Bandleader Doc Severinsen remembers Carson

Doc Severinsen, the longtime “Tonight Show” bandleader, remembers a Johnny Carson line that absolutely floored him.

“He came up with this line about ‘things that you seldom hear anymore,’ ” said Severinsen, by phone Monday from his home in California. “The line was, ‘Pardon me, isn’t that the banjo player’s Porsche?’ “

Naturally, Severinsen remembers the musician jokes the best. But Severinsen, who will play a SuperPops concert with the Spokane Symphony on Saturday, said there were just too many great laughs to remember them all.

“After 30 years of great work, you can’t just pick out a moment here and there,” he said.

Those laughs weren’t all onstage.

“Johnny was naturally funny,” said Severinsen, who was Carson’s bandleader from 1967 until Johnny left in 1992. “If you were sitting down having dinner with him, it was the same as if you were watching the show. I mean he just naturally thought funny.”

Carson, who died Sunday of complications from emphysema, was an unabashed fan of the show’s band and a “great music lover,” said Severinsen, 77.

“Yeah, he had a set of drums at home, and he’d tap away,” said Severinsen. “I tried to get him to play on the show, but he wouldn’t do it. He said, no, that’s for professionals.”

Severinsen said Carson’s death came as a shock, even though he knew Carson had been ill. He prefers to remember Carson at his most vibrant, the way he remembers him from the openings of thousands of shows.

“My favorite memory is of starting up that theme song, and he’d come sailing out through that curtain with a big smile on his face, like it was the most important thing in his life,” said Severinsen. “And I guess it was. He was just totally dedicated.”

For more on Doc Severinsen and his Saturday concert in Spokane, see this Thursday’s IN Life section.