After the success of Pinky & Perky and Alvin & The Chipmunks , there were a large number of copycat albums, which featured sped-up vocals of animal characters as well. These groups included The Grasshoppers , The Penguins , The Nutty Squirrels , The Happy Hamsters , The Panda Bears , Santa's Elves , Harvey The Singing Hamster , The 3 Little Pixies and The Busy Beavers Happy Time Records was [...]
The Night Before Christmas is an animated cartoon from 1941 featuring Tom and Jerry. The cartoon was released in theaters on 6 December 1941, and was directed by William Hanna and Joseph Barbera, produced by Fred Quimby and animated by Kenneth Muse, Jack Zander and Pete Burness, though the animators were uncredited. The third cartoon featuring the cat and mouse duo, it was nominated for the 1941 Academy Award for Best Short Subject: Cartoons, but lost to Disney's Lend A Paw , featuring Pluto. [...]
Although the U.S. and the Soviet Union had been wartime allies against Nazi Germany, the two sides differed on how to reconstruct the postwar world even before the end of the Second World War. The United States monopoly on nuclear weapons was broken in 1949 when the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear device, and many in the government and public perceived that the United States was more vulnerable than it ever had been before. In the wake of the fear that the Cold War spread, substantial numbers of fallout shelters were built in the 1950s in the [...]
The Ramrods were one of hundreds of groups in the US in the early 1960s who were playing instrumental rock and roll, but they became famous for their cover of Ghost Riders In The Sky and for their drummer, Claire Lane, who was a female, and also did the group's arrangements. Her brother Richard Lane played the saxophone and the other two members, guitarists Vincent Bell Lee and Eugene Moore, were cousins. At the end of 1960, they released their cover version of Ghost Riders In The Sky which had been a huge [...]
Johnny Guarnieri (1917-1985) was a jazz pianist who had the ability to closely imitate Fats Waller, Count Basie, and Art Tatum. In 1939, he joined Benny Goodman's orchestra, recording frequently with both the big band and the sextet. Through the 1940s he freelanced with many bands and and played with all of the top jazz musicians of the era, including Artie Shaw, Tommy Dorsey, Lester Young, Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins, and Louis Armstrong. Leroy Elliott "Slam" Stewart (1914-1987), was a swing-oriented bassist who had perfect pitch. His ability to bow the bass while humming an octave apart [...]
Troy Hess has performed publicly since he was 2 years old with such stars as Bob Wills, Ernest Tubb, Dolly Parton, Johnny Cash, George Jones and Tammy Wynette. His father, Bennie Hess, was a popular B-western movie actor and hillbilly singer on Mercury records in the 40's. Bennie's father had worked on the railroad with the legendary Jimmie Rodgers, and Rodgers widow later gave his' guitar to Bennie. At the age of 14, Bennie left school and moved to Lubbock Texas, where he formed The Rhythm Wranglers and started his first radio show on station KFYO, playing [...]
John Denver (1943 – 1997) was an American singer-songwriter and folk rock musician who was one of the biggest selling artists of the 1970s. He had 14 gold and eight platinum albums in the United States, and his hit songs, such as " Take Me Home, Country Roads ", " Annie's Song ", " Thank God I'm A Country Boy ", and " Rocky Mountain High ," are still popular all over the world. After Denver discovered guitar as a teenager, his interest in music blossomed. Eventually, he joined the Chad Mitchell Trio in Los Angeles, [...]
Soupy Sales is an American comedian and actor who brought pie throwing to an art form. By some estimates, Soupy has been hit by over 25,000 pies. Sales is best known for his long-running children's television show, The Soupy Sales Show , which originated in 1953 from the studios of WXYZ-TV in Detroit, Michigan. Beginning in October 1959, it was telecast nationally on the ABC television network. The Soupy Sales Show combined elements of Vaudeville, hipster jive, pure nonsense, and practical advice, through the antics and voices of Mr. Sales, [...]
