Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 06/08/07

1. Roadtrip!

Car gassed, bag packed, snacks stowed, tunes picked, shades ready, Vrooom! Soon to be off into the trackless wastes betwixt hither and yonder.

Hopefully I won't be too late to catch a piece of pie at The Griddle while I'm passing through Winnemucca...


2. CLAW Theatre!! Behold! Check it out!

Again, again, again, bless this internet for all the places it can take you and the surprising things you can stumble upon.

So okay; I'd had a dream that somehow involved Much, The Miller's Son, a character from the stories of Robin Hood. Except that in my modern-dress dream, his name had been updated to 'Mutch Millerson'. What EVER.

I was discussing it with a friend as we did some hunting online for a bit of 'Much' info, (there's an odd sentence) when lo and behold - - We found ourselves at the CLAW Theatre 'production' of Robin Hood, one of several elaborately 'staged' photoshop-enhanced performances with an ALL CAT cast.
Wow. SO much to see and learn. Thank you!

3. Two new volumes have appeared recently in Sundazed's 'Garage Beat '66' CD compilation series, and they do not disappoint. Seven CDs so far, and they still kick!

'Garage Beat '66 Vol.6: Speak of the Devil...' and 'Garage Beat '66 Vol.7: That's How It Will Be!' are the latest, chock full of garage/psyche goodness. All killer, no filler.

Wailing fuzzy-gut guitars, some dudes affecting Brit accents, trying to sing like Mick, some dudes trying to sing like Dylan, other dudes just howling. Perfectly obscure 45-oriented mid-to-late '60's rawk, all in glorious mono sound.

I've been impressed by the Garage Beat '66 series from the get-go. On the one hand, yes, many of the artists happen to be represented on their own individual Sundazed label reissues - - the label has made some handy samplers that can point you to more of their own product. But the material and its sequencing is really well-chosen, and these artists truly are not of the 'usual suspects' you'll often find on other garage comps.

For me, this series is second only to (any incarnation of) the Nuggets compilation. Dig it!

(Garage power trio illustration by the ever-fabulous Wayno.)

4. Bad weather, like bad moods, can't last forever. It just seems that way. The only constant is change.

*** A brief Vanity Moment, if I may:
Just over 100 posts and just over 5000 hits since I began this blog just about 2½ months ago.
Whee! THANK YOU for visiting, THANK YOU for allowing me to share.
I'll slow down my pace (or burn out) any day now, just wait...

78s fRom HeLL: Doris Drew - Where's A Your House, circa 1951 (an 'answer' song)

Continuing from my previous post, taking a peek at 'all things Seville' ...

Seville/Bagdasarian and Saroyan's song, 'Come On-A My House' was a big enough hit upon its release to warrant many cover versions, several parodies and at least one or two follow-up 'answer' songs, and here's one scratchy example.

I haven't found much info on Doris Drew.

Looks like prior to recording a few singles on the Mercury label she'd been a vocalist on network radio.

Within a few years after this
recording, she was apparently
singing jazzier material, as evidenced by the Mode label LP cover pictured here.

Orchestra leader and Mercury musical director Nook Schreier soon after changed his name to David Carroll, and was involved in a great number of recordings throughout the 1950's.











Listen to: Doris Drew, with Nook Schreier's Orchestra - Where's A Your House (click for audio)

The Roots of David Seville: Ross Bagdasarian & William Saroyan - Come On-A My House

A recent (and very cool) post over at Record Robot got me to thinking about Ross Bagdasarian (AKA David Seville, the Chipmunk impresario), and better yet, it spurred me to finally dig through a big stack of ancient cassette tapes to locate this little gem.

Ross Bagdasarian grew up in Fresno, California. His heritage was Armenian, and he was first cousin to author/playwright William Saroyan, who was eleven years his senior.

Bagdasarian and Saroyan colaborated in writing the song 'Come On-a My House' while traveling together in the summer of 1939.

The song was first used in 1950, incorporated into Saroyan's off-Broadway play, 'The Son'.

The first recordings of it were released in 1951, on the Federal record label by vocalist
Kay Armen (Mrs. Bagdasarian), as well as this version released on the Coral label, featuring vocals by Ross, accompanied by Saroyan supplying the narration.

It was the Rosemary Clooney version that became a HUGE hit, released that same year on the Columbia label (despite her reluctance to record it).

