Best Known As: Comic cornetist who chanted 'boop boop' in Three Little Fishies
Name at birth: Merwyn Bogue
Ish Kabibble was a cornet player and comic in the Kay Kyser big band from 1931 to 1950. He joined the band as Merwyn Bogue, but Kyser urged him to take on a funny persona as part of the band's routine. In the process he adopted an obscure old song, "Isch Gabibble" (with an altered spelling), as one of his signature numbers. Fans and band members then started calling him by the song's name, and it stuck. Outfitted as a bumpkin with kooky-looking bangs, he regularly stepped out of the trumpet section to interrupt the conductor with silly poems and sayings during live performances and broadcasts of the popular Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge radio and TV shows. He chanted the "boop boop dittem dattem whattem chu" line in the band's 1939 hit "Three Little Fishies," which spent weeks atop the Billboard pop chart. Offstage he doubled as the band's financial manager. From 1955 to 1960 he led his own six-piece Dixieland group, the Shy Guys.
Some sources list his birthplace as Erie, Pa., where he grew up, but his autobiography designates it as the nearby town of North East, where his family lived briefly... He married Janet Meade in 1932. They had three children: Merwyn (nicknamed Peter), born 1937; Pamela, 1940; and Janet, 1941. All were named Bogue, not Kabibble... Ish Kabibble: The Autobiography of Merwyn Bogue (1989) was co-written with his sister, Gladys Bogue Reilly.
Born Merwyn Bogue, this versatile and amusing artist managed to come up with a stage name that was even weirder sounding than his real name. Or actually, his boss, Kay Kyser, came up with the name when the trumpeter joined Kyser's band in 1931. At first, "Ish Kabibble" was just the name of a trumpet feature that allowed Bogue a chance to do his thing. When Kyser became the host of the enormously popular '30s radio program kraftily kalled Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, Bogue began to portray a perpetually silly and addled character named Ish Kabibble, serving as a comical sidekick to the leader. Why Bogue decided to take his character's name as his own might have had something to do with being named Merwyn Bogue, but the most likely inspiration for the Kabibble name itself was a humorous popular song by Sam Lewis entitled "Isch Gabibble" or "I Should Worry," published in 1913. The lyrics to this song connect the title with a relaxed, casual attitude about life: "I never care or worry/Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble/I never tear or hurry/Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble/...When I owe people money/Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble," and so forth and so on. A further presence of at least the "kabibble" part of the name was in a comic strip of that time, Abie the Agent by Harry Hershfield. This comic presented the adventures of a character named Abie Kabibble. Both the song and the comic probably helped popularize the expression "ish kabibble" as slang for "who cares?" in the early 1900s.
Defying this interpretation of his name, the trumpeter Kabibble remained one of the standout soloists in the Kyser group for nearly 20 years, minus a brief and unhappy stint with Spike Jones and the City Slickers. He often played the same sort of instrument as Dizzy Gillespie, a trumpet or cornet with the mouthpiece bent up at a 45 degree angle. He was a flashy soloist and handled the novelty vocals on numbers such as "Three Little Fishes," for which he is most famous. Yet it seems like what he was even more famous for was his haircut. His appearance was often compared to one of the Three Stooges, namely Moe Howard, and that is certainly no vision of loveliness. And although musical biographies should generally focus on music and not an artist's appearance, some of the following descriptions of the Ish-cut cry out for public awareness. "...It was extremely difficult to make out whether you were looking at the front or the back of his head." Or, Kabible's hair was "...like a brutal army haircut, put on the wrong way around. The result was that Ish Kabible looked somewhat like an Old English Sheepdog, but not half as pretty." Some musicians were even known to go around in Ish Kabibble wigs for a prank. The haircut seemed attractive in some way to Hollywood producers, as Kabibble was always given ample screen time in films in which he appeared with the Kyser band, including the horror comedy You'll Find Out, probably based on the comment Kabible's barber made to him before handing him the mirror, Swing Fever and Riding High. It is the horror production that remains the highlight of Kabible's haircut on film, as it manages to be more frightening than the combined efforts of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. The Kabibble character is also caricatured in the cartoon Hollywood Canine Canteen, directed in 1946 by Robert McKimson in which there is a dog character named Ish Kapoodle.
