I'm the Angel in the Christmas Play - A Christmas Music Countdown
“Poured the goldfish bowl into daddy's hat
Then I painted stripes down the family cat
Broke two teeth only yesterday
I'm the angel in the Christmas play!"
There's Spike Jones, the filmmaker. There’s Spike Jones, the football star. And then there was Spike Jones, the mayhem, bad boy musician of the Forties and Fifties.
According to Wikipedia, Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones was a popular musician and bandleader in the Forties and Fifties specializing in performing satirical arrangements of popular songs. Jones would pepper romantic ballads and classical works with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and comical vocals. His band recorded under the title Spike Jones and his City Slickers and toured the United States and Canada under the title The Musical Depreciation Revue.
His father was a Southern Pacific railroad agent. Spike was so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike, thus his nickname. At the age of 11, he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself. A railroad restaurant chef taught him how to use pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments.
Spike frequently played in theater pit orchestras. In the 1930s, he joined the Victor Young Orchestra. Later, he got many offers to appear on radio shows, including Al Jolson's Lifebuoy Program, Burns and Allen, and Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall.
From 1937 to 1942, he was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby's first recording of White Christmas. Spike Jones was part of a Cindy Walker’s back-up band. Her song “We're Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down” provided the inspiration for the name of Jones’ future band, the City Slickers.
The City Slickers evolved out of the Feather Merchants, a band led by vocalist-clarinetist Del Porter, who took a back seat to Jones during the group’s early years of the group. The band signed a recording contract with RCA Victor in 1941 and recorded extensively for the company until 1955. They also starred in various radio programs (1945–1949) and television shows (1954–61) on both NBC and CBS.
In 1942, a strike by the American Federation of Musicians prevented Jones from making commercial recordings for over two years. He could, however, make records for radio broadcasts. These were released on the Standard Transcriptions label (1941–46) and have been reissued on a CD compilation called (Not) Your Standard Spike Jones Collection.
Source: Wikipedia
Today, people go nuts even they even hear the word “Nazi,” much less listen to parodies of the group and their leader. But Spike Jones specialized nuttiness and loved to satirize naziness. Modern, and politically timid listeners would be shocked by some of his songs. But they were popular with his World War II audiences.
*Recorded days before the record ban, Jones scored a huge broadcast hit late in 1942 with “Der Fuehrer's Face,” a song ridiculing Adolf Hitler. Every use of the word “Heil” was followed by with a derisive razzberry sound.
The song was originally written for Walt Disney's 1943 Oscar-winning propaganda cartoon, first titled Donald Duck in Nutzi Land, according to the Disney Archives. The success of the record prompted Disney to re-title the animated cartoon after the song.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's “Clink! Clink! Another Drink” (reissued in 1949 as “The Clink! Clink! Polka”).
The romantic ballad “Cocktails for Two,” originally written to evoke an intimate romantic rendezvous, was re-recorded by Spike Jones in 1944 as a raucous, horn-honking, voice-gurgling, hiccuping hymn to the cocktail hour. The Jones version was a huge hit, much to the resentment of composer Sam Coslow (I’ll bet!). Other Jones satires followed: “Hawaiian War Chant,” “Chloe,” “Holiday for Strings,” “You Always Hurt the One You Love,” “My Old Flame,” (referring to Peter Lorre's voice - impersonated on the recording by Paul Frees - and eerie scenes in contemporary movies) and many more.
Jones's recording, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” with a piping vocal by George Rock, was a number-one hit in 1948. (Dora Bryan recorded a 1963 variation, "All I Want For Christmas is a Beatle".) * Source: Wikipedia
He was said to be disturbed that he wasn’t taken seriously as a classical musician, and he did produced albums with note-perfect versions of classical music and ballads. Still, on the romantic ballad, Laura, he couldn’t resist making the first half a serious song, and then switching tracks to his trade-mark comedy music, complete with gunshots and screams.
Jones was a lifelong smoker. He was once said to have gotten through the average workday on coffee and cigarettes. Smoking may have contributed to his developing emphysema. His already thin frame deteriorated, to the point where he used an oxygen tank offstage, and onstage he was confined to a seat behind his drum set. He died at the age of 53, and is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Calif.
There’s no particular history to The Angel in the Christmas Play. Like its cousin, “I’m Getting Nuttin’ for Christmas,” it features a bad kid getting ready to play an angel in the Christmas play, whose parents are in for a few surprises.
What’s great about Jones’ music is that it’s already recorded. You can laugh away (if you have a sense of humor – or a kid like this one) because it’s considered nostalgia. Spike Jones certainly knew how to put the “Merry” in “Merry Christmas” (along with lisping kids, horn honks, bells, and whistles.)
