Jay Taylor

Oh, mama, I miss you

I loved Jay. Every time the radio show cycles around I think of Jay Taylor and how funny and kind he was.

Growing up here in Tucson Jay’s advertising alchemy was omnipresent. It was only later in life when I started doing standup that I learned about the comedy duo of “Taylor and Kalil”, two Tucsonan’s who recorded a successful album titled "My plumber doesn't make house calls”. Frank Kalil and Jay Taylor never performed in a nightclub and yet, on the strength of their debut album, they were invited to perform on the “Tonight Show” where they were a hit, a national sensation.

Jay dabbled in the possibilities of TV comedy and chose returning home to the sane life of being an insanely successful ad guy, a big fish in our dusty pond. Fast forward me meeting Jay the retiree doing standup and making audiences wet themselves with laughter.

When my friend Elliot Glicksman, Borscht Belt comedy savant and Chief Writer for the Old Pueblo Holiday Radio Show, and I would meet Jay for lunch at “El Minuto” we’d eat tamales and just listen to Jay tell stories. We affectionately called it “an audience with Jay”. Like the Pope. Only funnier.

His one-man show was priceless. The Arizona Daily Star’s Cathy Burch describes his theatrical comedy masterpiece far better than I could : Jay Taylor's One-Man Show

Jay, the Goldwater Republican, despised Trump. Often I was his test audience for Trump jokes over lunch. Jay brimmed with mirth.

I recall introducing my dear old friend with glee, welcoming him to the stage of the Rialto, a theater he loved as much as I did. On that stage you can feel the vaudeville time machine quality of the genuinely historic “Rialto”, a show palace haunted by a century of laughter and the ghost of a vaudeville era piano player who perished in the pit. Jay, the pro, would stroll out to the center stage spotlight, adjust the microphone on the stage, clear his throat and proceed to entrance the audience with his storytelling.

I’ve linked to a video of one of his standup shows and it is brilliant. Jay knew his audience.

The “Arroyo Cafe Players” would remain seated on the stage next to our house band, “the Cadillacs”, while Jay performed his 10-minute set. Jay was our Tim Conway and we were his choir of Harvey Kormans, trapped behind him, squirming, dying with laughter, choking back the tears.

Jay would slay with his self-deprecating humor about aging, and he’d shock us with his capacity for veering into blue “backwoods” comedy with shameless glee that would rock the house. Oceanic waves of laughter would crash down from the balcony with wave after wave washing over the stage where we sat behind Jay, a scrawny loveable silhouette in the spotlight.

At Jay’s Memorial gathering his dear friend and onetime comedy partner Frank Kalil chastised me for luring “Jay to the dark side.” I told him,”That was all Jay.” Jay was a humble Christian who practiced what he preached and thus, he was curiously moral and could not abide the Immoral One.

Jay was guided by common sense, a zeal for enterprise, faith in this country and I’m pretty certain Jay loved Arizona even more than Goldwater loved the Grand Canyon.

Years ago I was hosting comedian potlucks on my back porch so my comedian friends could try out their material on their fellow comedians. A young comedian who did not know Jay began roasting the old bird as one would roast anyone foolish enough to cheerfully sit up front near the performer. Jay was so good-humored about the onslaught of insults he fed the comic straight lines, he killed, as we say in comedy, he killed.

The grasshoppers had met the master.

When we perform our show we remember Jay’s wonderful spirit. As soon as the curtain goes up I like to think he’s above us in the rafters of the old vaudeville house among the good ghosts haunting the theater, laughing and enjoying the show.

To see this year’s “Old Pueblo Holiday Radio Show” get your general seating admission tickets online here for $22.50: https://www.ticketmaster.com/arroyo-cafe-old-pueblo-radio-show-tucson-arizona-12-09-2023/event/19005F33ACB71C40

For more about our show: https://www.facebook.com/events/1012243953424633