Tony Vosik (aka phoneyfresh) has a blog called " Poems For Songs ," where, in the tradition of the Song-Poem , he accepts poem submissions for songs, and then sets them to original music. This song, " Santa on a Motorcycle ," was written by five year old twins Ivy and Noah, and was submitted by Tom Palmer. It features Tony's brother Wilson, and sisters Carmen and Megan, as backup singers. LISTEN TO SONG: [See post to listen to audio] [...]
Joseph Spence (1910 - 1984) was a Bahamanian guitarist, singer and blues musician. He is well known for his vocalizations and humming while performing on guitar. Several modern folk, blues and jazz musicians were influenced by and have recorded variations of his arrangements of gospel and Bahamanian pop tunes, including Taj Mahal and Ry Cooder, both of whom had the opportunity to meet and play with him. Joseph Spence played the guitar as he sang a demented sounding sort of scat. He grunted, snorted and made low guttural noises, and would often descend into complete nonsensical garble. They [...]
Max Headroom was an American television series which aired on ABC in the late 1980s. Max Headroom was the name of a fictional artificial intelligence, known for his surreal wit and a stuttering, distorted, electronically sampled delivery. The series was developed from a British television character, and Max was played by actor Matt Frewer. 3-D rendering and computing technology were not advanced enough for a full-motion, voice-synched human head to be practical for a television series at that time, and Max was actually actor Matt Frewer in latex and foam rubber prosthetic makeup with a fibreglass [...]
The Insane Clown Posse (ICP) is a horrorcore/hip hop/rapcore duo originally from Delray, Michigan. They almost always display themselves in character in full black and white "evil clown" makeup. The group has a dedicated following of fans, known as Juggalos and Juggalettes, who often show up at concerts with their faces painted in black-and-white clown face makeup. Formed in 1989, the first name the group was known by as JJ Boyz . In 1990, the group became known as Inner City Posse (ICP), and released a homemade gangsta rap cassette tape called [...]
When people look for new ideas for creating Christmas music, they often look toward fads and new technologies to include in their songs, to find a hook and give them a topical appeal. In the 1950's, helicopters caught the attention of everyone, so it's not surprising that someone would write a christmas song about them. In July 1950, the first North American Helicopter Transcontinental Flight took place, and 1951 saw the world's first certified commercial transport helicopter, the Sikorsky S-5. In July 1957, Dwight Eisenhower became first US President to fly in a helicopter. The imagery from the Korean [...]
Here is another bleak Red Sovine Christmas tear jerker from the early 1960s, called " Is There Really A Santa Claus? " The song is about two kids who are left motherless on Christmas Eve, and their grieving, despondent father tells them that they shouldn't expect any toys from Santa. Later, after overhearing the kid's prayers, he is overcome with guilt, and decides to buy them some toys at the last minute. As he hurries to the store he gets struck by a car and killed in the [...]
The Flintstones is an animated television series, that was produced by Hanna-Barbera Productions, and is one of the most successful animated television series of all time. The Flintstones is set in a town called Bedrock in the Stone Age era. In the Flintstones' fantasy version of prehistoric times, dinosaurs co-exist with cavemen, who use technology equivalent to that of the 20th century. Largely inspired by the 1950s Jackie Gleason sitcom The Honeymooners , The Flintstones originally ran on ABC Television, during prime time, for six seasons, from 1960 to 1966. [...]
Song Poems are song lyrics which have been set to music for a fee, and the service was usually promoted through small ads in magazines and comic books. The Song Poem industry (often referred to as "song sharks") played off the desire of people to become famous and make money from writing popular songs, as well as the gullibility and naivety of the general public in regard to the actual inner-workings of the record industry. People who mailed their poetry to be evaluated, received back a barrage of letters of praise [...]
In the 1970's, Dean Martin seemed to be suffering from a mid-life crisis. On Valentine's Day of 1972, he filed for divorce from his second wife, Jeanne, and a week later his business partnership with the Riviera casino was dissolved due to the casino's refusal to submit to Dino's request to perform only once a night. At the age of 56, less than a month after his second marriage had been legally dissolved, Martin married 26 year-old Catherine Hawn, on April 25, 1973, with Frank Sinatra as his best man. As a thank-you gesture from Dean, [...]
Musical Fruitcake
Bison - Quill
Monday Music – 28 May 2012