It was somewhere around this time that Ross Bagdasarian concluded that he *was* in fact in the music business, and so changed his name to David Seville. (He'd been stationed in the Seville region of Spain during WWII)

During the next few years he continued to record (with moderate commercial success), issuing singles on the Liberty label under the name 'Alfi & Harry', and then more singles and an LP as David Seville.

He had a few film roles during that time as well, including his appearance in Afred Hitchcock's 'Rear Window'.

It was 1958 when everything changed. He played around with recording his voice sped up, and released his novelty song 'The Witch Doctor', which was ridiculously successful. He took the process a step further in creating The Chipmunks, and a dynasty was born.


Listen to: Ross Bagdasarian, with narration by William Saroyan - Come On-A My House (click for audio)

Feodor Rojankovsky illustrated print ad, 1947

Illustrator Feodor Stepanovich Rojankovsky's work appeared in a great many children's books dating from the early 1940's until his death in 1970.

Here's an example from a 1947 magazine ad for Puss n' Boots cat food...

There are several places around the web where you can read about the artist and see other (better) examples of his work.

There's a good listing to be found at the ASIFA-Hollywood Animation Archive.

His Wikipedia entry has several further links cited, including some of the notable erotic drawings from his book, 'Paris Spring'.

Here's the link to a nice Rojankovsky gallery page, which it turns out is nested at the VERY impressive 'Alphabet of Illustrators' site, which in turn is one part of a HUGE site, 'The Visual Telling of Stories', some of which appears to be still under construction - - AND is itself also part of a further even more immense graphic art site still under construction. Golly Gosh - - PLEASE EXPLORE!!

Max Kaminsky and his Windy City Six - Chicago Style (1954)

A few selections of Traditional / Dixieland jazz from one of the coolest records on the planet.

By the time these tracks were recorded in 1954, each of these players were already legends of the jazz world, pioneers who had performed with *everybody* over the course of several decades.

Max Kaminsky - Trumpet
Pee Wee Russell - Clarinet
Miff Mole - Trombone
Joe Sullivan - Piano
George Wettling - Drums
Jack Lesberg - Bass

On these recordings the players are so well versed in the style that they'll tweak it, until it transforms into a kind of 'Progressive Trad Jazz'.

Likewise, they're so confident as they shift effortlessly from exquisite subtle nuance to broad hot 'n' sloppy strokes of 'playing the wrong notes right'.

Either that, or they were all drunk.
Regardless, I love it. Hope you feel the same.

(click for audio)
From the LP 'Chicago Style',
listen to:

Mix Max

Stuyvesant Blues

Short Ties and Long Ties

Never Touched Me

Two B. Kliban cartoons circa 1974, and one concert poster from 1967

Maybe it's just me, but perhaps the world needs B. Kliban now more than ever.

Well, I suppose his Cats have never quite left us.

But HE did, back in 1990, and it just seems wrong to not see his cartoons around much anymore.

To look at them now, many of them still seem rooted to a much different era, but I'd say it's in the best sense of the term.

I found these two in a couple of old 1970's OUI magazines. (There's a blast from the past)

To the best of my knowledge, they've not seen print since then.



Having found them, I began to nose around the web in preparation for this post.

I was SHOCKED to discover that not only have most of Kliban's non-Cat books been long out of print, but some of them have become difficult to find used, as well.

Seems like not too long ago you couldn't swing an old Cat calendar without hitting a copy of 'The Biggest Tongue In Tunisia' or 'Luminous Animals'...

Not surprisingly, there's a reasonable showing of Kliban stuff to be found on display around the net.

Here's a nice article attached to a fan site gallery.

Here's his entry at Lambiek.

- - And coincidentally, as luck would have it, June is B. Kliban month at the blog, Updateable Mixtape.

This image of Kliban's 1967 Avalon Ballroom concert poster comes via a Country Joe & The Fish website.

I've seen a couple of examples of Kliban's earlier artwork, and I'd love to find more.

I can remember seeing one or two of his mid-1960's cartoons somewhere as well, displaying a nearly unrecognizeable earlier style.

I'm hoping to lay hands on them before my attempts at recalling where it was that I'd seen them drives me *too* crazy...

(or is it too late?)

Jackie Vernon - A Man And His Watermelon

In a previous post about a month ago, I made mention of comedian Jackie Vernon in reference to comedian Steven Wright's style of deadpan delivery.

As Jackie Vernon's stand-up routines have kept bubbling up in my memory ever since, I thought I'd post a couple of them here.

