Sometimes the stars line up and the gravitational pull of the moon exerts just the right influence and great things happen. Or maybe it’s just luck.

As a senior in college, I was in charge of a small coffee house at UNC Charlotte. The room held 300 people max. No one ever drank a drop of coffee there, I’m pretty sure. It was my job to book acts for Thursday and Friday nights for The Rathskeller, a humble basement room in the school’s only dorm cafeteria. The university gave me enough budget to make it a great music venue.

Part of my role was to host the entertainers, so every week I hung out with people like Norman Blake, Robin Williams, Doc and Merle Watson, Leon Redbone, Lightnin’ Hopkins and a host of other extraordinarily talented people. It was the coolest job on campus, if not the world. Redbone was the oddest of them, Williams the craziest.

And Steve Martin the most memorable.

America has known him as the wild and crazy guy on the lookout for American foxes. Or as the early rapper King Tut. Then he was “The Jerk.” We’ve come to love him in other movies from the ridiculous to the sublime, like “Father of the Bride,” “Plains, Trains and Automobiles” and “Little Shop of Horrors.”

Most people aren’t aware that Martin is also a best-selling author. Or that he’s won Grammys and Emmys for his acting and writing, was nominated for four Golden Globes, and won best acting awards from the critics.

Even fewer know he plays the banjo. That is, until he teamed up with a North Carolina band called the Steep Canyon Rangers and started selling out venues all over the country. These days, he writes songs and plays the five-string well enough that a recent magazine article labeled him the new “Ambassador of Bluegrass.”

Martin was well-known but not famous when he came to UNCC for two shows on a Thursday night in late February 1977. He wore his patented white suit and acted like a crazy man. I paid him $1,800 for the night.

Offstage, he was quiet, even reserved, but respectful. There were none of the zany antics that followed on the riser. He seemed distracted, as if he was always rehearsing something in his mind. He never opened up on a personal level the way some of them did.

We had a packed house. My future wife was among the students who paid a whopping 25 cents to get in. It was the first time I noticed her. She noticed me when I introduced Martin to open the show. We met a couple of weeks later at a party.

Martin pulled out every gag he had. He sang King Tut, he juggled, then danced on happy feet. He told jokes, excuuuuused himself, and wore the arrow through his head. His first three years on SNL, Martin did all the same routines he let us see in Charlotte. The place rocked with laughter all night. Time stood still. Finally, he picked up his banjo and magic happened: The room was mesmerized.

The Man With Two Brains played for 10 minutes, then jumped off the stage and started moving through the audience, inviting us to follow him outside. We did. He wandered the campus with his banjo ringing and 600 happy feet dancing in a long, long line, tracing the sidewalks to a bell tower at the center of campus.

He climbed on a platform and played his heart out to a euphoric crowd 10 feet below. Finally, he got down and led the crowd back toward The Rat, playing outside for 45 minutes.

Martin pulled that group together like nothing I’ve seen before or since, a real Pied Piper in the flesh. I doubt the university has any institutional knowledge of the event, but my friends still talk about it.

After the show, we packed Steve’s stuff into my old ’72 VW Beetle, and I drove him back to the Charlotte airport. He thanked me and told me how much fun he’d had that evening. We had a bond, shook hands, and he turned and headed inside for a late flight to New York. I’ve often wondered if he knew what was ahead for him.

That Saturday night, I turned the TV on and there he was — Steve Martin in his first headline performance on SNL. I’m sure his life was never the same after that appearance. I knew, even then, that I couldn’t have gotten a return gig the following week for $18,000. But he was there for a moment.

And excu-u-use me, but I’ve always known Steve Martin could smoke a banjo.

Pat Taylor is advertising director for The Pilot. Contact him at pat@thepilot.com.