johnny carson

johnny carson

Ed McMahon, perhaps the most famous sidekick in television history, has died at a Los Angeles hospital. He was 86.

For 30 years, he sat cheerfully on the couch next to Johnny Carson on the set of NBC's "Tonight Show," and it was his trademark phrase that opened the broadcast every evening: "H-e-e-e-e-e-ere's Johnny!"

His publicist, Howard Bragman, did not give a cause of death, saying only that McMahon had a "multitude of health problems the last few months." He had been hospitalized in February, reportedly with bone cancer, and had also suffered a broken neck in a fall in 2007.

He died early Tuesday morning at Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, surrounded by his family, said Bragman.

"It takes a lot more time to not be nice than to be nice," McMahon once said. Audiences will remember him laughing at Carson's jokes, moving aside on the set to make room for the show's featured guests, and smiling through commercial pitches.

There is a famous clip in which McMahon delivers the slogan, "Now, doesn't your dog deserve Alpo?" -- but he barely got to finish, because Carson bit him. The audience loved it, and McMahon, the perfect straight man to Carson, apparently did too.

"You can't imagine hooking up with a guy like Carson," McMahon said in an interview with The Associated Press in 1993. "There's the old phrase, hook your wagon to a star. I hitched my wagon to a great star."

Edward Leo Peter McMahon Jr., born in 1923, grew up in Lowell, Mass., and worked as a carnival barker and a bingo caller to put himself through college at Catholic University. He did two tours of duty in the U.S. Marine Corps, serving in the Korean War.

"My childhood dream was to be a broadcaster," he told Time Magazine in 1998. "In those days, before television, it was to be a radio announcer. All my heroes were people that announced on radio. When the war started, I wanted to become a Marine fighter pilot, which I became. And I wanted to fly off a carrier, which I did."

After working at local radio and television stations, he became a game show announcer, hosting such shows as "Concentration" and "Snap Judgment."

In 1957, he was brought in to be the announcer for a program called "Who Do You Trust?" It was there that he met Carson. When Carson took over the "Tonight Show" from Jack Paar in 1962, he brought McMahon along.

doc severinsen

doc severinsen

"People ask us what kind of music we play," Doc Severinsen said Friday, early in a benefit concert for the Wisconsin Conservatory of Music with El Ritmo de la Vida. "I have no idea."

Severinsen, violinist Pedro Cartas, guitarist Gil Gutierrez, bassist Gilberto Gonzalez and percussionist Miguel Favero are pretty hard to pin down. They play jazz of some mixed variety: a little Gipsy Kings, a little Django Reinhardt/Hot Club of France, a little neo-Flamenco, a little Latin fusion. The repertoire ranged from "Dark Eyes," the Russian folk tune (as you've never heard it before), to Reinhardt's "Minor Swing," to Chick Corea's "La Fiesta" to "Sweet Georgia Brown" (also as you've never heard it before).

The mix of musical personalities made for pleasing contrasts. You know Doc, all showy but also emotional, with a big vibrato and dreamy way of slurring notes. Cartas' suave, cool precision made a nice foil for Doc. Gutierrez, a tremendous guitarist, showed command of plectrum, classical finger style and Flamenco techniques, and the intensity of his tremolo and the speed of his scales were amazing.

Their arrangements often begin far afield, so the tune sort of sneaks up on you, which is fun. Severinsen opened "La Fiesta" with this crazy extended solo on snaking Middle Eastern scales rendered in a timbre that sounded exactly like a snake charmer's shawm.

Solos were abundant but only occasionally lengthy. The numbers were more like taut, organized compositions than like rambling collections of improvisations. Many of them called for zipping scale work for the pitched instruments in unison octaves by way of a final flurry, and it was cool to hear the bass moving with the ease and speed of the violin. Gonzalez is really good, as a melodic player and as a rhythm engine.

These highly virtuosic players are showmen. Doc, as always, had amusing stories to tell, but they also worked comedy into the music. Gutierrez played off Doc's habit of conducting by pretending to miss cues. Favero left his congas to drum on the guitar strings while Gutierrez ran through the chord changes with his left hand. At the end of a long guitar solo, Gutierrez just couldn't seem to find that right last note. Cartas extended his violin, Gutierrez reached out and plucked a string, and there was the note he'd been searching for. Ha! Good one!