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Blue Birds

<center>Bluebirds - Spike Jones
 "Hiccups that will live forever"
 Sleeve contents
<img SRC="jpics/bb-14.jpg" ALT="Spike" NOSAVE height=210 width=136>
Who was it said that achievement is best judged by the standards of the
unattainable?
 Well, these guys set a standard all right.
 Jack Mirtle
<img SRC="jpics/bb-1.jpg" ALT="Victor and Bluebird" NOSAVE height=143 width=187>
 This Victor leaflet carried the announcement
 of the Slickers' first 78 rpm.</center>

THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES
When the eight Founding Fathers set up for their first recording on Victor?s Bluebird label, only a slight hint was given of the surreal heights to which the mind of Lindley Armstrong Jones would attain. In the opening grooves of Red Wing, the cowbell cadenza that had been part of the original penciling was scrapped and stitched onto another, later selection, while the War-Dance of the Hot-Foot Indians was heard throughout Slicker territory, cutely established a Monogram-Western movie atmosphere. A two-dollar Klaxon ("With the authentic jitney sound") provided by Lockie?s, a wood ratchet, bulb-horn and other gizmos were manipulated in stop-timebreaks. This innocuous
Dixieland cake-walk was not released in Britain until Summer 1947: thrust onto unsuspecting record-buying fans, who sustained more than somewhat of a high-wire fall after a diet of extravagances likethe madly-arranged Liebestraum and Danube. Fortunately the curse was renewed with the massive sales soon after of the half-crazedLove in Bloom.
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-2.jpg" ALT="Ten nights in a bar-room" NOSAVE height=146 width=151>
 A mining town woodcut:
 on of the inspiration for the flip side.</center>

BATTLE OF THE BELCH
Behind Those Swinging Doors is demure in a subtile way. Theold
Slicker legend has it that trombonick Jimmy Thomasson was hired toperform
a single E-flat eructation on Take One of this gold-rush cautionaryballad:
in the event RCA Victor propriety demanded assorted hiccups onTake Two.
We present here both hallowed items. (Aficionados wellknow that
these burps and hics do not compare with the gross omprovisationsin the
first unpaid "Boneyard" demos cut several months before at a studioadjacent
to the Hollywood Cemetery.)
<center>(February, 1945 - "His Master's Voice" Record Supplement)
 <img SRC="jpics/bb-4.jpg" ALT="Spike" NOSAVE height=128 width=135>
 Spike Jones and his City Slckers entertained an
 audience of 3,000 members of the Forces at the
 Queensbury Club. Here he is with an 'instrument'
 designed by himself.</center>

By now, the Band?s standard procedure of introducing each waxing with an apt and well-known snatch of folk-song which Spike Jones ran off on his
tuned cowbells, was now firmly established. Cindy Walker?s composition, Barstool Cowboy from Old Barstow gets of with a rousing ensemble, "where the deer and the antilope play." (cf. HQ CD02). "Shoot the likkerto me, John-Boy," intros The Covered Wagon Rolled Right Along (itwas the backing of the HMV Red Wing referred to above and was as such an equal disappointment) but it has an exuberant charm with great Bubber-Miley trumpet from Bruce Hudson on his only Slicker session. The rideout comes over hot and strong, as nice as Mother makes it.
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-3.jpg" ALT="Rarest of the Bluebirds" NOSAVE height=308 width=319>
 The rarest of the Bluebirds:
 once available at 35c, it is now
 regarded as ready legal tender.</center>

The Wild, Wild Wimmin is a magnum opus of the Original "High-Hat Tragedian of Song," Ted Lewis, King of Corn in his own time. (Willie Spicer receives no label credit for his Collidophone break: neither he nor it had been yet invented.) Don Anderson replaces Hudson on trumpet and Lou Bring bows in briefly after piano-man Stan Wrightsman bows out. Del Porter confided later that he thought Stan "didn?t seem to like playing our king of music very much."
Spike spins his drums prominently (dig that twenty-inch crash cymbal) in Foster Carling?s Song of the Souse, The Clink, Clink Polka, asit
is sometimes labelled. Mel Blanc, an Oregon pal of Del?s, takes time off
from a Looney Tune to prvide the magisterial portrait of a Lush Extraordinary as he hiccups his unsteady way through a price-list of jitters, ginters, ork-orks, katzenjammers and screaming meemies, all courtesy of "Don Birnam" and guy Lombardo.
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-5.jpg" ALT="The Band" NOSAVE height=222 width=292>
 The band in a formal shot while filming their second movie "Meet the People."
 Note Carl Hoefle's hurdy-gurdy.</center>

