As echoed in our last blog by Tom McGrath, being on time was the first requirement for getting that call. Joe Wilder recalled some advice from his father, about how he should conduct himself as a musician:

Joe Wilder and Monk Rowe

JW:    I guess I got it mainly from my father, who was a musician. My father played with a lot of the bands in Philadelphia and he was a stickler for being on time. He used to pound that into my brothers and me. You know it’s better for you to come one hour early than to come one second late for something, and he would use as an example, there was a drummer that played with one of the bands he played with. And the guy was a good drummer. And he said, “you know the dance starts at 8:00 and we’re all there,” and he said, “and we’re all sitting on the bandstand ready to play and the drummer isn’t there. He comes at 8:15.” He said, “he knows it takes him at least 20 minutes to set up his drums.” He said, “now what sense does that make? What excuse is that?” And then he would say, “you know just because you’re black doesn’t mean you have to show up late.”

When musicians speak of another musician and say he/she has “good time,” everyone knows what is meant. Usually this refers to a bassist or drummer who keeps a steady beat and is able to play with feeling while avoiding speeding up or slowing down. Being a successful studio musician required a different “good time,” the ability to be punctual without exception.

Bassist Milt Hinton got in on the ground floor and was one of the first black musicians to be accepted in the studio scene. His wife, Mona, spoke about the work:

Mona Hinton

MH:    It didn’t make any difference whenever a contractor would call, it could be, he never said who it was for. He would call and say, “is Mr. Hinton free at 10:00 on Tuesday” or whatever it is, and I had an appointment book, and, “yes he’s free.” “Well have him at RCA Victor or Capitol or Columbia Studio at such and such a time. Now when he left home he didn’t know whether it was a rock ‘n roll, whether it was with Stravinsky, whether it was with Barbra Streisand, he didn’t know who it was for. Guy Lombardo, you know, it could be anybody.  And these were the people. He just went there, they put the music up there, and he had to be on time, not looking for a place to park or not adjusting your strings. When that conductor’s baton came down across his nose you were there to get that first note.  And so Milton believes in punctuality. But these are the things that got him started. And once they knew that he was qualified, he could read anything, play anything, and so he just started getting more work than he could handle. Milton made his first recording date in 1930. And he has worked with every group of musicians, every generation, from that day up to the present day.

Mona alluded to Milt’s versatility, and his attitude that any music placed in front of him was worth playing well. Pianist Dick Hyman shared a similar opinion about doing what was necessary to serve the music, regardless of one’s personal taste.

Dick Hyman and Monk Rowe

MR:    What kind of people did you play behind?

DH:    Ivory Joe Hunter, Ruth Brown, Lavern Baker, The Coasters, The Drifters. I remember that terrible record “White Christmas” that was so popular.

MR:    Did you play on that?

DH:    I did. But we did all that stuff. And if you asked me what we thought of it, we always — we said to each other can you imagine, in 20 years, this was in 1955 or so, in 20 years people will be saying to each other, “listen darling, they’re playing our song.” And you know that’s exactly what happened. All of that funny music that we laughed at became classic in rock. And go figure it out.

MR:    Well musicians who’ve never done studio work may not realize that you don’t have to like everything you play on in a studio. It’s not possible.

DH:    No, no. What you have to like is being able to play it well.

MR:    Correctly, yeah.

DH:    And you do your best no matter what it is.

Dick Hyman wore multiple hats in the studio: pianist, organist, orchestrator, percussionist on occasion, and general get-the-job-done guy.

MR:    So if you listened to the Oldies station —

DH:    I do.

MR:    Are you likely to hear yourself?

DH:    Very much.

MR:    Can you tell me a couple of spots that I might hear?

DH:    Yeah. Johnny Mathis, there’s one — there’s a famous Mathis record that begins with a piano figure. “Chances Are.”

MR:    “Chances Are.” Yes. That’s you?

DH:    That’s one. Yeah. And then there’s another one that I whistled on for Johnny Mathis. And there’s another Bob Allen song.

MR:    “Wonderful Wonderful.”

DH:    Right.

MR:    That’s you whistling is that right?

