Spike Jones

Spike Jones
Spike Jones (left) with Marilyn Monroe and Ken Murray, 1952
Born	Lindley Armstrong Jones December 14, 1911(1911-12-14) Long Beach, California, U.S.
Died	May 1, 1965(1965-05-01) (aged 53) Beverly Hills, California, U.S.
Occupation	Musician
Years active	1937–1964

Lindley Armstrong "Spike" Jones (December 14, 1911 – May 1, 1965) was a musician and bandleader specializing in performing satirical arrangements of popular songs. Ballads and classical works receiving the Jones treatment would be punctuated with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and outlandish vocals. Through the 1940s and early 1950s, the band recorded under the title Spike Jones and his City Slickers and toured the United States and Canada under the title The Musical Depreciation Revue.

Biography

Jones' father was a Southern Pacific railroad agent. Young Lindley got his nickname by being so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike. At the age of 11 he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself. A railroad restaurant chef taught him how to use pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments. He frequently played in theater pit orchestras. In the 1930s he joined the Victor Young orchestra and thereby got many offers to appear on radio shows, including Al Jolson's Lifebuoy Program, Burns and Allen, and Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall.

From 1937 to 1942, he was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby's first recording of White Christmas.^[1] Spike Jones was part of a backing band for songwriter Cindy Walker during her early recording career with Decca Records and Standard Transcriptions. Her song "We're Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down" provided the inspiration for the name of Jones’s future band, the City Slickers.^[2]

The City Slickers evolved out of the Feather Merchants, a band led by vocalist-clarinetist Del Porter, who took a back seat to Jones during the embryonic years of the group. They made experimental records for the Cinematone Corporation and performed publicly in Los Angeles, gaining a small following. The original members included vocalist-violinist Carl Grayson, banjoist Perry Botkin, trombonist King Jackson and pianist Stan Wrightsman.

The band signed a recording contract with RCA Victor in 1941 and recorded extensively for the company until 1955. They also starred in various radio programs (1945–1949) and television shows (1954–1961) on both NBC and CBS.

During the 1940s, other prominent band members included:

September 14, 1949 appearance of Spike Dyke, modeled on Spike Jones, in Chester Gould's Dick Tracy

• George Rock (trumpet, and vocals from 1944 to 1960)
• Mickey Katz (clarinet and vocals)
• Doodles Weaver (vocals — specialized in playing sports commentators and absent-minded singers who persistently scrambled their lyrics into malapropisms and digressed into stand-up comedy)
• Red Ingle (sax and vocals)
• Carl Grayson (violin and vocals)
• Country Washburne (tuba)
• Earl Bennett, a.k.a. Sir Frederick Gas (vocals)
• Joe Siracusa (drums)
• Joe Colvin (trombone)
• Roger Donley (tuba)
• Dick Gardner (sax and violin)
• Paul Leu (piano)
• Jack Golly (trumpet and clarinet)
• John Stanley (trombone)
• Don Anderson (trumpet)
• Eddie Metcalfe (saxophone)
• Dick Morgan (banjo)
• George Lescher (piano)
• Freddy Morgan (banjo and vocals)
• A. Purvis Pullens, a.k.a. Dr. Horatio Q. Birdbath (tuba, bird calls, dog barks)

The band's 1950s personnel included:

• Billy Barty (vocals)
• Gil Bernal (sax and vocals)
• Mousie Garner (vocals)
• Bernie Jones (sax and vocals)
• Phil Gray (trombone)
• Jad Paul (banjo)
• Peter James (vocals)
• Marilyn Olson Oliveri (vocals & stand up bass)

The liner notes for at least two RCA compilation albums claimed that the two Morgans were brothers (the 1949 radio shows actually billed them as "Dick and Freddy Morgan"), but this is not true; Freddy's real name was Morgenstern.^[3] Peter James (who was sometimes billed as Bobby Pinkus) and Paul "Mousie" Garner were former members of Ted Healy's vaudeville act and had replaced Moe Howard, Larry Fine and Curly Howard as Healy's "stooges" in the 1930s.

Spike Jones's second wife, singer Helen Grayco, performed in his stage and television shows. Jones had four children: Linda (by his first wife, Patricia), Spike Jr., Leslie Ann and Gina. Spike Jr. is a producer of live events and television broadcasts. Leslie Ann is the Director of Music and Film Scoring at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Marin County.

