The last few days, I've been posting videos featuring Big Daddy, the group I liked that took contemporary songs and rearranged them so they sounded like they were recorded in the fifties. Big Daddy more or less disbanded a few years ago to the disappointment of a lot of fans. But I'm delighted to report that some configuration of the band has resurfaced with their version of the love theme from the movie, Titanic. Here they are, back from the dead for the second time. At least…
I think I linked to this one before, long ago. We continue our hit parade of music by Big Daddy, the group that went to great trouble to make any song from any era sound like it had been recorded in the fifties. In 1992, they did this on a CD of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. This enraged a few Beatles fans who thought it was sacrilegious to do anything to that album besides play it over and over and over and over.
At one point on a concert tour of Europe, they lip-synched the title song on a German TV show. If you worship The Beatles, you might not want to click but I like this. And everyone will enjoy the host's introduction…
Here's a video of a live performance by Big Daddy — live somewhere in Orange County, it says. They took the hit by Foreigner, "I Want to Know What Love Is" and they rearranged and mashed it up with "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens — and look at what they got…
Here's another selection from Big Daddy, the group that took current hits (current at the time they were active) and mashed 'em up with fifties tunes. This is a music video they did of the song "The Land Down Under" when it was big on the charts. Only they didn't do it the way it sounded when it was on the charts…
I was a big fan of a musical group called Big Daddy that had a great gimmick: They'd take contemporary rock songs and rearrange them in fifties style. (They also played very fine replicas of fifties tunes in the fifties style. They could sound like anyone. One member of the band was a white guy who could imitate Little Richard so well, he was once hired to dub some vocals for the singer.) They came up with a little legend about being captured in Laos and held prisoner for years. Here — watch this short promo video…
Okay, you got the premise? Over the next few days here, I'm going to feature a few Big Daddy treasures, some of which I've embedded here before long ago. Here they are doing something quite different to a Barry Manilow tune. I like it better this way, don't you?
Here's a one-minute promo for The Dick Van Dyke Show featuring the four stars out of character. It's so odd hearing Mary Tyler Moore address him as Dick instead of Rob…
This runs an hour so you probably won't want to watch it through to conclusion. But you might enjoy a few minutes of a live TV presentation of one of my favorite plays, June Moon by Ring Lardner and George S. Kaufman. The original production, directed by Mr. Kaufman, debuted on Broadway in October of 1929. It's the story of an idealistic young writer of song lyrics who meets up with reality (and romance) when he goes to New York and its famed Tin Pan Alley.
The play was a modest success and represented a personal high point for Lardner, who was and still is hailed as one of America's great humorous writers. His career was mostly in sports writing and short stories and having a play on Broadway was a long-held dream. He hoped to do more but died in 1933 before that could happen.
This TV version was done on June 2, 1949. The play has been chopped down to an hour but other than that, they don't seem to have done great damage to it and some of the performances are quite good. The first actor you see on your screen is a (then) newcomer named Jack Lemmon. He would go onto bigger and better things…
Thursday night, as described here, my friend Mickey Paraskevas and I went to see the first of four staged readings of Eric Idle's play, What About Dick? On the back of the program book, the following was printed….
The use of photography or recording of any kind is specifically prohibited.
HOWEVER, we invite you to record with your own hand held device the final number, The Dick Anthem, and you will be told when it pull it out and hold it up. Expose it to your friends after the show!
Though we had fabulous seats, we did not do this…because no one ever told the audience when to pull it out and hold it up. But some folks figured it out and did so anyway, including someone up in the balcony who posted this shaky video to YouTube. About halfway through, you'll see a guy in the audience who has a bald spot and is wearing a suede coat, standing and applauding in the front row. That's me and Mickey is on my left. On the stage are Eric Idle, Russell Brand, Billy Connolly, Tim Curry, Eddie Izzard, Jane Leeves, Jim Piddock, Tracey Ullman, Sophie Winkleman and sound effects wizard Tony Palermo. I'm sorry you don't have a good look at the suit Mr. Connolly was wearing but it was something that Spike Jones would have rejected as "too loud"…
By the way: Mickey (also known as Michael) had his sketchbook along. Wherever I go with him, he has a sketchbook or iPad along and he draws what he sees. He did some pencil drawings at the show and has since added in some color and posted them as a Facebook album. I think that link will get you to it.