One of the vocalists who worked with Kabibble alongside Kyser in the late '40s was Merv Griffin, his talk show days just a twinkle in his eyes. Upon leaving the band in 1951, Kabibble vamoosed to the tropical climate of Hawaii. He wrote his life story, Ish Kabibble: The Autobiography of Merwyn Brogue, which was published by the University of Louisiana Press. He spent his final years in Palm Beach, CA, and died of respiratory failure. Meanwhile another Ish Kabibble had emerged. Jerry Penfound of London, Ontario, was nicknamed "Ish" or Ish Kabibble, and from 1961 on played horns in Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. This Kabibble was usually part of that group's soul-band horn section along with Garth Hudson on tenor or soprano sax. Hudson, of course, went on to great later fame as a member of the Band. Not so for Penfound/Kabibble II. Maybe he just didn't have the haircut. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide
With his jet black hair cut like Moe Howard's, known as "the guy with the low-cut bangs and the high-kicking cornet," Ish Kabibble was a standout in the Kay Kyser Band for two decades. Born Merwyn Bogue in 1908, he joined Kyser's band in 1931. He appeared with the band in a few films, including You'll Find Out (1940), Swing Fever (1943), and Riding High (1950). Between 1949 and 1950, he also appeared regularly on Kay Kyser's television show Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge. Upon leaving the band in 1951, Kabibble moved to Hawaii. Later in life, he moved to Palm Springs, CA. ~ Sandra Brennan, All Movie Guide
The origin of Mervyn Bogue's stage name, Ish Kabibble, can be traced back to the 1913 novelty song "Isch ga-bibble" and this 1915 cartoon postcard, which displays a spelling (Ish Ka Bibble) almost identical to that used by Bogue. Between the song and the card, in 1914, Harry Hershfield introduced his character Abie Kabibble" in his comic strip Abie the Agent.
Ish Kabibble (January 19, 1908 – June 5, 1994) was a comedian and cornet player. Born Merwyn Bogue in North East, Pennsylvania, his family returned to Erie, Pennsylvania a few months after his birth.
He studied law at West Virginia University, but his comedy antics soon found an audience. He performed with Kay Kyser on the television quiz show Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge in 1949 and 1950. He also appeared in ten movies between 1939 and 1950. In Thousands Cheer (1943), he is the band member who tells Kyser the joke about his friend receiving $250,000, and he sings "I Dug a Ditch" in that film. He's also a vocalist in That's Right — You're Wrong (1939), You'll Find Out (1940), and Playmates (1941).
In his 1989 autobiography, Bogue explained his stage name, which he took from the lyrics of one of his comedic songs, "Isch ga-bibble."[1] The song derived from a boy named Ben, who thought the word was cool. "Ishkabibble?", which was purported to mean "I should worry?", prompted a curious (and perhaps not coincidental) association of the comedian with the "What, me worry?" motto of Mad's mascot, Alfred E. Neuman. While this derivation has been widely quoted on the Internet and elsewhere, the expression "ische ga bibble" is not Yiddish, and, in fact, contains no Yiddish words at all.[2]
Although Bogue's stage persona was that of a dimwitted person, he was a notable cornet player and was also business manager for the Kay Kyser Orchestra from 1931 to 1951. With the decline of the big bands, Bogue found a new career in real estate. He died in 1994 in Palm Springs, California. [3]
Influence
Kabibble's distinctive black hair in a bowl cut, similar to that used by Three Stooges member Moe Howard, is said to have been an inspiration for the hairstyle worn by Jim Carrey's character in Dumb and Dumber. Some maintain that Jerry Lewis lifted his comedic persona and look from Ish Kabibble, making an otherwise identical character more manic than Ish Kabibble's earlier presentation.
The name "Ish Kabbible" was used for a hoax student supposedly enrolled at Princeton University in the 1950s.
In 1985, the character's name was used as a plot device on the animated series The Thirteen Ghosts of Scooby-Doo. On this series, Scooby and the gang, along with an animated spoof of Vincent Price, are in search of the Amulet of Ish Kabibble.
In the TV show M.A.S.H., Alan Alda's character "Hawkeye Pierce" several times refers to Ish Kabibble. Once he asks who he and Trapper John should drink to - MacArthur or Ish Kabibble? Another time he refers to Ish Kabibble and his All Girl Orchestra and refers to him as part of a dream.
In the TV show Green Acres, Sam Drucker sells "Ish Kabibble" kazoos.