Then I painted stripes down the family cat
Broke two teeth only yesterday
I'm the angel in the Christmas play!"
There's Spike Jones, the filmmaker. There’s Spike Jones, the football star. And then there was Spike Jones, the mayhem, bad boy musician of the Forties and Fifties.
According to Wikipedia, Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones was a popular musician and bandleader in the Forties and Fifties specializing in performing satirical arrangements of popular songs. Jones would pepper romantic ballads and classical works with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, and comical vocals. His band recorded under the title Spike Jones and his City Slickers and toured the United States and Canada under the title The Musical Depreciation Revue.
His father was a Southern Pacific railroad agent. Spike was so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike, thus his nickname. At the age of 11, he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself. A railroad restaurant chef taught him how to use pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments.
Spike frequently played in theater pit orchestras. In the 1930s, he joined the Victor Young Orchestra. Later, he got many offers to appear on radio shows, including Al Jolson's Lifebuoy Program, Burns and Allen, and Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall.
From 1937 to 1942, he was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby's first recording of White Christmas. Spike Jones was part of a Cindy Walker’s back-up band. Her song “We're Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down” provided the inspiration for the name of Jones’ future band, the City Slickers.
The City Slickers evolved out of the Feather Merchants, a band led by vocalist-clarinetist Del Porter, who took a back seat to Jones during the group’s early years of the group. The band signed a recording contract with RCA Victor in 1941 and recorded extensively for the company until 1955. They also starred in various radio programs (1945–1949) and television shows (1954–61) on both NBC and CBS.
In 1942, a strike by the American Federation of Musicians prevented Jones from making commercial recordings for over two years. He could, however, make records for radio broadcasts. These were released on the Standard Transcriptions label (1941–46) and have been reissued on a CD compilation called (Not) Your Standard Spike Jones Collection.
Source: Wikipedia
Today, people go nuts even they even hear the word “Nazi,” much less listen to parodies of the group and their leader. But Spike Jones specialized nuttiness and loved to satirize naziness. Modern, and politically timid listeners would be shocked by some of his songs. But they were popular with his World War II audiences.
*Recorded days before the record ban, Jones scored a huge broadcast hit late in 1942 with “Der Fuehrer's Face,” a song ridiculing Adolf Hitler. Every use of the word “Heil” was followed by with a derisive razzberry sound.
The song was originally written for Walt Disney's 1943 Oscar-winning propaganda cartoon, first titled Donald Duck in Nutzi Land, according to the Disney Archives. The success of the record prompted Disney to re-title the animated cartoon after the song.
Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's “Clink! Clink! Another Drink” (reissued in 1949 as “The Clink! Clink! Polka”).
The romantic ballad “Cocktails for Two,” originally written to evoke an intimate romantic rendezvous, was re-recorded by Spike Jones in 1944 as a raucous, horn-honking, voice-gurgling, hiccuping hymn to the cocktail hour. The Jones version was a huge hit, much to the resentment of composer Sam Coslow (I’ll bet!). Other Jones satires followed: “Hawaiian War Chant,” “Chloe,” “Holiday for Strings,” “You Always Hurt the One You Love,” “My Old Flame,” (referring to Peter Lorre's voice - impersonated on the recording by Paul Frees - and eerie scenes in contemporary movies) and many more.
Jones's recording, “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth,” with a piping vocal by George Rock, was a number-one hit in 1948. (Dora Bryan recorded a 1963 variation, "All I Want For Christmas is a Beatle".) * Source: Wikipedia
He was said to be disturbed that he wasn’t taken seriously as a classical musician, and he did produced albums with note-perfect versions of classical music and ballads. Still, on the romantic ballad, Laura, he couldn’t resist making the first half a serious song, and then switching tracks to his trade-mark comedy music, complete with gunshots and screams.
Jones was a lifelong smoker. He was once said to have gotten through the average workday on coffee and cigarettes. Smoking may have contributed to his developing emphysema. His already thin frame deteriorated, to the point where he used an oxygen tank offstage, and onstage he was confined to a seat behind his drum set. He died at the age of 53, and is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, Calif.
There’s no particular history to The Angel in the Christmas Play. Like its cousin, “I’m Getting Nuttin’ for Christmas,” it features a bad kid getting ready to play an angel in the Christmas play, whose parents are in for a few surprises.
What’s great about Jones’ music is that it’s already recorded. You can laugh away (if you have a sense of humor – or a kid like this one) because it’s considered nostalgia. Spike Jones certainly knew how to put the “Merry” in “Merry Christmas” (along with lisping kids, horn honks, bells, and whistles.)
posted by Belle | 12:52 PM
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