It’s sobering to note how someone’s long and varied career can be distilled to a single credit – the father on “Mork & Mindy.”
Conrad Janis has died at the age of 94.
On “Mork & Mindy,” the television series that launched Robin Williams and co-starred Pam Dawber, Janis played Mindy’s dad, the owner of a music shop in Boulder, CO (and eventually conductor of the Boulder Symphony Orchestra). If I remember correctly, he had a marked preference for Igor Stravinsky.
In real life, in addition to being a prolific actor for stage and screens (big and small), Janis was a jazz trombonist. In that capacity, he recorded, he appeared on “The Tonight Show,” and he played Carnegie Hall.
I always found it most fascinating that he once assembled a team of jazz legends, all the way back in 1949, that included New Brunswick’s own James P. Johnson. Johnson, a pioneer of stride piano, composed what essential became the anthem of the 1920s, the “Charleston.” How short is history, anyway?
If you want to get a taste of Janis the musician, here’s a great interview:
https://musicguy247.typepad.com/my-blog/2015/08/conrad-janis-jazz-trombone-actor.html
In 2018, at the age of 90, participating in an oral history for the NAMM Foundation (National Organization of Music Merchants)
https://www.namm.org/library/oral-history/conrad-janis
On the Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon in 1984
From 1952, Conrad Janis and His Tailgate Band
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRBQTq7RIc0
James P. Johnson plays the “Charleston” in 1923 (presumably from a piano roll)
PHOTOS: Conrad Janis, with (center right) Jonathan Winters on “Mork & Mindy” and (bottom right) Henry Goodwin on trumpet, Edmond Hall on clarinet, James P. Johnson on piano, and Pops Foster on bass