- Spike Jones & His City Slickers
-
Spike Jones & His City Slickers: Musical Depreciation [Living Era]
- Cocktails for Two Time: 2:22
- Chloe (Song of the Swamp) Time: 2:32
- Behind Those Swingin' Doors Time: 2:28
- Red Wing Time: 1:55
- The Covered Wagon Rolled Right Along Time: 2:15
- Clink, Clink, Another Drink! Time: 1:52
- Little Bo Peep Has Lost Her Jeep Time: 1:54
- Pass The Biscuits, Mirandy Time: 2:26
- Der Fuehrer's Face Time: 2:07
- I Wanna Go Back To West Virginia Time: 2:31
- Hotcha Cornia (Black Eyes) Time: 2:00
- Leave The Dishes in the Sink, Ma Time: 2:17
- Serenade to a Jerk Time: 2:34
- Holiday For Strings Time: 2:32
- The Blue Danube Time: 2:19
- You Always Hurt the One YOu Love Time: 2:17
- Hawaiian War Chant Time: 2:11
- Liebestraum Time: 2:32
- That Old Black Magic Time: 1:58
- The Nutcracker Suite: Part 1 Time: 2:46
- The Nutcracker Suite: Part 2 Time: 2:25
- The Nutcracker Suite: Part 3 Time: 2:39
- The Nutcracker Suite: Part 4 Time: 2:26
- The Nutcracker Suite: Part 5 Time: 2:40
-
The Nutcracker Suite: Part 6 Time: 2:52
-
CD AJA 5189
[1] COCKTAILS FOR TWO
(Coslow/Johnston)
vocal: Carl Grayson
D4-AB-1056-2 Recorded 29 Nov 1944
[2] CHLOE (SONG OF THE SWAMP)
(Kahn/Moret)
vocal: Red "Swamphead" Ingle
D5-VB-1011 Recorded 3 Jan 1945
[3] BEHIND THOSE SWINGIN' DOORS
(Allan)
vocal: Del Porter
PBS 061519 Recorded 8 Aug 1941
[4] REDWING
(Chattaway/Mills)
vocal: Del Porter
PBS061517 Recorded 8 Aug 1941
[5] THE COVERED WAGON ROLLED
RIGHT ALONG
(Heath/Wood)
vocal: Del Porter
PBS 061520 Recorded 8 Aug 1941
[6] CLINK, CLINIC ANOTHER DRINK!
(Carling/Ohman)
vocal: Del Porter & The Boys in the Back Room (hiccups by Mel Blanc)
PBS 072021 Recorded 12 Jan 1942
[7] LITTLE BO PEEP HAS LOST
HER JEEP
(De Vol/Browne)
vocal: Del Porter; "Collidophone"
effects: Willie Spicer
PBS 072237 Recorded 7 Apr 1942
[8] PASS THE BISCUITS, MIRANDY
(Porter/Hoefle)
vocal: Del Porter
PBS 072239 Recorded 7 Apr 1942
[9] DER FUEHRERS FACE
(Wallace)
vocal:Carl Grayson; "Birdaphone"
effects: Willie Spicer
PBS 072525-2 Recorded 28 Jul 1942
[10] I WANNA GO BACK TO
WEST VIRGINIA
(Crago/Shannon)
vocal: Del Porter & The Boys in the
Back Room; "Trainaphone"
effects: Willie Spicer
PBS 072528 Recorded 28 Jul 1942
[11] HOTCHA CORNIA (BLACK EYES)
(Trad. air. Porter/Jones)
"Sneezaphone" effects: Willie
Spicer
PBS 072524 Recorded 28 Jul 1942
[12] LEAVE THE DISHES IN THE
SINK, MA
(Berle/Jones/Doyle)
vocal: Del Porter
D4-AB-1058 Recorded 29 Nov 1944
[13] SERENADE TO A JERK
(Porter/Hoefle)
vocal: Judy Manners &
Red "Jerk" Ingle
D5-VB-1010 Recorded 13 Jan 1945
[14] HOLIDAY FOR STRINGS
(Rose, arr. Porter/Jones)
D4-AB-1057 Recorded 29 Nov 1944
[15] THE BLUE DANUBE
(J. Strauss ll/Meyer arr. Porter/Jones)
vocal: Carl Grayson/Del Porter &
The Boys in the Back Room
D5-VB-1129 Recorded 10 Sep 1945
[16] YOU ALWAYS HURT THE ONE
YOU LOVE
(Fisher/Roberts)
vocal: Carl Grayson & Red Ingle
D5-VB-1128 Recorded 10 Sep 1945
[17] HAWAIIAN WAR CHANT
(Freed/Noble/Leleiohaku)
"Spike Jones & His Wacky
Wakakians & Chorus"
D5-VB-1131 Recorded 10 Sep 1945
[18] LIEBESTRAUM
