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Terry Lasorda - A Performer With A Rich History.
I had to make the pilgrimage to Stevens Magic Emporium! – Terry Lasorda
We at Stevens Magic Emporium – always LOVE it when people stop by to say hello to us! Wichita, KS, is a great place to live – the quality of life is fantastic… However, Wichita is no Metropolis… That is why we are consistently humbled by the amount of people that make efforts to stop by our shop. True story, this year we had a customer from Montana drive all the way down to Wichita – solely to meet us and also check out a set of the Jeremey Pei Linking Rings – which he ended up purchasing! The other day Terry Lasorda popped in from Philly! His story really intriqued me because it was exceptionally rich in both his early fellowship with some of the greats, as well as a fascinating performance history including working as the close up magician at The Stardust Casino, at the same time Siegfried and Roy were the headliner. Add the fact that he also worked with Muhammad Ali who also attended some of my fathers (Joe Stevens), Desert Magic Seminar’s back in the days, I encouraged him to put his story together to share with you! I hope you will enjoy it!
In His Own Words – Terry Lasorda
As to myself, I consider myself a lucky practitioner of sleight of hand. Lucky because it has had a positive effect on my life since diving into it some fifty years ago this month. It started as a physical therapy to polio. And, since then initiated a forty six year old great friendship with my best friend in magic (George Hample), helped get me through some challenging times of my life, and has opened doors throughout my life including a year working for and traveling with Muhammad Ali. My short stint doing close-up magic at the Stardust Casino in 1978 was just one of many adventures that I had while working for Muhammad Ali that year. I am mentioned in this TV Guide article link: http://www.trussel.com/hf/tvguide.htm. My contracted responsibilities with Muhammad Ali was to perform as a warm-up act for many of his public appearances at the time and teach him casual magic, which he loved. I travelled around the world for a year with Muhammad Ali starting in 1978.
By far my greatest inspiration in magic is George Hample, the inventor of “Beswitched”, and a master of routining and magic editing for the sake of entertainment. Here is a recent photo of George.
George Hample
George is an 82 year old recent cancer survivor, who is now again performing his entertaining brand of close-up and stand-up magic. George taught me the importance of originality, scripting, editing and magical routining. George and his wonderful wife, Ruth, live in Philadelphia, PA.
My other great influencer, primarily in my early years, was the late Jack Chanin , who is pictured below on the right.
Jack Channin
This work also requires a lot of sleight of hand!
I have been gifted beyond my dreams to have worked with some of the greatest people in the art!
