Drummer Sam (or “Sammy”) Weiss played in New York with many of the most prominent jazz musicians of the ’30s and early ’40s, including Louis Armstrong, Adrian Rollini, Wingy Manone, Miff Mole, Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, and Tommy Dorsey. He also worked with Louis Armstrong, Paul Whiteman, Louis Prima, and Erskine Hawkins, among others. After moving to California in 1945, Weiss led his own successful orchestra and worked freelance. He led bands throughout the ’60s, and also worked in television; his TV work included appearances on The Jack Benny Program in 1961 and 1964. He died in 1977.
Here are Jack, Sammy, Wayne Songer, and others doing a “hilbilly” sketch:
And going back a few decades, a Weiss appearance with Gene Kardos in 1934:
Here I pause the official biography for a moment, to say that one of the most pleasant aspects of JAZZ LIVES (which I began nine years ago this year . . . no presents, please) is that people find me. Some months back, I got a cheerful message from Jayne Weiss, Sammy’s daughter, who had noticed that I had mentioned her father in a blogpost. In our conversation, I mentioned that her father was remarkable in making the transition from sideman to bandleader to personality, “Sammy The Drummer.” And she said, “That was exactly who he was. He was a personality.”
Sammy was one of the cast of characters on the Jack Benny television show: this episode is based on New Year’s Eve, 1961:
Here are some of Jayne’s thoughts.
Since my dad’s death, people are always finding things and sending them to us, so I got a hold of my cousin Brian, who does web design, and we are going to create a website for my dad, with discographies, clippings, photographs, videos. In 1971, my mother started to write a book about my father, because he had a very interesting story. She had written to Ralph Edwards of THIS IS YOUR LIFE, but the show was being cancelled. But I found the letter and the story she had written about him. I have a letter from Artie Shaw and telegrams from Jack Benny. He was with Jack Benny for twenty-five years, radio and television.
He was from the Lower East Side, a very poor family, because his father, who was a bootlegger, had died when he was very young and he had to help support the family. He was self-taught at thirteen; he took rungs of a chair and made drumsticks, then took parts of the chair and tin plates and made a set of drums. And he would sit at the front of the building and entertain the neighborhood. One day a neighbor came by and asked Sammy if he would get a few friends together and play their daughter’s wedding. He was maybe fourteen, a big, tall guy. Having no drums, he would rent a set, and he got a band together . They paid the band three dollars, and my father decided that this was for him. At fifteen, he started his career. Then he started playing in the Catskills, fall and winter, dances, weddings, bar mitzvahs. In 1933, he was playing at the Stevensville Lake Hotel, where he met my mother. (They were married for thirty-seven years and had five children.)
Now, my mother, who looked like Jean Harlow, was already engaged to Henny Youngman’s brother-in-law. But when Sammy met my mother, he walked her all around the hotel, introducing her to everyone as his future wife. When she went to break up with the brother-in-law, he locked himself up in a room with a gun and threatened to kill himself. Unlike Sammy, my mother came from money: her father was in the pants business and one of his customers was Bugsy Siegel. Her parents were opposed to the marriage because Sammy didn’t seem as if he could support a family. Then she was in the hospital, seriously ill with peritonitis, with her father at her bedside, praying for her to get well. She looked at him and said, “I’ll only live if I can marry Sammy.” And she got well.
You know, he was the first drummer for Benny Goodman, Tommy Dorsey, and Artie Shaw. He was with Goodman at Billy Rose’s Music Hall in June of 1934. But when they went on the road, he didn’t go, because he wanted to stay home and raise a family.
That’s why Gene Krupa showed up, and Buddy Rich, because Sammy stayed in New York. In fact, when I was young, I went with my dad to the musicians’ union on Hollywood and Vine, I was crossing the street and Buddy Rich was crossing the street the other way, coming towards us, and the two of them stopped in the middle of the street, hugging each other, and I was standing there, going “What the heck?”