Record hits

Der Fuehrer's Face

In 1942, a strike by the American Federation of Musicians prevented Jones from making commercial recordings for over two years. He could, however, make records for radio broadcasts. These were released on the Standard Transcriptions label (1941–1946) and have been reissued on a CD compilation called (Not) Your Standard Spike Jones Collection.

Recorded days before the record ban, Jones scored a huge broadcast hit late in 1942 with "Der Fuehrer's Face", a song ridiculing Adolf Hitler that followed every use of the word "Heil" with a derisive razzberry sound, as in the repeated phrase "... Heil, (razzberry), Heil (razzberry), right in Der Fuehrer's face!".

The song was originally written for Walt Disney's 1943 Oscar-winning propaganda cartoon, first titled Donald Duck in Nutzi Land according to the Disney Archives. The success of the record prompted Disney to re-title the animated cartoon after the song.

More satirical songs

	Spike Jones and His City Slickers: Cocktails for Two 16-second sample, as the musical mayhem begins
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink" (reissued in 1949 as "The Clink! Clink! Polka").

The romantic ballad "Cocktails for Two", originally written to evoke an intimate romantic rendezvous, was re-recorded by Spike Jones in 1944 as a raucous, horn-honking, voice-gurgling, hiccuping hymn to the cocktail hour. The Jones version was a huge hit, much to the resentment of composer Sam Coslow.

Other Jones satires followed: "Hawaiian War Chant", "Chloe", "Holiday for Strings", "You Always Hurt the One You Love", "My Old Flame", referring to Peter Lorre's voice (impersonated on the recording by Paul Frees) and eerie scenes in contemporary movies, and many more.

Ghost Riders

Spike's parody of Vaughn Monroe's "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was performed as if sung by a drunkard and ridiculed Monroe by name in its final stanza:^[4][5]

CHORUS: 'Cause all we hear is "Ghost Riders" sung by Vaughn Monroe.
DRUNK: I can do without his singing.
FRIEND: But I wish I had his dough!

The official American release used an alternate take, minus the dig at Monroe, because Monroe, a popular RCA recording artist and also a major RCA stockholder, demanded it.^[6] The original version was released on the European market in 1949. (A few pressings containing the first ending were mistakenly released on the West Coast and are a prized rarity today.)

All I Want for Christmas

Jones' recording, "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth", with a piping vocal by George Rock, was a number-one hit in 1948. (Dora Bryan recorded a 1963 variation, "All I Want For Christmas is a Beatle".)

Murdering the Classics

Among the series of recordings in the 1940s were humorous takes on the classics such as the adaptation of Liszt's Liebesträume, played at a breakneck pace on unusual instruments. Others followed: Rossini's William Tell Overture was rendered on kitchen implements using a horse race as a backdrop, with one of the "horses" in the "race" likely to have inspired the nickname of the lone SNJ aircraft flown by the US Navy's Blue Angels aerobatic team's shows in the late 1940s, "Beetle Bomb". In live shows Spike would acknowledge the applause with complete solemnity, saying "Thank you, music lovers." A collection of these 12 "homicides" was released by RCA (on its prestigious Red Seal label) in 1971 as Spike Jones Is Murdering the Classics. They include such tours de force as Pal-Yat-Chee (Pagliacci), Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours, Tchaikovsky's None but the Lonely Heart, and Bizet's Carmen, besides the two above.

In December 1945 Spike released his version of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, arranged by Joe "Country" Washburne with lyrics by Foster Carling. An abridged version is also included in the aforementioned album, with a complete version available in Spiked: The Music of Spike Jones.

Radio

After appearing as the house band on The Bob Burns Show, Spike got his own radio show on NBC, The Chase and Sanborn Program, as Edgar Bergen's summer replacement in 1945. Frances Langford was co-host and Groucho Marx was among the guests. The guest list for Jones's 1947-49 CBS program for Coca-Cola (originally The Spotlight Revue, retitled The Spike Jones Show for its final season) included Frankie Laine, Mel Torme, Peter Lorre, Don Ameche and Burl Ives. Frank Sinatra appeared on the show in October 1948, and Lassie in May 1949. Jones's resident "girlsinger" during this period was Dorothy Shay, "The Park Avenue Hillbillie." One of the announcers on Jones's CBS show was the young Mike Wallace. Writers included Eddie Maxwell, Eddie Brandt and Jay Sommers. The final program in the series was broadcast in June 1949.

