My friend Scott Sansby celebrates a milestone birthday today. We will be celebrating this morning with our mutual friend Jay Applebaum. We have each been friends with Scottie since the Eisenhower administration. Scottie has a wide world of friends, but the three of us stayed best friends through high school and have remained friends ever since.
Before Scottie had a crippling accident in September 2023, we got together at least once a year to celebrate Jay’s birthday. The photo below shows the three of us following a happy lunch together on Jay’s birthday in July 2023. Jay is in the middle flanked by Scottie on the right and me on the left.
Scottie took up drumming around the time the Beatles hit it big. He studied for years with Connie Villars and went on to anchor the rhythm section of just about every great local band at one time or another. I was there at the beginning when the best musicians in Highland Park formed and named the Aristocats in the mid-1960s. I followed every one of the several bands that Scottie anchored thereafter.
When I came back to town from college the summer after my freshman year, Scottie told me that he and his musical friends had found a guy they knew was going to be a star, and right they were. The guy was Al Jarreau.
They followed Al from Minneapolis out to Los Angeles. When Al last came through town to perform at Minneapolis’s Pantages Theater in 2011, they reunited at Al’s party after the show. From left to right in the photo below are Dik Hedlund, Rich Dworsky, Scottie, Al, and Bobby Schnitzer.
Out in Los Angeles Scottie entered Leon Russell’s world at Shelter Records. Scottie recorded with Leon’s wife, Mary McCreary, and with Shelter artist D.J. Rogers. Leon told Scottie that he was “my old lady’s favorite drummer.”
Although we pursued separate paths, Scottie always invited me along for the ride. When Leon performed with Mary at the St. Paul Civic Center on September 25, 1976, Scottie me put on the guest list to let me join them all backstage. Leon’s friend Gary Busey was there. I heard backstage that Busey had starred in a then unreleased film in which he portrayed Buddy Holly. I share so many memories with Scottie I feel like they fill half my brain.
Jay and I visited Scottie every day in the hospital and have continued to visit him just about every morning in the nursing homes he has lived in since he was released from the hospital. I used to write Scottie on his birthday each year: “Dear Scottie: Old friends are the best.” Since Scottie’s accident the three of us have deepened our old friendship and shared what friends have to give each other, as we will again this morning.
