Q: How many Musician jokes are there?
A: Just one -- all the rest are true!!
For more of these Q and A jokes click HERE. There's a bunch of 'em on another page.
An accordian player parks his car on busy street in N.Y. He's
apprehensive to leave his accordian but puts it in the back seat and
locks up the car. He comes back 2 hours later and as you probably
guessed...someone broke into his car and left 2 more accordians.
The trombone player had a New Year's gig with his quartet. It was going
very well. The band was enjoying it, the audience was digging and the
club owner was ecstatic.
"Hey, you guys are great!" the club owner exclaimed, "I'd like book you
for next New Year's Eve next year. Are you available?"
"As a matter of fact we are," answered the trombonist.
"Well, consider it booked then!"
"Thanks very much," answered the trombonist, "Is it alright if I leave
my horn here?"
A blonde drummer, tired of being ridiculed by his peers, decides to learn how to play some "real" musical instruments.
He goes to a music store, walks in, approaches the store clerk, and says "I'll take that red trumpet over there and
that accordion."
The store clerk looks at him a bit funny, and replies "OK, you
can have the fire extinguisher but the radiator has got to stay!!!"
A foreign pianist was engaged to act as accompanist for an aspiring amateur
singer. The amateur was a lady. She had bounding ambitions but her
technique was faulty. This defect became manifest at the first rehearsal.
After the poor woman had flatted and flatted until she had flatted
practically all of her notes, the accompanist waved her to silence.
"Madam," he said mournfully, "it is no use. I gif up der chob. I blay der
black keys, I blay der white keys - und always you sing in der cracks.
A tourist in New York city stopped a passing pedestrian carrying a violin case and asked,
"How do I get to Carnagie Hall?"
"Practice, man, practice."
There is a guitarist playing on a big band. The job requires him to
read notes of course. While they were playing a certain piece, he
noticed a word "BOW" on a bar.
So what he did is he bowed (means bending half of the body downwards).
Annoyed of this non-musical term, he just thinking to himself, many years of music
school and they did not teach me this term. So, since he knew he is right, when he saw the
sign "BOW" for the second time, he didn't do it. But to his surprised,
he fell down very hard because something hit his head, can you guess?
The conductor put the sign "BOW" on certain bars
because the "TROMBONE PLAYER" is playing behind him. He he he, That's
all folks!
Bandleader sends his son to take piano lessons. The
teacher's first question was whether the boy knew the scale, to which he
replied, "Oh, yes,ma'am--$125 for the leader and 100 for the sidemen."
Perfect Pitch: Tossing a soprano sax into a toilet without touching the rim.
Q: What do you call a guitar player without a girlfriend??
A: Homeless!
A pianist and a vocalist are working their regular gig as a duo, and right
before they start a tune they play every night, the pianist says to the
singer, "Wait a sec... I'd like to try something a little different
tonight. I'll play my normal intro, but I want you to come in after only
seven bars, and sing a minor 3rd BELOW the key I'm playing. Then sing the
verse a 1/2 step ABOVE the key, but go to the bridge after 11 bars, and
sing the bridge a 4th above that. Then on the last verse, sing a whole
step sharp for the first five and a half bars, then drop a half step as
you go to the coda six and a half bars early."
The singer, stunned, says, "What?!? I can't do that!!"
To which the pianist replies calmly, "Why not? You nailed it *last* night."
When Mozart passed away, he was buried in a churchyard.
A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the
cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area
where Mozart was buried.
Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and
listen to it.
The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint,
unrecognizable music coming from the grave.
Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.
When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave,
listened for a moment, and said, "Ah, yes, that's Mozart's
Ninth Symphony, being played backwards."
He listened a while longer, and said, "There's the Eighth
Symphony, and it's backwards, too. Most puzzling."
The magistrate kept listening; "There's the Seventh...the
Sixth...the Fifth..."Suddenly the realization of what was
happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced
to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, "My fellow
citizens, there's nothing to worry about. It's just Mozart
decomposing."
Sadam Husein, Hitler and Kenny G are all in a room together.
You have a revolver with two bullets. Who do you shoot?
Kenny G two times!
An then there was the one about the jazz musician and the country
musician who made a dope run to Columbia, got caught and were
sentenced to be executed by firing squad. The captain asked,
"Any last request?" to which the country musician replied,
"Yes, I'd like to hear Achy Breaky Heart one more time."
