The Most Mishige

It’s been a year! Let’s see if I do a Hallowe’en post this year… for now you’ll have to settle for Jewish novelty songs.

Mickey Katz (June 15, 1909 Cleveland, Ohio - April 30, 1985 Los Angeles, California), was an American comedian and musician who specialized in Jewish humour. This humour most famously translated into a series of LPs of popular songs reinterpreted with a distinctly Yiddish flavour. Most songs were lyrically transformed into what is, for a goy like myself, a largely incomprehensible mix of Yiddish-English.

Like Spike Jones and his City Slickers, Katz capitalised on popular songs, giving them a Yiddish twist. Despite some opposition, and the fact that most of the lyrics were incomprehensible to the majority of Americans, Katz proved incredibly successful during his career.

With albums such as Mish Mosh and The Most Mishige, Katz carved out a niche in Jewish musical comedy that allowed performers such as Allan Sherman to follow.

Mickey Katz - Sixteen Tons

Here’s The Most Mishige, featuring such hits as The Barber of Schlemiel, Knish Doctor, and K Nock Around The Clock. The whole album features, alongside the inventive and humorous lyrics a tight klezmer band that’s able to span musical styles and break into Jewish interludes whenever is needed. Katz’s voice throughout is simply wonderful, and has some serious chops on the clarinet.

Mickey Katz Trivia Time: He was the father of Academy and Tony Award winning actor Joel Grey (famous for playing the Emcee in Cabaret) and grandfather of Dirty Dancing actress Jennifer Grey.

Download HERE (53 mb)

Bonus video: Here’s a clip from Thoroughly Modern Millie with Mickey Katz and his Orchestra backing up Julie Andrews at the most choreographed wedding I’ve ever seen. Katz can be seen on clarinet, when he’s not being blocked by Julie Andrews’ hat or by the remarkably acrobatic Rabbi.

The Addams Family

Vic Mizzy (January 9, 1916 – October 17, 2009) was an American composer for television and movies whose best-known works are the themes to the 1960s television sitcoms Green Acres and The Addams Family. He also penned top-20 songs from the 1930s to 1940s.

This is an album of incidental music from the original 1960s black and white American sitcom The Addams Family, based on the characters in Charles Addams' New Yorker cartoons. Mizzy did an admirable job on the music; it’s in keeping with the music of American TV shows of the time – think “I Dream of Jeannie” or “Bewitched” - just with added harpsichord. With a mix of blues, jazz, lounge and latin rhythms, it at times verges on Esquivel-levels of bachelor pad atmosphere, which is brilliant. I have happily put this on in the background whilst entertaining, and have drawn compliments and questions on my music choice. If you weren’t to listen to the theme tune, this would stand up on its own as a great lounge album; full of jazz flute, drum set, laid back sax and mixed chorus scatting. “Uncle Fester's Blues” could be the b-side to Quincy Jones’ Soul Bossa Nova; “On Shroud No. 9” sounds like it should have Ann-Margret purring over the top of it; and you get the theme tune twice, with and without vocals!

Download HERE (59mb)

The Postelfonia's BmG 223

Here is a special guest post from poet, knitter, gadabout: Señor Eddus.

Eddus curates a delightful new blog, entitled "Oh, Poetry!", about, well, poetry. Check it out!

Imagine it's the sixties and you have a new job in the National Post and Telephony Company. Also that you are Dutch. On your first lunch break you wander the halls, a little lost. But wait, there's singing coming from somewhere. You follow the sound of the female choir singing, as you get closer you hear the accompanying clumpy guitar and austere piano. You find them in an empty room, at practice. You have discovered The Postelfonia's.

They sing with the talent you'd expect from a hobbyist choir of Dutchwomen. They might be a little flat (individually and as a group) they might not quite remember which bit of the song comes next, or even how many times they're singing certain refrains, but gawd damn it, they had fun recording this.

There's such pleasure to be had from just singing, without the concern of rhythm or pitch. This is the pleasure these women are indulging in. The sound they make is not unpleasant, not at all. It's charming because of it's earnest amateurishness. Just listen to the faltering ending to "Puppet on a String", it's a terrible, but that's okay. They're a collection of well-meaning aunties, whose mistakes you can always forgive.

The whole album is a delight, but it's their medley of Mary Poppins songs that really cemented my love for The Postelfonias. It might just be because their Dutch accents are very distinct on this song, especially when trying to sound like chimney sweeps from London. The women go on to tackle "Congratulations", "Let the Sunshine In" and "Hava Naguila" with the reliability one expects from the postal service. Apart from a bit of clapping here and there, they play it very safe.

There's a lot of odd music on the internet. Most is unsettling, disturbing or confusing. But this odd music is reassuring, charming, homely. It's simplicity comforts me. I listen to this album and imagine a group of Dutch women having fun one lunchtime a week and it warms my heart.

Edward, of Oh, Poetry!, for The de Winter Family Album

Download HERE (34MB)

The Mariachi Brass featuring Chet Baker

When one thinks of Chet Baker, one doesn’t immediately think of “Tijuana Brass”. But by 1966 – after years of drug addiction, prison sentences, deportation, and a rather nasty case of having his teeth knocked out – Baker was in need of money. So, as was the norm for hard-up jazz musicians, he cashed in on whatever musical fad was about at the time. In 1966 it happened to be Herb Alpert’s Tijuana sound. I seem to have about five hours of music that is all people cashing in on this craze... not all of it stellar.

