A Monday Night with Lester and Leo

I was living in Boston at the time, with a day job at a business magazine, and, as luck would have it, my colleagues and I were dispatched to New York City to cover a convention a few months after Les’ Mondays at Fat Tuesday’s started. On the night we arrived, I dragged my fellow suits to the Lower East Side to “come in and hear the truth,” as Les tagged those shows, which blended beautiful music, infantile humor, and silly banter between the elder statesman, then a mere 79, guitarist Wayne Wright, and bassist Gary Mazzaroppi. The audience was sparse, which made the experience rarer and more beautiful, and I left with a head full of melodies, higher than the moon, knowing I had to return.

In March of the next year, I was on yet another biz trip to Manhattan, and this time my wife, Laurie Hoffma, joined me, expressly so we could both see Les. It was cold and slushy outdoors, and the small interior of Fat Tuesday’s was a warm, welcoming retreat—especially when Les’ trio started playing. The setlist was unsurprising. It was music Les had ascended with, during the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s—songs like, to the best of my memory, Gershwin’s “Embraceable You,” “As Time Goes By,” Rodgers & Hart’s “Lover,” “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and numbers he’d made hits with Mary Ford, like “Tennessee Waltz,” “Vaya Con Dios,” and “How High the Moon.” But regardless of how that looks, these chestnuts didn’t sound corny. They sounded loved. And while Les’ arthritis had already slowed him down, that only made him squeeze everything from each ripened melody and from his lush tone.

I’d recently begun freelancing for some small music publications and, with Laurie’s urging, decided to introduce myself to Les during the set break and ask if he’d do an interview. This took some courage on my part, because, to me, talking to Les was like talking to one of the heads on Mt. Rushmore. But this 6-string chief of state was exceedingly friendly, walking the club to visit each table, with a drink at the end of his 90-degree-angled right arm, famously fused in that position after a car wreck in 1948 so he could keep playing guitar.