‘LaBamba’ answers the call from Springsteen, Southside, Conan
By Ellen S. Wilkowe • Daily Record • February 8, 2009
His kids call him Dad, but to everyone else, Richie Rosenberg of Randolph is best known as LaBamba. Everyone except for his wife, that is.
“She calls me LB,” he said.
For the past 16 years, the man of one hat, one horn — a trombone — has found himself on the receiving end of Conan O’Brien’s jokes as a member of the show’s house band, the Max Weinberg 7.
“I don’t know idea why he picks on me,” Rosenberg said jokingly in a phone interview from — where else? — NBC in New York, where he tapes “Late Night With Conan O’Brien” almost daily from 2 to 8 p.m. “But from day one, there was always a camera on Max and on me.”
This year O’Brien will head west to take over “The Tonight Show,” and while an NBC spokesman would not reveal the band’s fate, Rosenberg said he will be going along — “a dream come true,” he said.
“I can only speak for myself and not the band,” Rosenberg said. “I just wish I didn’t have to leave this all behind.”
This, meaning New Jersey. “I’ll miss the Shore,” he said.