A Dictionary of the Avant-Gardes by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Taylor & Francis Ltd

Jones, Spike

(14 December 1911–1 May 1965; b. Lindley Armstrong J.)

One of the greatest comic musical performers ever, a contemporary of CHUCK JONES, both born around Los Angeles within a single year apart, Spike Jones gathered in the early 1940s a group of musicians whom he called the City Slickers, who were willing to perform his extravagant comedy. Their first greater success came with a 78 rpm. recording of “Das Fuhrer’s Face” (1942) in which the semblance of a Teutonic oom-pah band regularly screams “Sieg Hiel” followed by the sound of flatulence to various lyrics deprecating Adolf Hitler. (The real Führer reportedly so hated this record that he tried to destroy every copy he could.)

Over the next dozen years the City Slickers recorded prolifically and toured widely with songs and comic arrangements that were both popular and musically sophisticated. Often they began with a song or theme already popular: “Holiday for Strings,” “Hawaiian War Chant,” “You Always Hurt the One You Love.” More memorable now probably are the group’s take-offs from more classical music, such as Franz Liszt’s Liebestgräume, which they played as fast as they could with unusual instruments; likewise Gioacchino Rossini’s William Tell Overture, played with kitchen implements. As true classics, these musical (re)arrangements remain hilarious decades later.

‘Tis said that Spike’s imagination got lost in the late 1950s wake of early rock music, which he reportedly judged already ridiculous (and thus unavailable for parody), and then the decline in his personal health exacerbated by heavy cigarette smoking. Visibly hyper-nervous, he ostentatiously performed with chewing gum as a kind of SIGNATURE movement. He died too young.

Among the later major musical comedians reflecting his influence count Raymond Scott (1908–94), Allan Sherman (1924–73), Gerard Hoffnung (1925–59, the sole Brit here), P.D.Q. BACH, FRANK ZAPPA, and “Weird Al” Yankovic (1959).

Someday an appreciative book should be written about the two Jones boys, Chuck and Spike, perhaps along with FRANK ZAPPA, as epitomizing a rich strain of Angelino art.

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