Four LPs were made, on which Chet played flugelhorn in order to support his family. The albums were surprisingly successful, considering that the content is often entirely devoid of Latin history. Songs such as “Pennsylvania 6-5000” and “In The Mood” are injected with only the slightest Latin flavour, making these albums delightfully kitsch lounge music. Never released to CD, you might be able to find them in your local charity shop; the covers feature beautiful females (always staring at you) in sultry locations, often sporting a large flower in their hair, or Cordobés hat about their person.

Here is a sampling of these tracks which, whilst they were made to cash in on a fad and make easy money, are still very pleasing and make excellent lounge or mood music. The Mariachi Brass’ version of “Flowers On The Wall” is one of my top played tracks out of my music collection.

Download HERE (35mb)

Arnold Schwarzenegger's Total Body Workout

There’s not much I can really say about this.

It’s a workout mix, with narration and motivation by your workout partner, Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It’s also one of the campest things I’ve ever had on my iTunes, and will sit nicely next to your Arnold Schoenberg collection.

So let’s do push ups to Don’t Stop Believing by Journey!

Warm up time to Gladys Night & The Pips!

Biceps curls to It’s Raining Men!

Work those triceps to Blue Oyster Cult!

I’m not joking.

Download HERE (55mb)

Fred Buscaglione

Fred Buscaglione (23 November 1921 - 3 February 1960) was an Italian singer and actor, popular in the late 50s who cultivated a public image in both his films and songs of a slick (if comical), ruthless gangster whose only weaknesses were whiskey and women. Taking inspiration from hardboiled detective stories and the gangster of New York and Chicago, his racy songs of gangsters and their molls caught the Italian public’s attention and by the late 50s Buscaglione was a national superstar, appearing in television, film, and advertising.

Il Favoloso is essentially a Best Of collection, putting together twenty of his hits from his 1955 debut single Che Bambola (What A Babe!) which sold over a million copies with almost no promotion and catapulted him to fame, to, well, I can’t say “his later recordings”, as he only recorded up to 1959. At the age of 39, in February of 1960, Buscaglione was killed in a car accident when his pink Ford Thunderbird collided with a truck in the early hours of the morning, in front the US Embassy in Rome. This compilation features all his hits, including Teresa non sparare (Theresa, Don't Shoot!), Eri piccola così (You Were This, This Little), Guarda che luna (Look, What A Moon),Love in Portofino, Porfirio Villarosa, Whisky facile (Easy Whiskey) and Che Notte (What A Night!).

The songs are great. This isn’t an album of an actor singing (which is usually a terrible, terrible sign), rather it is an album of a singer who also acted. Buscaglione attended the Giuseppe Verdi Conservatory in Turin as a child, and as a teen he performed in night clubs, singing jazz, and was proficient in both the double bass and violin. During World War II he was incarcerated in an American internment camp, but soon found work in an allied radio station’s orchestra. It was perhaps this experience that allowed Buscaglione to experiment with American musical styles in a country that had banned most foreign music.

The American influence in his work is incredibly apparent in the tracks on this compilation. Buscaglione’s whole style was modelled on Chicago and New York gangsters, albeit with a comical touch, so the songs are replete with the hallmarks of American jazz and swing. Brushed snare, trumpets and sax all feature heavily, complimenting Buscaglione’s singing, which ranges from gravely spoken work (“Ciao Joe”, “Che Notte”) to songs where he actually displays a pleasing light-baritone (“Guarda Che Luna”). The songs are playful, brilliantly arranged songs about fights, whiskey and dames performed with aplomb by one of Italy’s most popular entertainers of the 1950s

Download HERE (74mb)

Mme. St. Onge

Judging by the subject material, this French-Canadian album by one Mme. St. Onge, may have been cut around 1967. On it are French renditions of popular hits from the time, such as The Beatles’ Help (re-titled “Il”) performed by a woman with no interest in tonality.

I say “woman”… the mysterious Mme. St. Onge appears an elusive character, with a strained falsetto, no other known works, and only one (rather masculine) photograph to her name. Some may posit that it is, in fact, a man doing this. If this is the case then the album has just been lifted from a mere wonder to something fucking amazing.

Evidence however seems to imply that Mme St Onge had a proper singing career in earlier times. Her real name was Francine Laplante, although she also recorded a couple of singles under the name of Maryse Marshall. It is possible that this album was done with the humour intentional to cash in the Mrs. Miller craze (St. Onge is a very common last name in Francophone Canada. Calling somebody Mme St. Onge in Canada would be similar to calling somebody Mrs. Miller in the United States).

Whatever the case regarding the provenance, the songs speak for themselves. Throughout the ten tracks Mme. St. Onge bleats her way through, supported by a competent backing band.

For fans of music to suffer by, this is a must.

Just listen to the first thirty seconds of Prends-moi (Try Me) if you need any convincing. Trust me on this.

01 Il (Help) (2:33)
02 Et maintenant (3:05)
03 C'est le Freddy (2:16)
04 Tant de choses a dire (3:10)
05 Prends-moi (Try Me) (2:53)
06 Demain (3:02)
07 C'est si triste que je voudrais pleurer (I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry) (2:05)
08 Les marionnettes (2:31)
09 La fille d'Ipanema (One Note Samba) (1:29)
10 Chez moi (Call Me) (2:50)

Download HERE(42mb)