Afternoon With the Doc

Little-known fact: Dizzy Gillespie's last performance was in Seattle.

Little-cared fact: Seattlest could've gone.

But tickets were expensive and we were in high school and we figured we catch Gillespie the next time he came through. There wasn't a next time--and there might not be for 79-year-old Doc Severinsen either, and we wanted to do something nice for our grandparents, so we joined The Greatest Generation Sunday afternoon at the Renton/IKEA performing arts center.

Severinsen came out in a pink jacket with a sequined collar, a purple shirt, and salmon pants. He declared it "Saturday night" and started a best-of program of big band music, hitting all the classics: Jumpin' at the Woodside, One O' Clock Jump, Sing Sing Sing, you know. Severinsen, 79--who grew up in a small town on the Oregon side of the Columbia--can't hit the high notes as he once could--noticeably in the trumpet solo on Flying Home--but he put on a fun show, and the other soloists, a mix of former NBC Orchestra types and younger folks, were terrific.

After the show, the crowd applauded loud and long for an encore, but none came. Here's Doc and the Tonight Show in 1990 performing with They Might Be Giants on Birdhouse in Your Soul--back when he could really blow.