OK, so I've heard a lot of versions of Lon's joke. It started me on a
memory and Internet search for variations on the Musician Afterlife Joke.
Lon Price wrote:
A tenor sax player dies and finds himself in Hell. He meets Satan,
who tells him to report to the equipment room to pick out a horn.
The tenor player spends a few hundred years (he's got eternity,
right?) picking out the perfect Selmer Mark VI tenor, the perfect
mouthpiece and reed. Finally, he's ready for the first rehearsal.
It's a big band with the biggest legends in jazz in attendance--Miles
is in the trumpet section, Bird is on alto, etc. The charts are
swingin', in easy keys, and the band is cookin'! The tenor player
leans over to the guy sitting next to him and says, "I thought this
was Hell. Sure seems like Heaven to me so far." The guy says, "No,
it's Hell, alright. You don't get no solos!"
---------------------
Recently deceased blues guitarist Stevie Ray Vaughan "comes to" after
his death. He sees Jimi Hendrix sitting next to him, tuning his guitar.
"Holy cow," he thinks to himself, "this guy is my idol." Over at the
microphone, about to sing, are Jim Morrison and Janis Joplin, and the
bassist is the late Barry Oakley of the Allman Brothers. So Stevie Ray's
thinking, "Oh, wow! I've died and gone to rock and roll heaven." Just
then, Karen Carpenter walks in, sits down at the drums, and says:
"`Close to You.' Hit it, boys!"
----------------------
so this musician dies and goes to hell. The devil is delighted to see
him and comes to the gates to pick him up in a limo. The musician looks
in the back seat and there's a beautiful new Bach trumpet with his name
etched on the bell. "Where are we going?", he asks.
"Well, if you don't mind", says the devil, "there's a gig tonight and
I'd like you to sit in."
"Fine", the musician says and a few minutes later they pull up to a
sold-out show in a massive stadium packed with cheering fans. The
musician takes his place on stage and as he looks to the front of the
stage he sees that Sara Vaughn is the singer. Then he looks over sees
that Tony Williams is on drums, Joe Pass is playing guitar and J J
Johnson is on trombone.
"Wow, what a lineup", he says to the devil, "Am I really in hell?"
"Yup", the devil replies.
Satan turns to the band and says, "OK, band, on the count of three...
'Tie a Yellow Ribbon..."
-------------------------
The sax player died and went to heaven.
After he entered the pearly gates, he was directed by St. Peter to the
local jazz band's rehearsal studio.
When he walked into the studio, the sax player was overjoyed to see that
in the sax section were John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderly, and Gerry
Mulligan. The rest of the group was made up of equally great players,
including the leader of the band, Duke Ellington.
The sax player was so overcome with joy at the prospect of playing with
such great musicians he exclaimed to Duke, "What a band! It must be
great to conduct a group like this!"
Duke Ellington replied, "Yeah. Well...It's okay, I guess."
The sax player was shocked. He asked, "How can you say that? This band
has all of the greatest musicians there ever were! What's wrong?"
Duke Ellington replied, "Well, you see...God's got this girlfriend, and
she sings..."
---------------
A musician dies and goes to heaven.
He meets Jimi Hendrix, Elvis Presley, John Lennon - and then he sees
Bono flying by.
"Hey," the musician says, "I didn't know Bono was dead!"
"He's not," Elvis replies. "That's God - He likes to pretend he's Bono."
-------
(I had heard a similar one with an orchestra full of famous classical
musicians, but the conductor isn't very good....
"Who's that?"
"That's God. He thinks he's Herbert von Karajan.")
----------------
This British one is quite different. I seem to remember a joke like
this, not involving musicians, from way, way back in my childhood:
--------
A musician dies and goes to hell. Shown into the room for musicians, he
sees they are all stood around drinking and having a smoke, albeit stood
in a pool of sewerage. He thinks "that's not too bad". just then a voice
shouts "tea-break over! Back on yer heads, lads!"
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