He moved to the West Coast in 1945 because my older brother got very sick, and the doctors told him that my brother couldn’t survive another winter. Luckily, the Jack Benny Show was moving west. When he and my mother first moved out to California, their house had a room separate from the house where the musicians would jam, also because my brothers were musical. There were always people coming and going, and they used to say that my mother cooked in army pots because there were so many. Maurice played trumpet, drums, and piano. My brother Allan sang and played drums. And Jack played clarinet, saxophone, drums, and piano. And they all had bands.
I was twelve years younger, so I remember hearing about all of this, but I was little. I played piano, violin, and guitar. My father always used to say I had perfect pitch, because he would call across the room, “Hit A,” and I would hit it. One day they got a notice in the mail, “Come to _____ School. Your daughter is playing first-chair violin in the orchestra.” They didn’t even know. I had found a violin in the garage, took it to school, and learned how to play it.
On radio, he worked on WNEW and then went on staff with WNBC. He had his own radio show called JAMMIN’ WITH SAMMY, and worked with Paul Whiteman, Kate Smith, Walter Damrosch, “Manhattan Merry-Go-Round” with Abe Lyman — also with Mark Warnow, Freddie Rich, Ray Bloch, Raymond Scott, Paul Lavalle. He could read, play piano, and all the percussion instruments. He was on the Carnation Show, Meet Millie, Edgar Bergen, the Colgate Hour, Russ Morgan, Jack Carson, Lucky Strike, Al Jolson, Steve Allen, Burns and Allen, Victor Young, Dinah Shore. My mother took Dinah Shore to pick out an outfit for her first audition in New York. My father accompanied Tony Martin at the Cocoanut Grove. In 1953, he did a movie with Frank Sinatra, THE JOKER IS WILD. He recorded with Johnny Guarneri and Slam Stewart for Savoy Records.
On the Benny Show, he was a character. He was bald. They actually wrote a show about me, in May 1951, “When Sammy’s Wife Has a Baby.” The joke was that everyone went to see the baby in the hospital, and someone says, “How did you know which one was Jayne?” “She was bald!” Jack and Mary Benny bought me my layette when I was born.
He had his own band for private parties and conventions, dances. In November 1957 he had a month’s engagement at the Hollywood Palladium, “playing the kind of music the public has always loved.”
He was wonderful. Definitely Mister Personality. A wonderful father who loved his kids. I had the best parents ever. He was so involved. We would have lots of people for the holidays, for Thanksgiving. Wherever we went, if we would walk into a restaurant, “Oh, my God! Sam!” And he was such a sport. My mother would yell at him because he would always pick up the tab. “Bring me his check.” People knew him at the market, on the golf course. He could golf during the day and work at night.
There’s a famous steakhouse, Monty’s in the San Fernando Valley. On my twenty-first birthday, we went there for dinner. Over the years, I heard “Me Tarzan. You Jane.” jokes constantly. That night, sitting at the bar, was Johnny Weissmuller, drunk. My father didn’t realize just how drunk Johnny was, but he said, “Look, it’s my daughter’s birthday, and her name is Jayne. It would be such a hoot if you came over and did your shtick.” There was an outdoor patio, and Johnny opened the doors and did the Tarzan call, then came over to the table and said, “You Jane. Me Tarzan.” I wanted to die, to crawl under the table.
Sammy was on every Mickey Katz album. My mother actually sings on one. Mickey and Grace Katz were very dear friends of our family. In fact, I have a picture of Joel Grey before his nose job, dancing with my mother at one of the bar mitzvahs! Mickey did my father’s eulogy. I knew Mannie Klein (his wife was nicknamed “Dopey”) and he gave me a nickname when I was about three. They would sit me on the piano, and call me “Quackwee.”
He passed away in 1977 from pancreatic cancer. He was only 67. My older brother also contracted that cancer and died at 75.