DH:    That was one of my — well you know I had made my own — I have to admit — hit record of “Moritat,” which then became known as “Theme from the Three Penny Opera” and then finally became known as “Mac the Knife” in 1955 for MGM as the Dick Hyman Trio. And I whistled on it as well as playing an instrument called the harpsichord piano. So it became known around town that I was willing and I was capable of whistling. Willing to undertake it and capable of doing it without running out of breath. So I found myself being called to be a whistler on dates and I promptly joined AFTRA, that is the singers union, because their scale was higher than the musician’s union, and on a good day I might collect both scales on a single session. So I’m the whistler on that and I’m the whistler on something with Marion Marlowe , something called “The Man in the Raincoat,” one of those spooky third-man theme type recordings.

MR:    Was it a lip whistle or was it a teeth whistle?

DH:    No, no, no. The teeth whistling we left to Bob Haggart.

Studio musicians rarely saw the music in advance that was to be recorded. In the studio, time is money, and even the smallest mistake could require another take. Contractors soon learned which musicians had the chops, the punctuality, the versatility and the correct attitude. Drummer Bob Rosengarden shuttled between an NBC staff position (including membership in the “Tonight Show” band), recording dates, and the Music Director position for “The Dick Cavett Show.”

MR:    I was going to ask you when you showed up for a day at work at NBC, did you know what was in store for you that day?

Bob Rosengarden

BR:    I had no idea and couldn’t have cared less. I mean I just showed up. I always came from, in those days, because there weren’t that many good musicians, new guys who could play. I always prided myself and it’s not false modesty or anything, that I liked only two kinds of music — good music and bad music. So I didn’t mind having to play a polka, it didn’t really bother me, I can do it well, and I had a classical, musical background. So I found myself again slipping and sliding, right back into the NBC Symphony. Because I was one of the new boys. And there was a conductor there at that time by the name of Arturo Toscanini. Dumb luck.

MR:    But you were ready.

BR:    Oh, yes. I mean you sure as hell better be ready. And the old man couldn’t see too far away, you know you had to be right there. So he would look over and he’d make some gesture. And hopefully I’d figure out what it was he wanted me to do or not do. And [Johnny] Carson adopted us. I mean he loved Doc [Severinsen]. I still every once in a while hear from John. And again, slipping and sliding we were doing record sessions all the time, you know, every day. And we all saw each other every day in recording. We used to do three record dates a day, and a television show, every day. Seven days a week. It was a wild and wonderful time.

In our next blog we’ll take a look at some remarkable studio moments ranging from the sublime to the ridiculous.

A Social Hero

One can’t turn on the television these days without hearing about the societal leap America made in electing its first black president. And it’s true, January 20, 2009 will forever be known as the date where a giant step was made in race relations. Tracing the history of the integration of black and white into a merged society, one repeatedly comes across the name of Benny Goodman as being one catalyst for the integration of black and white musicians sharing the stage.
Though Benny was known for his quirky business relations and often miserly ways, he refused to understand why he couldn’t have the best people he could find playing with him at all times. The music quality came before any other considerations for him. He wanted the best available. I have chosen two quotes to demonstrate how Benny’s interesting personality forced racial integration, because he insisted it would be so. First, racial mores or racial prejudice weren’t part of Benny’s lexicon; Benny just wanted the best of the best as his sidemen. Second, Steve Allen relates his personal experiences with the “King of Swing.”
The following two quotations were taken from early interviews, Lionel Hampton in 1995 and Steve Allen in 1999. We are fortunate to have such first-hand recollections documented in our Archive, as both interviewees were icons who unreservedly told first-hand stories about their experiences working in the thriving entertainment world of the thirties through sixties:

The first clip, from Lionel, talks about doing his musical homework as a child and his early development on the vibes, which would later catch Benny’s ear:

Lionel Hampton & Monk Rowe, in 1995

LH: [W]e got through rehearsals and, which we did, and if you became a newspaper boy, you had to practice, I think it was three times a week. And so in between, after, we’d go to music school, where the Chicago newspaper boys rehearsed at, and they had some xylophones there, and I would play the solos that I had taken off the records that was played by Louis Armstrong and Coleman Hawkins and Benny Goodman. And it ended up that I liked it a lot. I would practice and play note for note what these stars played.
MR: So you’re really developing your ears for music.
LH: So I got a little head start on jazz, see? So I played something for a song that Louis had made a record on, called “Chinese Chop Suey.” And Louis liked it so well, he said “I’ll tell you, you keep the vibraphone out there, and we’re going to have you record with us.” So Eubie Blake, the big solo player and piano player at that time sent Louis arrangements to record for him. And the name of the tune was “Memories of You.”
MR: A beautiful song.
LH: Yeah, a beautiful song, yes. And so I played on the record, and people was wondering what instrument it was that they heard. And the vibes got very popular on the gig. And I found a new career.
MR: Because you got — your quartet started playing around California? And eventually that led to meeting Teddy Wilson and Benny Goodman?
LH: Yes.
MR: So it’s funny how things in your childhood will work. The fact that you got a little experience on that xylophone really paid off later on.
LH: Yeah. Real big. And about the big band, you know I joined Benny Goodman .... And we were the first integrated group, the first black and white group.
MR: Was that ever a problem playing in certain parts of the country?
LH: No, no, because we all played good music. And Benny presented us in a professional way. We were a four in his organization, and it would be noticeable that we were soft. And the people liked that. Some of the ovations that he used to get, it was the sound.
MR: I thought it was interesting that that quartet didn’t use a bass player a lot.
LH: No. Because Teddy Wilson played it in the left hand.

Later Lionel speaks about his actual integration into the Benny Goodman Quartet:

LH: I was the first black musician to play in a white band. See and Teddy Wilson was playing with Benny, but he used to play when Benny used to take intermission, and no white musicians was on stage, then Teddy would play, by himself see? So I was the first one, legally to break that tradition down. But you know the funny thing about it, there wasn’t no black and white playing together no place. Not in pictures, moving pictures, not in baseball, or football, no kind of sports. The Benny Goodman Quartet was the first mixed group and it was, you know.

Steve Allen spoke about working with Benny Goodman, and his often bizarre show business ways. Steve played the title role in the movie “The Benny Goodman Story,” and for that role he learned to play the clarinet. Steve related some insightful stories about his preparation for that part, and a subsequent duet playing with Benny on “The Steve Allen Show”:

SA: As soon as I agreed to do the movie then of course the question was even though I was a musician I knew nothing about the clarinet, so we had to hire somebody to teach me, and somebody knew about Sol, our mutual friend Bobby Rosengarden once said something hysterically funny, he described Sol Yaged as quote the Jewish Benny Goodman. For you young people, Benny himself is Jewish. But anyway Sol was the perfect choice, and a very easy guy to work with, so he gave me several weeks of just basic lessons, you know how to hold it, how to blow and all that stuff. And the reason I did have to go through all that, some people have said well why did you bother? Why didn’t you just go like that and pretend to play? The answer is my fingers had to be on the right holes. Now if you’re taking a shot from the back of a ballroom, it doesn’t matter, you can hardly see my hands. But on a close up I can’t be playing this if the real notes are over here. So I did have to have my fingers, and I did have to learn the instrument, and I learned it well enough to do a little playing in public. I once played a duet with Benny himself on a little tune I’d written. Benny himself that night was in a fog as usual. Benny Goodman lived in a fog. He was Mr. Absent Minded and often didn’t know what he was doing. He’d walk on stage with his fly open and stuff. And through accident, he was just a careless man and didn’t think much about the world. He was just the greatest clarinet player of them all. So just after the movie, NBC and Universal Studios got together to do a little promotion going in both directions, so that meant booking Benny on our show, which was on the air Sunday nights at NBC at the time. So Benny himself played for a few minutes, and naturally was thrilling as always, and then our production group decided that Benny and I would do my little song with the two of us playing clarinets. It was sort of a riff thing [scats], an easy thing to play. So in the script I walked in after Benny had played his marvelous numbers, and I said “Benny that was terrific.” And his line was “well thank you, Steve, say, I see you brought your clarinet, why don’t you and I do something together?” A pretty simple line, and he’d had a whole week to work on it, he had one line with a week to work on it, and he forgot my name. Now it was my show, I was playing him in the movie, you might figure if there was any name he wouldn’t forget it’s mine. He might have forgotten his own. But anyway he did, on the air, and he did what he always did, because he was always forgetting people’s names. He had the world’s worst memory for names. One night parenthetically I’ll tell you about his memory. He was doing a performance somewhere and his usual pianist, who was Teddy Wilson, the great black pianist, was not available that week and so he wasn’t at the instrument. I don’t know who the other guys was … it was some white player.
MR: Johnny Guarnieri?
SA: Thank you. So Benny is saying “thank you ladies and gentlemen, and I’d like to also share the thanks with our great drummer, Mr. Gene Krupa, and the King of the Vibes, Mr. Lionel Hampton,” now he turns to the white piano player and says “and at the keyboard, uhhh, Teddy Wilson, ladies and gentlemen.” That was the only name he could come up with. So that’s how Benny was about names. Anyway, back on my show, thirty million people watching. In those days you did have an audience that large. So I said “Benny that was fantastic, beautiful.” There’s about a two second silence and then he says “oh thank you, uh, Pops, say why don’t we do something together?” So that was the name he used. He called his grandmother Pops, and anybody. If he couldn’t think of a name he called them Pops.