WHEN MINNIE WAS NINE YEARS OLD SHE GOTS AN OPTION ON A DEEP CHICKEN
 Wolfgang Bumkhaus, 1925
Listen up to the item that Spike Jones collectors have been waiting half-a-century for: the rare and precious (cracked) eleven-inch test pressing of Beautiful Eggs. The jewel of Scott Corbett?s fine collection, this monophonic miracle plays as good as new and alone is worth the price of the CD. It also gives the llie to the Vaultkeep?s motto: "When RCA Victor loses a master, it?s stays lost." Pack Up Your Troubles is a twin of the Standard Transcription track but good for the gang tosing along to,
and included here at the behest of rabid completists. A theme from Aida (10% paid to the ghost of Verdi), segues into Siam, a relic of the P?tang P?toon P?tang Dynasty, composed by Del Porter for his Feather Merchants Band, King Jackson contributes a drowsy monologue reminiscent of Beethoven?s "Tired" Symphony. Buy Harlequin?s CD01 and hear how the treatment got wilder in the ensuing years and especially on that V-disc.
<center>
<img SRC="jpics/bb-6.jpg" ALT="Jones, Grayson, Morgan and Ingle." NOSAVE height=285 width=231>
 A bunch of the boys were a-whooping it up:
 Jones, Grayson, Morgan and Ingle.</center>

MUSIC BY DE VOL
A jeux d'esprit by youthful Frank de Vol and Jerry Bowne provides meat for the raucous and over-recorded Little Bo-Peep, giving a rowdy indication if how far the boys were prepared to go at that time: Frank Stern achieves the seemingly impossible feat of executing a trombone Fonk on a sousaphone. Willie Spicer, barely hatched but fully-grown and looking years younger, solos sensationally on that most difficult of all instruments, the Collidophone, and Spike's conclusive swipe at his Slingerland tambourine tips the Richter Scale at 8.6.
Swinging half-choruses on both takes from King Jackson's low-flying trombone lift Josephine out of a crunchy rut as the Band switches from Stone-Age Waltz to Eight-in-a-Bar and from Boogie to Barrelhouse.
According to Del Porter, the composer, there was once upon a time a Texan by the name of O'Donnell running for Governor whose catch-phrase, "Pass the Biscuits," became the inspiration for the song, sung here by Del Porter the vocalist, and later made into a Walter Lantz Swing Symphony Cartoon. Del Porter the clarinettist takes a brief break. Perry Botkin shines on banjo and teeth.
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-7.jpg" ALT="Rehearsing at CBS" NOSAVE height=212 width=314>
 That old Canuck Jack Mirtle scooped everybody by locating this action shot
 of the Band rehearsing in a very solemn and workmanlike manner:
 (Earnest) Ingle on clarinet, Morgan at banjo, a companionpiece
to the
 above picture, shot at CBS.</center>

With time thinning out before Petrillo's deadline, our eight desperadoes cut the final six/seven Bluebirds, commencing with the serenade to a Muscovite Maiden: a Molotov Cocktail played at seventy-eight revolutions per minute in wooden roubles from intro to coda. The Song of the Vodka Boatmen stimulates the smoothest and slipperiest Fonk ever committed to wax, and while Del Porter hollers "Send it home" midway, the takes climaxes with the moistand unforgettable genius of Frank Leithner in two featured Sneezes unequalled since the reign of the Pharoahs. Hotcha proved to be the most requested number throughout
the Slickers' European tour in 1944.
Del Porter wrote the arrangement on the keyboard of his girlfriend's piano, but never received full credit for a chart that turned the Disney tune into a jillion-and-a-half seller and 100,000 sheet music sales by May 1943. Porter revealed that the good people of RCA Victor "kicked like the devil" over the Bronx Cheer, but eventually relented: Del also spoke warmly of Grayson's "masterful" vocalising. According to the Heinz B. Wong Slickerkunstarchiv, the Reich-Chancellor was heard to remark that though he had enjoyed the toe-tapping selection he would have preferred it without the razzberry.
(Remember you read it here first.)
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-9.jpg" ALT="Spike" NOSAVE height=244 width=220>
 Boss-man at the Console, having just switched from
 "King Cotton Brass" to "Santa Fe Silver Moon"
 - the Steinway of washboards.</center>