(Liszt, Porter arr. Porter/Jones)
vocal: Red Ingle;
narration: Richard Morgan
D5-VB-1130-2 Recorded 10 Sep 1945
[19] THAT OLD BLACKMAGIC
(Mercer/Arlen arr. Porter/Jones)
vocal: Carl Grayson
D5-VB-1127 Recorded 10 Sep 1945
THE NUTCRACKER SUITE
(Tchaikovsky, with special lyrics & effects
by Foster Carling & Country Washburne)
[20] Part 1: "THE LITTLE GIRL'S DREAM"
- Miniature Overture; March
D5-VB-1134 Recorded 27 Sep 1945
[21] Part 2: "LAND OF THE SUGAR-
PLUM FAIRY" - Lemon-Drop Waltz;
Dance Of The Sugar-Plum Fairy
D5-VB-1135 Recorded 28 Sep 1945
[22] Part 3: "THE FAIRY BALL" - The
Chinese Dolls; Chinese Dance;
Dance Of The Flutes
D5-VB-1136 Recorded 28 Sep 1945
[23] Part 4: "THE MYSTERIOUS ROOM"
-The Forbidden Room; Arab
Dance
D5-VB-1137 Recorded 28 Sep 1945
[24] Part5:"BACK TO THE FAIRY BALL"
- They Dance On The Seat Of
Their Pants; Russian Dance-
Trepak; Waltz Of The Flowers
(part 1)
D5-VB-1138 Recorded 29 Sep 1945
[25] Part 6: "END OF THE LITTLE GIRLS
DREAM" -Waltz of The Rowers
(part 2); Granny Speaks (vocal:
Susan Scott); Goodnight, Sleep
Tight
D5-VB-1139 Recorded 29 Sep 1945
Recording location: Hollywood
All rights reserved. Unauthorized copying, hiring, lending, public performance and broadcasting prohibited.
Evolution played its part in the maturing of Spike Jones and his City Slickers but, having once found his unique comic formula, he was assured of success. An outgoing disposition and high musicality allied to an exemplary sense of comic timing enabled him to exploit his matchless gift for parody and mimicry. He knew, too, how to draw the best from others of similar talents and inclinations, sending up a wide variety of songs and dance-band playing styles and elevating tomfoolery to a level of artistic sophistication.
Born Lindley Armstrong Jones in Long Beach, California, on 14th December 1911, Spike played drums and led a band even in his school-days. As a teenager at high school he played with his own band "Spike Jones and his Five Tacks" on local radio stations. Here the lunatic high spirits of the comedy-routines of Musical Depreciation Society were already embryonic and, when he played on radio with Ray West and in studio outfits backing shows featuring Crosby, Jolson, Bums and Allen and others, he had golden opportunities for in-depth studies of the traits and weaknesses of his future "victims". As a studio session-drummer, Spike recorded with bands backing Hoagy Carmichael (1937), Ella Logan (in Perry Botkin's outfit, 1938), Pinky Tomlin (1938), Crosby and Mercer (in Victor Young's ad hoc "Small Fryers" group, 1938) and in Young's larger-scale studio orchestra (1939), continuing until 1941 to regale his audiences on radio with a dazzling array of incongruous novelty instruments serving the satire in such early hits as the mock-C & W Behind Those Swingin' Doors and The Covered Wagon Rolled Right Along. Even here, the musical mastery and superb timing of what appears, at least superficially, to be just a well-honed trad-jazz band are partly obscured by so much hilarious clowning.