There have been many milestones in race relations in this country, and, in jazz, we recognize the contribution of clarinetist Benny Goodman, one of our social heroes.

It's Campbell's Chicken Noodle Soup

This month marks the second anniversary of the abrupt passing of Kenny Davern, at age 72 at home of a heart attack. Kenny had only returned to his home in New Mexico two months prior, after attending his annual trek to Hamilton for our Fallcoming concert.

From before the jazz archive even existed, archive benefactor Milt Fillius hand-picked musicians to come to Hamilton for a special concert for the Hamilton community. Kenny always came, usually as leader, but in addition, Milt chose the best of the best. We were treated to the finest free jazz concerts, and Milt brought them to us! They always were, and still are, remarkable annual events. Kenny played the clarinet, and he maintained his amazing chops right until the end. Once Monk made an offhand comment to Kenny saying “I’ve read you’re considered one of best clarinetists alive,” to which Kenny directly replied, “Who’s the best?” I loved Kenny. It wasn’t just about his “sweet” jazz playing, though there was that. He was a realist and never sugar coated things, at least not with us. He also had the most caustic wit, on the bandstand and off, and said exactly what was on his mind. One time a Hamilton trustee rose to leave the event mid-set. Kenny addressed him by saying “got to go to bed? Got to go watch ‘The Tonight Show’?” The trustee returned to his seat. Kenny had no idea that the elderly person was a Hamilton VIP. Of course Kenny knew Milt and Monk and I, but for him, his yearly treks to Clinton, (via a minimum getting on three planes to make the connections) were simply a great gig.

I once told Kenny that the musicians Milt picked were Milt’s absolute favorites and Milt got such a kick out of choosing all the musicians he wanted to hear play together, never-minding the dynamics of what such combinations meant to the musicians. It was amazing to see Milt, year after year, sitting plumb in the front row of in the building known as the Fillius Events Barn and grinning ear to ear, watching his friends perform. He used the college as the venue, and he would have probably done it from his home in San Diego if he could have, but Milt liked to share his passion with others. When I told this to Kenny, that Milt was hand-selecting his own band and footing the entire bill for the weekend, it seemed to make more sense to Kenny. Of course Milt never consulted the musicians about who they would like to play with. Milt assumed that the musicians would happily come together as professionals do.

There are two videos of Kenny at Hamilton. Part 2 is a sit down he did at the college with Monk in 2001. We have found that many times interviewees either don’t watch the videos, or squirrel them away somewhere and never share them with their families. Bereaved families, however, are usually thrilled to discover them after the musician passes.

During interviews, very few musicians spoke their mind on tape as clearly as Kenny did. Usually once the camera went on there was a huge reluctance to say anything negative about anybody, especially fellow musicians. It’s after the lights are turned off and the camera is shut down that the musician’s true feelings are revealed. The musicians are usually uptight on camera for about the first 15 minutes of any interview. They are nervous, being that this is being conducted by a college, that they will be intimidated by professorial questions. Monk speaks as a bachelor’s-level-educated musician first, and as an improviser and composer. It only takes a short time before the interviewee warms up. The interviews themselves are directed by the conversation, not by a list of prepared questions Monk researches beforehand. In preparation for interviews, Monk buys recent CD’s of interviewees’ recent work and often consults The New Grove Encyclopedia of Jazz tomes before the session, so he sits down fully prepared about personal style and past relationships.