If it's not already on, turn on the Closed Captioning to see the names of the movies in this haunting montage…
I missed this a few months ago when our funny friend Doug Molitor put it up online. And hey, if Newt's really dropping out, I'd better run it now…
I'm going to post another story about Dick Clark tomorrow or the next day but in the meantime, here's a short clip from one of his Pyramid shows that will show you another side of him. Dick was a very serious guy but every so often…
This one was sent to me by Craig Shemin, a very fine writer who does a lot of work for Muppet projects and I believe he's involved with things the Jim Henson family does to preserve the man's memory and legacy. I highly recommend Craig's new blog which already has some mighty good reading on it with more, I'm sure, to come. And while you're at it, follow him on Twitter. Thanks, Craig.
Justin Mory writes…
Regarding facts the late actor Robert Heyges had reported wrong on his website about the Marx Brothers you wrote that Chico and Groucho never exchanged roles when performing on Broadway. But what I'm wondering is if it's true that Zeppo understudied Groucho's roles and filled-in when need arose? I'm thinking specifically of a scene in the movie version of Animal Crackers that, legend has it, has Zeppo performing as Groucho. Is it in fact Zeppo, and did he ever have occasion to impersonate Chico or Harpo?
When the Marx Brothers were on stage, Zeppo understudied all his brothers. He couldn't play the piano like Chico and he couldn't play the harp like Harpo but he apparently could provide a reasonable facsimile of everything else his three performing brothers did. So if one of them was out, Zeppo went on in his place and a member of the chorus filled in for Zeppo. It is said that after Groucho missed an entire week of one play due to illness, he watched at least one performance with Zeppo from out front and remarked, "Well, it looks like I'm not needed." Whether Zeppo was that good or Groucho was just being nice to his brother is open to speculation.
Regarding this scene in the film of Animal Crackers…
Legend has it that's Zeppo playing Groucho's role in the scene where the lights are dim. Is it? I wouldn't be shocked to find out it was the real thing but I've long assumed that yes, that's Zeppo. The voice is just far enough off Groucho's to make that believable.
A bit less believable is the way it's reported, which is that Groucho was ill one day so Zeppo stepped into the job. That's possible but it is quite a coincidence that Groucho should be out the day they had to film a scene in the dark. We'll probably never know for sure but I suspect Groucho was off in his dressing room reading a book when this was shot. I'm thinking it was just an inside joke to deploy Zeppo in the one scene in the movie where he could have pulled off an undetectable impersonation. If Groucho had been too sick to work that day, they probably would have shut down the company until he was better.
There was however a less arguable example of Groucho impersonation a few years later when the Brothers were working for MGM. They were about to go on the road with a touring show to test some of the comedy scenes in Go West, the next film they were to film. Publicity photos were needed and Groucho was for some reason unavailable…so Irving Brecher, who wrote Go West, climbed into a Groucho suit and posed with Chico and Harpo. Apparently, no one noticed that Groucho had somehow gotten 24 years younger. Too bad Frank Ferrante wasn't around in those days…
It's been way too long since we brought you an episode of The Cheap Show, the world's most appropriately named program. My pal Michael "Mickey" Paraskevas did a mess of these for a local cable channel on the east coast and I think the budget for each was around fourteen dollars. But if you're clever, you can do a lot for fourteen dollars.
To learn more about The Cheap Show, visit its website. That is, after you watch this chilling installment…
I have friends who spend their lives doing this…
P.S. Thanks to Dawna Kaufmann for the link.
Here's a brief chat with the late Arthur Marx, the son of Groucho and a rather successful writer. I knew Arthur a little and liked him. When I was around him, I was semi-afraid to ask him about his father because I figured, probably correctly, that too many people did that. So we talked about his life as a champion tennis player and later about his work in television and on the stage. I probably could have asked him questions like these but I didn't.
The person asking him these questions is Skip E. Lowe, who's kind of a legendary Hollywood figure. He was a child star and entertainer but he's probably best known for his long-running cable access TV show on which he chats with just about everyone in show business at one time or another. It is said that Martin Short's Jiminy Glick character got his interviewing style and maybe his voice from Mr. Lowe. Here's Skip E. talking with Arthur…