Three particular ones come readily to mind. When I had my 5 piece band years ago (and we were playing a lot of jazz and pop) my wife (who was also the singer in the band) would always call out a particular tune in our first set when we would be playing dining rooms.

One posh dining room we were working in at the time was the Black Knight Room of Toronto's Royal York Hotel. The room was dimly lit and with our stage lights on, it was difficult to see the audience. My wife announced that we were going to do our rendition of a tune popularized by Tony Bennett called Just In Time and before I could count in the tune, the man himself Tony Bennett comes up onto the stage, smiles, gives me his key for the tune, and counts in the tune, and then proceeds to sing it (wonderfully) with our band, and then trading verses with my wife and even doing a bit of scatting with her. He also performed The Best Is Yet To Come with us. (I couldn't bear to ask him to do San Francisco.) It was one of those magical moments. When we finished the set, he invited us over to his table, bought us a round of drinks, and told us how great we all sounded and that that was why he wanted to come and sing with us and he hoped we didn't mind the instrusion!!!! I also got him to autograph a couple of charts I had of some of his tunes. Bennett happened to be in town, staying at the hotel and was having dinner with the guy who handled the P.R. for the Royal York, Gino Empry.

Another time, we were performing in a different club in Toronto, when the movie Dirty Dancing was the craze, and unbeknownst to us, Bill Medley was in the club, having returned from a concert performance and was staying in this hotel. As soon as we started in on the vamp for I've Had The Time of My Life, he came up onto the stage and performed the entire tune with our singer. The club went nuts. It was also fortunate that we were doing a dead lift of his arrangement and in his key so it was tight and sounded totally rehearsed. Hell of a nice guy. Another amazing moment. Fortunately one of my brothers was in the club and witnessed this and was rather impressed. I was glad he was there to see this as more often than not, people figure you're just bullshitting them when you describe an event like this.

Lastly, when my wife and I got married, we were in the midst of a steady engagement in another supper club in Toronto, and had to work on the evening of our wedding (which was a simple civil ceremony done at Toronto's old City Hall during the day.) Got to the club early and had dinner with my parents and inlaws, and a lady who handled all the P.R. for this supper club and whom we were already friendly with informed us that Burton Cummings was in the audience and that perhaps if we didn't mind, he might want to come up and sing a few tunes with our band later in the evening. How could I say no? We did our first set, which was a pure jazz and standards set, and Burton clapped louder and longer than anyone else in the club which had about 300 people in it at the time.

At the end of our first set, he invited us to his table, bought us drinks, hit on my wife (he was rather drunk but friendly-drunk at the time) and talked keyboards and road stories with me.

The following set and, for the rest of the night, he played with us as I had a baby grand piano on stage in an L shape to a bank of synths. I let him have the piano and I handled the synths. We did two solid sets of Guess Who material (and being a Guess Who fan sure came in handy as I knew all his tunes), and we also jammed on various blues and rock n' roll tunes. He sounded phenominal and his voice was in great shape. He closed the evening alone performing a solo version of Stand Tall which had just been released as a single at the time. Suffice to say, the club went nuts all evening; the patrons considered us Gods for playing and being able to back him up, and to this day, we tell people that Burton Cummings played at our wedding!