From the first moment Kenny sat down with his friend Monk, the wit was revealed and the stories are all there. We are sad that Part 2 was only an hour in length.

I will never forget the first conversation I had with Kenny, it was a personal coup. Kenny was on a break at the Hamilton concert, and went outside to smoke. This was around 1997. I asked Kenny about set list decisions, the implication being because all six musicians didn’t ordinarily play together, and finding common ground seemed so effortless. He said there was usually some kind of sit down where they’d decide before the set. I said to him “Oh so on stage, you don’t just get up there and call ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ in E, right?” He stared at me for a minute, then turned to Monk and said “I like this girl.” Once I had heard Monk mention that he was afraid because he was backing up Joe Williams for a few tunes on piano when he was at the college, and he was apprehensive because Joe was nonchalant about telling Monk in advance what tunes he wanted to sing and in which keys. Monk said to me “I’m afraid he’s going to say ‘Honeysuckle Rose’ in E.” Thus I filed away Monk’s comment, then later used the same comment with Kenny, and from that moment on Kenny and I had a warm relationship.

Kenny always invited Monk to come to the stage for one song at every Fallcoming, and Monk got to choose the tune. Once Monk said “how about ‘Summertime’” and Kenny said “no way, I own that tune.” That was Kenny’s signature song and he didn’t want to share it. So Monk decided instead on “Wabash Blues,” from a recent album Kenny had released. Nearing the end of the first set Kenny would point to Monk in the audience with his clarinet and say “get your horn out, boy,” and Monk would pull out his old Conn silver soprano sax and saunter to the stage. Monk never had to fumble with opening his case, putting his horn together or preparing his reed. To me, it looked like he belonged with the group. I always took pictures, as did the college.

Monk, Kenny, and James Chirillo on guitar, Fallcoming 2005

Chuck Riggs, the drummer on Kenny’s last gig at Hamilton, called after he passed and wanted Monk to know that he thought we had videotaped the last concert Kenny ever played. We aren’t sure if this is true or not, but when he returned home to New Mexico, Kenny did call and I could hear Monk on the phone talking to him about the final performance. Kenny seemed unhappy about his own performance, after receiving the videotape in the mail, and I heard Monk saying that the micing process wasn’t all that great as it was done from a camera in the balcony of the Fillius Events Barn. Kenny and Monk reviewed the concert song by song. I think Kenny was his own worst critic. He never failed to amaze me with his facility and how strongly he was able to maintain it and not compromise his playing due to his age as so many musicians do who develop physical problems. Kenny told Monk that he was unhappy with the final note Monk played on, “Wabash Blues,” and how he kept wanting Monk to get off that note. Monk told me after he hung up the phone that he knew at the time that the note he should have been on was a physical impossibility on the soprano sax, and that Monk knew at the time it was wrong, but Kenny called it to his attention later on. Jeez, these musicians sure can be picayune about things, can’t they? It’s doubtful anyone in the audience noticed it, but Kenny and Monk both did, enough so that it was a topic for later conversational dissection.

When Kenny did a clinic at the college at that same last visit in October, 2006, Monk went to the small class with him so that he could accompany Kenny on piano. Monk considers himself an adequate pianist, not a top-flight soloist. When he came home he beamed as he told me that Kenny had given him the supreme compliment after the clinic, that he really knew what he was doing in the art of accompaniment (presumably not playing too much or too little but just right). Since piano isn’t Monk’s first instrument, it really meant a lot, coming from Kenny.

We went out to a restaurant for lunch before the concert that day of Fallcoming, just the three of us. I was unable to attend that final concert, as one of my daughters needed me to be in Rochester for that weekend. Anyway, I was looking at the menu and Monk and I brought up something we have often discussed between us. Pasta is usually described as “al dente,” but what’s the opposite of that? It isn’t like when you order your steak rare or well done. So we posed the question to Kenny, what is the opposite of al dente? Without missing a beat, Kenny said “it’s Campbell’s Chicken Noodle Soup.” We both cracked up at the instantaneousness of his response, thus forever putting this question to bed for both Monk and myself.