Despite the decades that separate them, the similarities between the performance styles of Vernon and Wright are fairly easy to spot, but the comparison might be doing a disservice to the talents of each of them.

So, um, maybe just forget I mentioned it?

From his 1967 LP, 'A Man And His Watermelon, recorded live at the Blue Room of the Shoreham Hotel, Washington, DC - -

Listen to:
Jackie Vernon - A Man And His Watermelon
(click for audio)

Listen to:
Jackie Vernon - The Heckler/
How To Meet A Girl
(click for audio)




(Oh, and just in case Vernon's topical reference throws you, Dean Rusk was U.S. Secretary of State under Kennedy and Johnson, from 1961 - '69, known for his hawkish stance on the Vietnam War.)

Rutland Patching Plaster ad, 1947

From a 1947 issue of The Saturday Evening Post.

Does this lady look just a tad speedy to you?

"...and then last night I re-painted the bathrooms and wall-papered the attic and it's just so easy to get things DONE when you put your mind to it not a bit sleepy and I figured since I've still got oh probably about ninety-six hours left on my little run well say eighty-seven to ninety-eight hours maybe but who's counting anyway so I figured that as long as I'm UP and feeling MOTIVATED why don't I just patch up these nasty holes that got in the walls somehow I can almost remember how they got there did I do it upset about something spiders maybe spiders watching me I don't know maybe doesn't matter doesn't matter I just LOVE this patching plaster it smells SO much better than the other stuff I used that reminds me of that time when was it doesn't matter now but ANYWAY it reminds me..."

In Crowd of the month: The Pair

A groovy low-key vocal version this month, recorded live circa 1965.

There's not too much information floating around about vocalist Carl Craig and bassist Marcus Hemphill, the Pair Extraordinaire.

The best capsule bio I could find was over at Record Robot, where they'd already done their homework in a posting from earlier this year.

There's a little bit more to be gleaned from an old posting at It's Magic, as well as the 1986 New York Times obituary for Marcus Hemphill.



Listen to: The Pair - The "In" Crowd (click for audio)

(- - and click here for all of my 'In Crowd of the month' posts gathered together on one page)

1950's Record Rack from Downbeat Magazine

From a 1957 issue of Downbeat; order a subscription, get a free record rack.

I dig the staggered 'split-level' look to it.

Looks like it maybe could have tended towards being top-heavy and perhaps a bit teetery, just like so many other wire rack record holders...

78s fRom HeLL: Ziggy Talent - I Ain't Gonna Take It Settin' Down

Ziggy Talent was a saxophonist and novelty vocalist who performed with Vaughn Monroe's big band throughout the 1940's and into the early '50's. On stage he'd often go on with just the band's rhythm section while Monroe and the rest of the orchestra would take a break.

He put his odd, high-pitched and reedy singing voice to good use on several goofy songs over the years, both with Monroe and on his own, including 'Sam, You Made The Pants Too Long', 'The Maharajah of Magador', 'Josephine, Please No Lean On The Bell', and 'Please Say Goodnight To The Guy, Irene'.



Looks like this record was released in the late 1940's, and I'll assume for now that 'The Talented Ten' included members of the Vaughn Monroe Orchestra.









Listen to:
Ziggy Talent and his Talented Ten -
I Ain't Gonna Take It Settin' Down
(click for audio)

Reasons To Be Cheerful: week of 06/01/07

At the risk of this weekly (weakly?) post sounding even MORE like Peggy Hill's 'Musings' column;

1. Going Back To Bed, and hopefully a schedule that can allow for it.
Or better yet, Uninterrupted Sleep.

2. The Junk Drawer. In your kitchen or wherever.
A designated clutter-friendly zone.
Go ahead, organize it. I dare you. See how long that lasts.

3. PLAY is an important thing.
There's lots of krazy places to play on the internet.
There's people trying to sell you things, see, and often they'll supply DEMOS for their product.

It might be something sorta obnoxious that you'd never really want to use for it's intended purpose, but it can be loads of silly fun to tinker around with it in that demo area. Y'know what I mean?

- - and if you can type in any juvenile and depraved message for it to parrot back to you in a weird Hawking-esque voice? Now THAT'S a good time.

You gots to be careful about demos and getting suckered into 'free' trial periods, though. Otherwise you might wind up paying for a bunch of crap, when alls you were looking for was a gadget to play with...



(ADDENDUM 6/15/07: My 'free' trial ended, so my creepy little animated spokesfreaks have been removed)