Spike Jones and His Other Orchestra

The very name of Spike Jones became synonymous with crazy music. While he enjoyed the fame and prosperity, he was annoyed that nobody seemed to see beyond the craziness. Determined to show the world that he was capable of producing legitimate "pretty" music, he formed a second group in 1946. Spike Jones and His Other Orchestra played lush arrangements of dance hits. This alternate group played nightclub engagements and was an artistic success, but the paying public preferred the City Slickers and stayed away. Jones wound up paying some of the band's expenses out of his own pocket. Some of the City Slickers band members appeared and recorded with the Other Orchestra, but most of the Other Orchestra personnel consisted of "serious," accomplished studio musicians from the Los Angeles area.

The one outstanding recording by the Other Orchestra is "Laura," which features a serious first half (played exquisitely by the Other Orchestra) and a manic second half (played hilariously by the City Slickers).

Movies

In 1940, Jones had an uncredited bandleading part in the Dead End Kids film Give Us Wings, appearing on camera for about four seconds.

In 1942 the Jones gang worked on numerous Soundies, musical shorts seen on coin-operated projectors in arcades, malt shops, and taverns. The band appeared on camera under their own name in four of the Soundies, and provided background music for at least 13 others, according to musicologist Mark Cantor.

As the band's fame grew, Hollywood producers hired the Slickers as a specialty act for feature films, including Thank Your Lucky Stars and Variety Girl. Jones was set to team with Abbott and Costello for a 1954 Universal Pictures comedy, but when Lou Costello withdrew for medical reasons, Universal replaced the comedy team with look-alikes Hugh O'Brian and Buddy Hackett, and promoted Jones to the leading role. The finished film, Fireman, Save My Child, is a juvenile comedy that turned out to be Spike Jones's only top-billed theatrical movie.

Television

As a shrewd businessman, Jones saw the potential of television and filmed two half-hour pilot films, Foreign Legion and Wild Bill Hiccup, in the summer of 1950. Veteran comedy director Eddie Cline worked on both, but neither was successful. The band fared much better on live television, where their spontaneous antics and crazy visual gags guaranteed the viewers a good time. Spike usually dressed in a suit with an enormous check pattern and was seen leaping around playing a washboard, cowbells, a suite of klaxons and foghorns, then xylophone, then shooting a pistol. The band starred in variety shows, such as The Colgate Comedy Hour (1951, 1955)^[7] and their All Star Revue (1952) before being given his own slot by NBC, The Spike Jones Show, which aired early in 1954, and Club Oasis on NBC, in the summer of 1958; and by CBS, as The Spike Jones Show, in the summers of 1957, 1960, and 1961. Jones and his City Slickers also appeared on NBC's The Ford Show, Starring Tennessee Ernie Ford in the episode which aired on November 15, 1956.^[8] In 1990, BBC2 screened six compilation shows from these broadcasts; they were subsequently aired on PBS stations.

Later years

The rise of rock-'n'-roll and the decline of big bands hurt Spike Jones' repertoire. The new rock songs were already novelties, and Jones could not decimate them the way he had lampooned "Cocktails for Two" or "Laura." He played rock-'n'-roll for laughs when he presented "for the first time on television, the bottom half of Elvis Presley!" This was the cue for a pair of pants — inhabited by dwarf actor Billy Barty -- to scamper across the stage.^[9]

Jones was always prepared to adapt to changing tastes. In 1950, when America was nostalgically looking back at the 1920s, Jones recorded an album of Charleston arrangements. In 1953 he responded to the growing market for children's records, with tunes aimed directly at kids (like "Socko, the Smallest Snowball"). In 1956 Jones supervised an album of Christmas songs, many of which were performed seriously. In 1957, noting the television success of Lawrence Welk and his dance band, he revamped his own act for television. Gone was the old City Slickers mayhem, replaced by a more straightforward big-band sound, with tongue-in-cheek comic moments. The new band was known as Spike Jones and the Band that Plays for Fun. He also recorded a cover of "Dominique" with Spike Jones' New Band in 1964, a hit by The Singing Nun, in which he not only plays part of the melody on a banjo but melds the melody successfully with "When the Saints Go Marching In!"