The captain turned to the jazz musician who begged,
"Shoot me first".
This would be jazz tenor man was having 'creativity' problems and felt that a trip to London's Soho district might
stimulate his playing. He got a cheap apartment and every afternoon would go out on the balcony
and practice. One day he started playing Over the Rainbow and a crowd began to gather. He played the
first eight, then the second eight, and then the first eight again and the second eight again and just
repeated this again and again until a voice in the crowd below yelled, "Play the bridge!"
In a fit of temporary insanity the sax man threw himself off of the balcony and landed below on the street where
the crowd gathered around his crushed body. "Why did you do that?" asked one of his listeners.
"I never can remember how the bridge goes and I'll never be a jazz musician. How does the bridge
go?" he wheezed.
At that point an approaching ambulance wailed, " Dah dah, dah dah, dah, dah....(Bb G, Bb G...)"
This is a true story told us by Oscar Peterson on my Jazz Cruise last year.... (Wes)
While doing a Norman Grantz Jazz at the Philharmonic all of the cats in the band would go downstairs
to the basement at half time to play poker and Ella would come on stage with her group. As they filed downstairs they
would lay their horns on a big table in the wing.
Oscar and one other cat who didn't gamble stayed in the wings and listened to Ella. Oscar relates that his gaze wandered
over to the table where all the horns were scattered about and out of curiosity began looking them over. He noticed
that the mouthpiece on Diz's horn was shallow with a big hole and that Roy Eldridge's was deep with a small hole.
He turned to his friend and said, "Shall we switch mouthpieces?" They did
When Ella began singing Lady Be Good it was a cue for all the cats to come back on stage for the big finale.
They all rushed by, picked up their horns and ran on stage. Ella finished her scat and turned to Diz and said,
"Take it Diz...."
Diz put his horn to his mouth and went splaatttt! Roy, quick to the rescue said, "I got it Diz" and went squeeaak.
Brought down the house! Oscar didn't dare tell them that he did it.
A man is being led thru the jungle on a safari. He begins to hear
some really furious, pounding drums, rolling along without end. After
15 minutes of this, he asks the guide "When do the drums stop?" The
guide answers "Oh, the drums NEVER stop. Bad things happen then."
The man ponders this for about two hours more of furious pounding,
and says, irritated, "When do the drums stop?!?" "The drums never
stop. Bad things happen when the drums stop." Finally, after 5 hours,
the man asks "What bad thing happens when the drums stop?" "BASS
SOLO."
Quite a number of years ago, the Seattle Symphony was doing
Beethoven's Symphony No. 9 under the baton of Milton Katims.
Now at this point, you must understand two things:
1. There's a quite long segment in this symphony where the basses
don't have a thing to do. Not a single note for page after page.
2. There used to be a tavern called Dez's 400, right across the street
from the Seattle Opera House, rather favored by local musicians.
It had been decided that during this performance, once the bass
players had played their parts in the opening of the symphony, they
were to quietly lay down their instruments and leave the stage, rather
than sit on thier stools looking and feeling dumb for twenty minutes.
Once they got backstage, someone suggested that they trot across the
street and quaff a few brews.
When they got there, a European nobleman recognized that they were
musicians, and bought them several rounds of drinks. Two of the
bassists passed out, and the rest of the section, not to mention the
nobleman, were rather drunk. Finally, one of them looked at his watch
and exclaimed, "Look at the time! We'll be late!"
The remaining bassists tried in vain to wake up their section mates, but
finally those who were still conscious had to give up and run across
the street to the Opera House.
While they were on their way in, the bassist who suggested this
excursion in the first place said, "I think we'll still have enough time--I
anticipated that something like this could happen, so I tied a string
around the last pages of the score. When he gets down to there,
Milton's going to have to slow the tempo way down while he waves
the baton with one hand and fumbles with the string with the other."
Sure enough, when they got back to the stage they hadn't missed their
entrance, but one look at their conductor's face told them they were still
in serious trouble. Katims was furious! After all...
It was the bottom of the Ninth,
the basses were loaded,
the score was tied,
there were two men out,
and the Count was full.
The following program notes are from an unidentified piano recital.
Tonight's page turner, Ruth Spelke, studied under Ivan Schmertnick at
the Boris Nitsky School of Page Turning in Philadelphia. She has been
turning pages here and abroad for many years for some of the world's
leading pianists.