Total, unbridled anarchy becomes fully-fledged with Spike's side-splittingly funny million-selling 1942 mockery of Adolf Hitler, Der Fuehrer's Face. Dating from 1936, its tune was originally written by the British (naturalized American) composer Oliver G. Wallace for Disney's Donald Duck cartoon Nutsy Land and, inspired by hearing the Slickers' send-up, Walt himself re-christened the best-selling wartime American anti-Nazi morale-booster. No.3 in the American charts, this Jones landmark was for 10 weeks a US best-seller.
Cow-bells, washboards, pistols, saws, a live goat trained to bleat in time with the music, glass breaking at regular intervals and the Jones patent Latrinophone (a toilet-seat fitted with catgut strings!) very soon became the unmistakable, instantly recognizable hallmarks of the Slickers' musical (?) armoury on radio, on records, in overseas tours to entertain US servicemen (in USO), culminating in the sublime mayhem of Musical Depreciation, the highly successful revue which Jones toured from 1947.
These, and many other effects, grace (or disgrace?) the majority of Slickers' discs, most memorably, perhaps, in their other big hit: the million-selling Cocktails For Two of 1944. Spike's second Golden Disc, it still probably rates as the finest of all City Slickers'
demolitions of a sentimental love-sons. Originally the work of two New Yorkers - lyricist-composer Arthur J. Johnston (1898-1954) and composer-songwriter, pioneer crooner and popular music publisher Sam Coslow (b.1902), it was featured by the smooth Danish filmstar-crooner Carl Brisson (1895-1958) in the 1934 Paramount film Murder At The Vanities. Once heard "depreciated" by Jones, it can never again sound the same to a human ear. The same applies to Chloe (here inimitably apostrophised by Red Ingle as an "old bat"), a 1927 song of tender sentiment with words by emigre-Russian American Gus Kahn (1886-1941) and composer Neil Moret, as well as to such diverse standards as Red Wing (originally a 1907 ragtime hit by Massachusettian composer-lyricist Thurland Chattaway (1872-1947) and Philadelphia-born composer-lyricist, violinist and publisher Frederick Allen "Kerry" Mills (1869-1948), You Always Hurt The One You Love (in 1944 a million-selling number for the Mills Brothers and the work of New York-born Doris Fisher (b. 1915) and lyricist Allan Roberts (1905-1966)) and That Old Black Magic (a time-honored collaboration between Johnny Mercer (1909-1976) and Harold Arlen (1905-1986) made for the 1942 Paramount movie Star-Spangled Rhythm). Holiday For Strings, a parody of the 1944 million-seller by London-born American concert-pianist and composer David Rose (1910-1990), with its emphasis on bottles and tin-cans becomes an epic for percussion which, it must be said, is almost an improvement on its model. Nor, indeed, are the classics sacred, either. Black Eyes, Johann Strauss ll's The Blue Danube and Liszt's Liebestraum (No.3) are treated with all due irreverence, while Tchaikovsky's The Nutcracker Suite (with clever lyrics and effects by Foster Carling and Country Washburne), complete with a superb mockery by Susan Scott of Deanna Durbin (then at the height of her popularity), transforms ballet into pantomime in droll conclusion.
Peter Dempsey (1996)
Transfers ® © 1996
ASV LTD,
1 Beaumont Avenue, London W14 9LP
COMPILED AND PRODUCED BY PETER DEMPSEY
Photographs as black & white originals: Colin Williams
Design: Phil Duffy, P. D. Graphics
Made and printed in England