He Has Tenor Spot for ‘Tonight’ : Tommy Newsom, Who Plays Maxwell’s on Sunday, Found a Home With Carson

Tommy Newsom, Johnny Carson’s ever-droll fourth banana, recalls well the first time he subbed for Doc Severinsen conducting “The Tonight Show” band. It was in New York in the spring of 1968, a year after Severinsen had taken over for the previous leader, Skitch Henderson.

At that time, the colorful Severinsen still had free-lance commitments he’d made before assuming the helm of the band and the trumpeter needed an occasional substitute leader. He chose saxophonist, composer and arranger Newsom.

“Johnny blanched when he saw me,” Newsom, 62, said in a recent phone interview from his home in Tarzana. “I was such a contrast to Doc, who was dressing like a demented flamingo, while I just wore my other suit--I had a limited wardrobe. I don’t think I said a thing.”

He’s been filling in for Doc ever since. It wasn’t long after that first meeting with Carson that Newsom’s own quick wit found expression and he has since proven to be as good a foil for Carson as Severinsen. But in the beginning the native of Portsmouth, Va., thought he was the most unlikely candidate for the post.

“I never did find out why I was chosen, except that Doc knew I could conduct” said Newsom, who appears Sunday at Maxwell’s in Huntington Beach with trombonist Bob Enevoldsen and bassist Jim De Julio’s trio.

Newsom at the time was noted for his first-class arrangements for “Brazilian Byrd,” an album by guitarist Charlie Byrd, and he’d written and conducted some commercial jingles as well.

Newsom, who arrived in New York in 1956 wanting to make a living in music, has certainly done just that. For almost 30 years, Newsom has been a key member of “The Tonight Show” band, playing first chair alto saxophone and having written more than 500 hundred arrangements for the group. He has appeared a soloist, composer and arranger on the band’s three Amherst albums, including 1991’s “Once More With Feelin’.”

A more specific goal was on Newsom’s mind when he came to Manhattan: playing jazz tenor. Perusing the directory of NYC’s musicians’ union caused him to change his mind.

“I looked through the book and saw names like Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Al Cohn, Coleman Hawkins was in there, Sonny Rollins was available. There were all these greats, living right in New York,” he said. “I said ‘What is this? It’s the major leagues is what it is.’ It was a little intimidating.”

“So my way was to go the studio way. Look, I love music, so it suited me fine. I came in as a tenor saxophonist who could also play alto, flute and clarinet,” said Newsom, exhibiting the lilting phrasing and extended vowels that one associates with a Virginian accent.

Still, Newsom found his share of work on tenor outside the studios, though he says he never performed at such top New York clubs as Birdland and that he never led a band until he was with “The Tonight Show.” He appeared at clubs in New Jersey, and on Long Island, where he worked with trumpeter Roy Eldridge. He also played society jobs with Vincent Lopez at the Taft Hotel--”That was really the pits,” he cracked.

He also did his share of weddings and bar mitzvahs, “but we played jazz on those,” he said. “I remember working one bar mitzvah in Brooklyn and this couple came dancing by and the woman looked at me and said, ‘You’d never get away with this in the Bronx.’ ”

Newsom made records with such greats as the ex-Count Basie trumpeter, Buck Clayton. And, from the early through the late ‘60s, there were stints with Benny Goodman, including his 1963 Capitol album, “Hello Benny,” to which Newsom contributed five arrangements. But the musician’s most noteworthy Goodman gigs were tours of Latin America in 1961 and Russia in 1962.

“Believe it or not, I was the jazz tenor player on the Latin tour, but I played second chair to Zoot in Russia. I was like the spear carrier,” he joked. “People in Russia loved Zoot. They’d chant his name over and over, as if they just liked to say it.”

Newsom feels his experiences with Goodman landed him a spot as an NBC staff musician in August, 1962--he joined “The Tonight Show” orchestra the next year. “It gave me some credibility,” he said.

Since coming to Los Angeles with the show in 1972, Newsom has continued to play his “first love--the tenor saxophone,” if somewhat if inconspicuously. Recent activities include the release last year of his debut album as a leader, “Tommy Newsom and the T.V. All-Stars” on Laserlight Records. Since July, he’s had a steady Monday night quintet job with Enevoldsen, pianist John Hammond and others at Buster Brown’s Bar and Grill in Simi Valley.

Newsom, who lists influences including Sims--”He swung so good, kind of the way it’s supposed to be”--Illinois Jacquet, Dexter Gordon and Rollins, calls his own jazz solo style “early-’50s middle of the road. I like to swing with a melodic type of improvisation, rather than playing patterns.”

At Maxwell’s, Newsom said he’ll offer everything from pop standards to a Horace Silver tune or two. “Who knows: people might even recognize some of the things we play,” he quipped.

Falling in love with music as a teen-ager--”It was a lust. I had to do it,” he said--Newsom taught himself to play and arrange. He took a bachelor’s in music education from Peabody Institute in Baltimore, Md., in 1949, spent three years in the Air Force, playing with Airmen of Note big band from 1953 to 1956, then came to New York, where he earned a master’s degree from Columbia in 1957.

“I didn’t know whether I could make a living as a musician, so I wanted something to fall back on, and that meant teaching school,” he said.

Newsom calls his three decades with “The Tonight Show” an “extremely pleasant” experience. And while he plans to play some engagements with Severinsen, who has announced he’ll take the band out on tour after he leaves with show with Carson on May 22, he says the extended tours are out.

“That’s for the 19-year-olds,” he joked. As for other plans, “I imagine I’ll be doing some writing.”

Asked for a memory of his time with NBC, Newsom cited, “Last fall (when) Stan Getz was on. He played so beautifully, like you wish all tenor saxophone players would play. It was like he knew he was on his last round, and he was warm and loving, which he wasn’t famous for being.”

Newsom said he doesn’t regret his decision to play in the studios instead of making an assault on the jazz world. “I wasn’t going to be a threat to the giants,” he said. “If I keep playing, I can probably play well enough so that I won’t embarrass myself.”

Tommy Newsom and trombonist Bob Enevoldsen join Jim De Julio’s trio Sunday from 2 to 6 p.m. at Maxwell’s By the Sea, 317 Pacific Coast Highway, Huntington Beach. Admission: $4, plus $7 food-drink minimum. Information: (714) 536-2555.