In 1988, Ms. Spelke won the Wilson Page Turning Scholarship, which
sent her to Israel to study page turning from left to right. She is winner
of the 1984 Rimsky Korsakov Flight of the Bumblebee Prestissimo
Medal, having turned 47 pages in an unprecedented 32 seconds. She
was also a 1983 silver medalist at the Klutz Musical Page Pickup
Competition: contestants retrieve and rearrange a musical score
dropped from a Yamaha. Ms. Spelke excelled in "grace, swiftness, and
especially poise."
For techniques, Ms. Spelke performs both the finger-licking and the
bent-page corner methods. She works from a standard left bench
position, and is the originator of the dipped-elbow page snatch, a style
used to avoid obscuring the pianist's view of the music. She is page
turner in residence in Fairfield Iowa, where she occupies the coveted
Alfred Hitchcock Chair at the Fairfield Page Turning Institute.
Ms. Spelke is married, and has a nice house on a lake.
Orchestra Personnel Standards:
Conductor
Leaps tall buildings in a single bound.
Is more powerful than a locomotive.
Is faster than a speeding bullet.
Walks on water.
Gives policy to God.
Concertmaster
Leaps short buildings in a single bound.
Is more powerful than a switch engine.
Is just as fast as a speeding bullet.
Walks on water if sea is calm.
Talks with God.
Oboist
Leaps short buildings with a running start and favorable winds.
Is almost as powerful as a switch engine.
Is almost as fast as a speeding bullet.
Walks on water in an indoor swimming pool.
Talks with God if special request is approved.
Trumpet Player
Barely clears a quonset hut.
Loses tug-of-war with locomotive.
Can fire a speeding bullet.
Swims well.
Is occasionally addressed by God.
Bassoonist
Makes marks high on wall when trying to clear short buildings.
Is run over by locomotive.
Can sometimes handle a gun without inflicting self-injury.
Dog-paddles.
Talks to animals.
Second Violinist
Runs into buildings.
Recognizes locomotives two times out of three.
Is not issued any ammunition.
Can stay afloat with a life jacket.
Talks to walls, argues with self.
Manager
Falls over doorstep when trying to enter buildings.
Says "Look at the choo-choo."
Wets self with water pistol.
Plays in mud puddles.
Loses arguments with self.
Horn Player
Lifts buildings and walks under them.
Kicks locomotives off the tracks.
Catches speeding bullets in teeth and eats them.
Freezes water with a single glance.
Is God.
A violinist was auditioning for the Halle orchestra in England. After his
audition he was talking with the conductor. "What do you think about
Brahms?" asked the conductor.
"Ah..." the violinist replied, "Brahms is a great guy! Real talented
musician. In fact, he and I were just playing some duets together last
week!"
The conductor was impressed. "And what do you think of Mozart?" he
asked him.
"Oh, he's just swell! I just had dinner with him last week!" replied the
violinist. Then the violinist looked at his watch and said he had to
leave to catch the 1:30 train to London.
Afterwards, the conductor was discussing him with the board
members. He said he felt very uneasy about hiring this violinist,
because there seemed to be a serious credibility gap. The conductor
knew for certain that there was no 1:30 train to London.
A musician calls the symphony office to talk to the conductor. "I'm sorry,he's dead," comes the
reply. The musician calls back 25 times, always getting the same reply from the receptionist. At
last she asks him why he keeps calling. "I just like to hear you say it."
There was a certain bartender who was quite famous for being able to accurately guess people's
IQs. One night a man walked in and talked to him briefly and the bartender said, "Wow! You
must have an IQ of about 140! You should meet this guy over here." So they talked for a
while about nuclear physics and existential philosophy and had a great time.
A second man walked in and soon the bartender has guessed about a 90 IQ for him. So he sat him
down in front of the big-screen TV and he watched football with the other guys and had a hell of
a time.
Then a third man stumbled in and talked to the bartender for a while. The bartender said to
himself, "Jeez! I think this guy's IQ must be about 29!" He took him over to a man sitting at a
little table back in the corner and said, "You might enjoy talking with this guy for a while."
After the bartender left, the man at the table said, "So do you play French bow or German bow?"
There were two people walking down the street. One was a musician.