The last City Slickers record was the LP Dinner Music for People Who Aren't Very Hungry. The whole field of comedy records changed from musical satires to spoken-word comedy (Tom Lehrer, Bob Newhart, Mort Sahl, Stan Freberg). Spike Jones adapted to this, too; most of his later albums are spoken-word comedy, including the horror-genre sendup Spike Jones in Stereo (1959) and Omnibust (1960). Jones remained topical to the last: his final group, Spike Jones's New Band, recorded four LPs of brassy renditions of pop-folk tunes of the 1960s (including "Washington Square" and "The Ballad of Jed Clampett").

Death

Jones was a lifelong smoker. He was once said to have gotten through the average workday on coffee and cigarettes. Smoking may have contributed to his developing emphysema. His already thin frame deteriorated, to the point where he used an oxygen tank offstage, and onstage he was confined to a seat behind his drum set. He died at the age of 53, and is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California.

Influence

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There is a clear line of influence from the Hoosier Hot Shots, Freddie Fisher and his Schnickelfritzers and the Marx Brothers to Spike Jones — and to Stan Freberg, Gerard Hoffnung, Peter Schickele's P.D.Q. Bach, The Goons, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, and "Weird Al" Yankovic. Billy Barty appeared in Yankovic's film UHF and a video based on the movie.

Syndicated radio personality Dr. Demento regularly features Jones' music on his program of comedy and novelty tracks. Jones is mentioned in The Band's song, "Up on Cripple Creek". (The song's protagonist's paramour states of Jones: "I can't take the way he sings, but I love to hear him talk.") Novelist Thomas Pynchon is an admirer and wrote the liner notes for a 1994 reissue, Spiked! (BMG Catalyst). A scene in the romantic comedy I.Q. shows a man demonstrating the sound of his new stereo to Meg Ryan's character by playing a record of Jones' music.

In 1997, singers Artie Schroeck and Linda November directed a production in Atlantic City entitled "The New City Slickers Present a Tribute to Spike Jones", with a band that attempted to re-create the style and humor of Jones' music.^[10][11]

Discography

• Dinner Music For People Who Aren't Very Hungry (1956)
• Spike Jones in Stereo (1959)
• Omnibust (1960)
• Washington Square (1963)
• Spike Jones New Band (1964)

Popular recordings

• "All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth"
• "Black Bottom"
• "The Blue Danube"
• "Bottom's Up"
• "By the Beautiful Sea"
• "Chloe"
• "Cocktails for Two"
• "Dance of the Hours" (Ponchielli)
• "Der Fuehrer's Face"
• "Down In Jungle Town"
• "Flight of the Bumblebee" (Laughing Record)
• "Hawaiian War Chant"
• "Holiday for Strings"
• "Hotcha Cornia"
• "The Hut-Sut Song"
• "I Want Eddie Fisher For Christmas"
• "I Went to Your Wedding"
• "Mairzy Doats"
• "The Man on the Flying Trapeze"
• "Never Hit Your Grandma With A Shovel"
• "Old MacDonald Had a Farm"
• "Omnibust, (LP Album of spoken-word comedy)"
• "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott (Recognizable as the 'industrial factory' music from cartoons.)
• "The Sailor With The Navy Blue Eyes"
• "The Sheik of Araby"
• "The Sound Effects Man"
• "Spike Jones in Stereo (A Spooktacular in Screaming Sound, LP album)"
• "(Mono version: Spike Jones in Hi-Fi - A Spooktacular in Screaming Sound, LP album)"
• "That Old Black Magic"
• "Pal-Yat-Chee"
• "William Tell Overture"^[12]
• "Yes, We Have No Bananas"
• "You Always Hurt the One You Love"

References

Sources

Notes by Peter Gamble from Clink Clink Another Drink CD by Audio Book & Music Company, ABMMCD 1158.

Further reading

• Corbett, Scott C. (1989) An Illustrated Guide to the Recordings of Spike Jones. Monrovia: Corbett. No ISBN.
• Mirtle, Jack. (1986) Thank You Music Lovers: A Bio-discography of Spike Jones. Westport; Greenwood Press ISBN 0-313-24814-1

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Spike Jones

• Spike Jones at the Internet Movie Database
• Red Hot Jazz
• Allmusic
• Phillywire article with added links