[78-L] RCA Victor humour

[DAVID BURNHAM]

Like beauty, "funny" is in the mind of the beholder.  Many people would call Bob Hope one of the finest comedians but he often left me cold, although as a kid I was in stitches watching "Calamity Jane", (or was it "Son of Paleface"?  I've forgotten).  Johnny Carson's humour lost some of it's effect because he seemed to want to make it clear that he was reading cue cards - obviously looking down below the camera during his routines.  David Letterman, on the other hand, often brings his cue card operator into the routine which adds to the humour.  To get back to RCA and records, I always enjoyed the Allan Sherman "Peter and the Commisar" record but more for the "End of a Symphony" than the title track, (if you want a spoof on "Peter and the Wolf", nothing can beat Peter Schickle's "Sneaky Pete and the Wolf"), but, unfortunately, when the Sherman record was mastered onto CD, (and I hope it wasn't one of my ARSC friends who did it), the applause is
 painfully and speaker damagingly loud compared to the program content.


db



>________________________________
> From: David Lennick <dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>To: 78-L Mail List <78-l at klickitat.78online.com> 
>Sent: Monday, October 28, 2013 10:01:29 PM
>Subject: Re: [78-L] Mr. Magoo
> 
>
>On 10/28/2013 8:35 PM, Michael Biel wrote:
>> dl wrote:
>>>> RCA's sense of humor was sometimes very hard to detect.
>>
>> Guckenheimer Sour Kraut Band is not funny?????  Homer and Jethro is not
>> funny?????   "Sing Along with Jonathan and Darlene Edwards" is not
>> funny?????  Bob Arbogast "The Chickens Are In the Chimes" is not
>> funny????   Wingy's "Stop the War the Cats are Killing Themselves" is
>> not funny????  "Am I Dreaming or Are All My Favorite Bands Playing?" is
>> not funny?????  And check out "Bob and Ray On A Platter" instead of
>> "Throw a Stereo Spectacular".
>>
>> Mike Biel  mbiel at mbiel.com
>
>Jonathan and Darlene was funny, as well as their only album for RCA. 
>Guckenheimer was funny. The Chickens was Sacha Burland and Mason Adams, not Bob 
>Arbogast, and was only a single. Wingy and All My Faves were 20 years earlier, 
>ditto Spike Jones. Bob and Ray On a Platter was forced, not nearly as good as 
>their on air stuff, much better than Stereo Spectacular 'tis true. Homer and 
>Jethro, no contest. But they were still fighting a losing battle against Verve, 
>Capitol and Coral, later United Artists. Nobody's mentioned Spike Jones but 
>he'd rarely been funny on Victor after 1950, notable exception being the one 
>side he made with Homer and jethro which RCA SAT ON for 3 or 4 years.
>
>dl
>>
>> -------- Original Message --------
>> Subject: Re: [78-L] Mr. Magoo
>> From: David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>> Date: Mon, October 28, 2013 7:17 pm
>> To: 78-L Mail List<78-l at klickitat.78online.com>
>>
>> http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ESE0RGxpqf8
>>
>> Never heard this one before!
>>
>> As for Magoo, the music by Dennis Farnon is funnier than the sketch, and
>> it's
>> not top drawer either. CJBC in Toronto used a couple of portions of it
>> as the
>> opening and closing for their daily dose of Bob and Ray. (I did the same
>> years
>> later on a daily comedy bit on another station.)
>>
>> dl
>>
>> On 10/28/2013 6:34 PM, David Breneman wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> From: David Lennick<dlennick at sympatico.ca>
>>>
>>>
>>>> An album that's nowhere near as funny as you wish it would be, as I recall.
>>>> Like the Bob and Ray Stereo Spectacular, or Lord Buckley's Hipsters
>>>> Flipsters,
>>>> or Allan Sherman's Peter. RCA's sense of humor was sometimes very hard
>>>> to
>>>> detect. (Defend 'em all you want, but I have never laughed at any of those
>>>> albums.)
>>>
>>> Re Magoo in Hi-Fi -
>>>
>>> I have a very nice copy of it, which I bought because I always thought I
>>> loved *everything* Jim Backus did (with the exception of Gilligan's Island).
>>> It's pretty unimaginative stuff. Magoo is building a Hi-Fi. He reads
>>> that he needs woofers and tweeters, so naturally he goes out and gets some
>>> dogs and birds. The jokes go down hill from there. All this inanity is
>>> commented upon by his doofy nephew Waldo - and that's insipid doofiness,
>>> not comic doofiness.
>>>
>>> Re "Why Don't You go Home for Christmas" -
>>>
>>> It's a monologue by Backus, delivered to his apparently shrewish wife,
>>> emploring her to go spend Christmas with her parents "So *I* can have a
>>> Happy New Year." ("If you had any class, you would go by bus.") You
>>> can almost imagine him in a smoking jacket, hoisting a martini and leaning
>>> against a console stereo, as he begins "Every year, about this time, Old
>>> Jingle-Bells-Ville..." Much more humor in three minutes than the whole
>>> Magoo LP.
>>>
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>>
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