The other didn't have any money either.
We know a guy who was so dumb his teacher gave him two sticks and
he became a drummer but then lost one and became a conductor.
Definition of a string quartet: a good violinist, a bad violinist, a would-be violinist and someone
who hates the violin getting together to complain about composers.
A drummer, sick of all the drummer jokes, decides to change his instrument . After some thought,
he decides on the accordion. So he goes to the music store and says to the owner, "I'd like to look
at the accordions, please." The owner gestures to a shelf in the corner and says "All our
accordions are over there." After browsing, the drummer says, "I think I'd like the big red one in
the corner." The store owner looks at him and says, "You're a drummer, aren't you?" The
drummer, crestfallen, says, "How did you know?" The store owner says, "That `big red
accordion' is the radiator."
Two cowboys were waiting in their fort for the Indians to attack. They listened to the distant
pounding war drums. One cowboy muttered to the other, "I don't like the sound of them drums."
Just then, a distant voice came over the hill, "It's not our usual drummer!"
A guy wanted to play bass in a band. The band told him, "Okay, but you will have to have 1/3 of
your brain removed." So, the guy went into surgery. When he woke up, the doctor said, "I'm
terribly sorry, but we made a mistake and accidentally removed 3/4's of your brain!" The guy said,
"Uh, that's okay. Got some sticks?"
In an emergency a jazz trumpeter was hired to do some solos with a symphony orchestra.
Everything went fine through the first movement, when she had some really hair-raising solos, but
in the second movement she started going improvising madly when she wasn't supposed to play at
all.
After the concert the conductor came round looking for an explanation. She said, "I looked in the
score and it said `tacit'--so I took it!"
Did you hear about the bassist who was so out of tune his section noticed?
A double bass player arrived a few minutes late for the first rehearsal of the local choral society's
annual performance of Handel's Messiah. He picked up his instrument and bow, and turned his
attention to the conductor. The conductor asked, "Would you like a moment to tune?"
The bass player replied with some surprise, "Why? Isn't it the same as last year?"
Two bass players were engaged for a run of Carmen. After a couple of weeks, they agreed each
to take an afternoon off in turn to go and watch the matinee performance from the front of house.
Joe duly took his break; back in the pit that evening, Moe asked how it was. "Great," says Joe.
"You know that bit where the music goes `BOOM Boom Boom Boom'--well there are some guys
up top singing a terrific song about a Toreador at the same time."
The soprano, not being smart enough to use birth control, says to her saxophophonist lover,
"Honey, I think you better pull out now." He replies, "Why? Am I sharp?"
Small wonder we have so much trouble with air pollution in the world when so much of it has
passed through saxophones.
Piccolo
Two musicians are walking down the street and one says to the other, "Who was that piccolo I
saw you with last night?" The other replies, "That was no piccolo. That was my fife!"
The audience at a piano recital were appalled when a telephone rangjust off stage. Without
missing a note the soloist glanced toward the wings and called, "If that's my agent, tell him I'm
working!"
The organ is the instrument of worship for in its sounding we sense the majesty of God and in its
ending we know the Grace of God.
A jazz musician dies and goes to heaven. To his delight, he learns when
he gets there that he will be joining the big band. The saxophones are
Johnny Hodges, Charlie Parker, Lester Young, Coleman Hawkins and Harry
Carney. The trumpets include Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Louis
Armstrong and Roy Eldridge. The trombones are equally great. Papa Jo
Jones is on drums, Oscar Pettiford on bass and Art Tatum is on piano.
But when he gets to the first rehearsal Gil Evans, the
arranger-conductor, pulls him aside and says:
"Listen, I just have to warn you about one thing. God has this
girlfriend who sings..."
Three guys held winning tickets to the largest lottery jackpot in
history. A tabloid news program decided to do a piece on it, and
interview the three co-winners. The first guy was a lawyer, and when
asked what he intended to do with his winnings, he replied:
"I think I'll start a practice that caters to the less fortunate, and
take on only clients whose causes I really believe in".
The second guy was a doctor, and when asked the same question, replied:
"I think I'll open a clinic which offers quality medical care to the
less fortunate and homeless, free of charge."
The third guy was a jazz guitarist, and when asked what he would do with
his new fortune, said:
"I think I'll just keep gigging until the money runs out".
Got any good ones? Send 'em in! Wes