I’m not sure if Kenny ever knew what an unlikely place Hamilton is for the jazz archive to be located. Hamilton is a northeastern liberal arts college with a small music department. Milt Fillius, ’44, being the huge swing era supporter that he was, provided the initiative for the creation of the jazz archive starting around 1992. This project went around and around for three years, much to Milt’s dismay, before Mary Kopcza from the Communications & Development department at college finally called Monk in 1995 and asked if he’d be interested in coordinating the project. At that time Monk was reluctant to get involved because although he was an adjunct instructor on saxophone, he was Artistic Director for the Arts in Education Institute at the Stanley Center for the Arts. Monk agreed to stick his big toe in the water in 1995 to see what this would all be about. Monk was not interested in “coordinating” the project (providing all the research, questions and contacts for someone else to use to conduct the actual interviews). In March of 1995, Milt Fillius attended the first interview trip to Scottsdale, AZ, and he said he wanted Monk to become the Director of the Jazz Archive. So since nearly the beginning, it’s been Monk who conducted the interviews.

And through this position, Monk travels to do presentations on jazz history — at SU, and Rutgers — and makes presentations before groups, such as the Society of American Archivists in New Orleans, and, before the International Association of Jazz Educators went down last year, Monk made biannual presentations or we wrote papers for IAJE conferences. He’s often invited to give presentations which include interview clips with commentary.

When Kenny passed Monk dedicated his next radio show to Kenny. He usually transfers these to CD, and he sent the CD to Kenny’s lovely widow, Elsa. Monk did the same thing when Bob Rosengarden passed recently, and sent it to Bob’s widow, Sharon, a longtime friend of ours. Bob, or “Rosie” as he was nicknamed, was a longtime friend of Milt and was his Fallcoming drummer of choice. Bob let us know in no uncertain terms when we first met him that he preferred being referred to as Bob, not Bobby, as he was often identified on album covers. He came to the college many times. Bob used to be the music director of the “Dick Cavett Show,” and provided all the ta-ta-booms after the jokes Dick Cavett delivered. Bob was incapacitated by Alzheimer’s for the last several years of his life, and Sharon often called either myself or Monk to share stories about Bob and his use of the minimal drumset. Sharon attended Fallcoming with Bob when he attended his final public performance also, and at that time Sharon told Monk and I “this will be the last concert Bob ever plays in public,” as she saw Bob’s early Alzheimer symptoms. When Monk sent Sharon the CD of his radio show after Bob passed, she called us and said “it was lovely to hear Bob’s voice again, it had been so long since I heard his voice.” The “voice” of course, were the clips Monk had selected to augment the radio show.

It was fortunate that Milt Fillius and Monk had seven years of active interviewing gathering, enough time to get this archive to where it is, for which we are very proud. And in the process, the education that has come as a fortunate byproduct of doing the interviews, for Monk, has been an invaluable resource for Monk’s personal development.

Here’s one final funny story about Kenny which to mind as I recall his trips here. In 2005, Kenny had a new cell phone. He was never one for gadgets or computers or email. That year, one of Kenny’s flights was delayed. He called our home phone and got our answering machine and started ranting and raving about how he couldn’t figure out how to “work the phone” and swearing about the flight being delayed, and then finally leaving the message about when his flight would arrive in Syracuse. We got the message and Monk adjusted his schedule for the later pick-up. Monk too tends to be quite challenged when it comes to all things cellular, and when Kenny finally arrived at the Syracuse airport at 11 PM, the airport was dark and effectively “closed.” The two of them wandered around the airport apparently just missing each other, for about 45 minutes before they finally connected. Monk knew the flight had landed. Anyway, they couldn’t find each other. Apparently it never occurred to the two of them until the next day, well after the crisis was resolved, that they simply could have called each other on their cell phones to connect with each other. My daughters were laughing hysterically when they were told about the scenario, as us old fogies never seem to think of using technology first, to solve problems. Later Kenny profusely apologized to me for having heard his rant on our machine. He was sincere in his apology, but I thought it was the funniest message I ever heard on our telephone. We miss Kenny and we mourn his passing at such a young age. We take solace in the fact that he maintained his finest form right up until the end. And he left such a remarkable body of work, including his album “My Inspiration,” Kenny’s personal favorite. Click on the link of the title of this article, “It’s Campbell’s Chicken Soup Noodles” and you will be transported to the Hamilton website where there is a clip of Kenny and Monk’s interview from 2001. Coincidentally on that site, just below Kenny’s clip is also one of Bob Rosengarden, so you will get double the fun.

Romy