That well-known drummer's prop, the Anvillaphone, made up from two short lengths of brass piping mounted on a wooden block and struck with a mallet, combines with auto-horn and bell-plate in a comical chase chorus that further enlives "Oh, By Jingo!" Red Roundtree and Country Washburn, who have just replaced Botkin and Stern, are also featured in brief spots.
The Standard Transcription of the Sheik of Araby on Harlequin HQ CD01 can be distinguished from our track here by playing both Compact Discs simultaniously (variant 2.5 seconds) but the real clincher is that on this track Carl Grayson is singing the Valentino chorus through his mosquito-net.
With world fame a mere gunshot away, the Slickers conclude their last Bluebird session with I Wanna Go Back to West Virginia: this relaxed and poignant flip-side to Der Face catches perfectly the 1942 mood with its railway bell, portable locomotive and "here's to Old Man Klaxon, may his name forever stand."
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-8.jpg" ALT="Der Fuehrer's Face" NOSAVE height=301 width=231>
 The song-sheet that almost sold more
 than the record world-wide.</center>

Even if you don't have myopic ear-drums, brace yourself for the hiccup on this belch-less take of Swinging Doors. Will H. Hays and his office won their battle. When the gang filmed Chloe for Paramount, Red Ingle (as Simon Legree) was forced to substitute "You Old Witch"for "YOU BAT." Fifty years later it's still hard to believe. Hi Neighbour, vocalised by popular singer and composer of the day, Jack Owens, kicks off with Perry Botkin's facile fingers executing a plectrumrole worthy of Mike Pingatore, and delves into the classics for a brief exerpt from Frederick Delius' On Hearing the First Coo-Coo in Spring.
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-10.jpg" ALT="Cindy Walker" NOSAVE height=292 width=251>
 The gorgeous Cindy Walker: "Greatest living writer of
Country Music."
 She provided the Band with its enduring moniker.</center>

As virtual unknowns, the Band accompanies beautiful songstress and Country and Western composer Cindy Walker in two more of her compositions, playing righteous Dixieland all the way. That Big Palooka, Bob Burns, is serenaded by Cindy as King Jackson solos. The homespun, black-hills, grass-root, cracker-barrel philosopher-humourist was known as a virtuosoof the giant kazoo that provided the nickname of one of the U.S. Artillery's most formidable weapons.
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-12.jpg" ALT="The Nilsson Twins" NOSAVE height=285 width=216>
 Spike Jones serenades the Nilsson Twins on
 the eve of their tour of USAF bases.</center>

You Can't Say "No" to a Soldier. "Those poor Nilsson girls," said
Del Porter, "they wanted so bad to be the singers." In contrast of the song-title, they also had to be chaperoned around the Army Bases. The charm of their teen-age close-harmony touches the heart. Applaud trombonist John Stanley, swinging beyond the call of duty: his lip-trill is a thing of beauty and a joy forever.
<center><img SRC="jpics/bb-11.jpg" ALT="Big Palooka, Red Roundtree and Spike" NOSAVE height=254 width=305>
 The Big Palooka himself (left) and Spike put the finger
on
 Red Roundtree. Backstage at the Lifebuoy Show.</center>

Hawaiian War Chant, this original Wacky Wakakians fossil from a 1945 Victor session rounds off the programme. (Evedently shelved on the assumption that more precision and careful honing would result in a Gold Disc. It did.) However, as a piece of evolutionary evidence of the Descent of Man Friday it's got a lot to recommend it: Drummer Giggie Royse spiels in fluent Gibberish and Carl Grayson mimics Fish-Mimic Richard Haydn to perfection in this gentle joshing of Another Boring Fitzpatrick Short. Their mission completed, the Moonstruck Malahinis leave the studio hand over hand.
And so we say farewell...


VO-DOH-DOH-DE-OH-DOH
<center>
<img SRC="jpics/bb-13.jpg" ALT="Hotcha Cornia" NOSAVE height=234 width=305>
 Hotcha Cornia in action: the "Gower Gulch" sequencefrom
 Thank Your Lucky Starts. At stage left: Phoebe, goat-vocaliste.
 Note: this is the original text and all the photographs from the sleeve, no changes done by me.
 
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 It's here for reference and informational purposes only.</center>