Lindley Armstrong "Spike" Jones (December 14, 1911 – May 1, 1965) was an American musician, bandleader and conductor specializing in spoof arrangements and satire of popular songs and classical music. Ballads receiving the Jones treatment were punctuated with various sound effects, including gunshots, whistles, cowbells, hiccups, burps, sneezes, animal sounds and outlandish and comedic vocals. Jones and his band recorded for RCA Victor under the title Spike Jones and His City Slickers from the early 1940s to the mid-1950s, and they toured the United States and Canada as "The Musical Depreciation Revue".
Early years
Lindley Armstrong Jones was born in Long Beach, California, the son of Ada (Armstrong) and Lindley Murray Jones, a Southern Pacific railroad agent. Young Lindley Jones was given the nickname 'Spike' for being so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike. At the age of 11 he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself; Jones' first band was called Spike Jones and his Five Tacks. A railroad restaurant chef taught him how to use pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments. Jones frequently played in theater pit orchestras. In the 1930s, he joined the Victor Young orchestra and got many offers to appear on radio shows, including Al Jolson's Lifebuoy Program, Burns and Allen, and Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall.
Spike Jones and His City Slickers Jones became bored playing the same music each night with the orchestras. He found other like-minded musicians and they began playing parodies of standard songs for their own entertainment. The musicians wanted their wives to share their enjoyment, so they recorded their weekly performances. One of the recordings made its way into the hands of an RCA Victor executive, who offered the musicians a recording contract. One of the City Slickers' early recordings for the label was a Del Porter arrangement of "Der Fuehrer's Face". The record's success inspired Jones to become the band's leader. He initially thought the popularity the record brought them would fade. However, audiences kept asking for more, so Jones started working on more comic arrangements.
From 1937 to 1942, Jones was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby's first recording of "White Christmas". He was part of a backing band for songwriter Cindy Walker during her early recording career with Decca Records and Standard Transcriptions. Her song "We're Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down" provided the inspiration for the name of Jones's future band.
The City Slickers developed from the Feather Merchants, a band led by vocalist-clarinetist Del Porter, who took a back seat to Jones during the group's embryonic years. They made experimental records for the Cinematone Corporation and performed publicly in Los Angeles, gaining a small following. Original members included vocalist-violinist Carl Grayson, banjoist Perry Botkin, trombonist King Jackson, and pianist Stan Wrightsman.
The band's early records were issued on RCA Victor's budget-priced Bluebird label, but were soon moved to the more-prestigious Victor label. They recorded extensively for the company until 1955. They also starred in various radio programs (1945–1949) and in their own NBC and CBS television shows from 1954 to 1961.
Orchestra members
During the 1940s, prominent band members included: George Rock (trumpet, and vocals from 1944 to 1960) Mickey Katz (clarinet, vocals) Doodles Weaver (vocals – specialized in playing sports commentators and absentminded singers who persistently scrambled their lyrics into malapropisms and digressed into stand-up comedy) Red Ingle (tenor saxophone, clarinet, violin, vocals) Frank Rehak (trombone) Del Porter (clarinet, vocals) Carl Grayson (violin, vocals) Perry Botkin (banjo) Country Washburne (tuba) Luther "Red" Roundtree (banjo) Earl Bennett, a.k.a. Sir Frederick Gas (vocals) Joe Siracusa (drums) Joe Colvin (trombone) Roger Donley (tuba) Dick Gardner (baritone sax, clarinet, violin) Paul Leu (piano) Jack Golly (alto saxophone, clarinet) John Stanley (trombone) Don Anderson (trumpet) Charlotte Tinsley (harp) Eddie Metcalfe (saxophone, clarinet) Dick Morgan (banjo), a.k.a. I. W. Harper Freddy Morgan (banjo, vocals) George Lescher (piano) A. Purvis Pullen, a.k.a. Dr. Horatio Q. Birdbath (bird calls, dog barks) Russ "Candy" Hall (bass, tuba)
The band's 1950s personnel included: Helen Grayco (vocals) Earl Bennett, as Sir Frederick Gas Billy Barty (standing 3' 9", vocals and comedy routines, including impersonations of Liberace) Lock Martin (standing 7', comedy routines) Freddy Morgan (banjo) Peter James (vocals; sometimes billed as Bobby Pinkus) Jad Paul (banjo) Gil Bernal (sax, vocals) Paul "Mousie" Garner (vocals) Bernie Jones (sax, vocals) Phil Gray (trombone) Marilyn Olsen Oliveri (vocals, harp)
The liner notes for at least two RCA compilation albums claimed that the two Morgans were brothers (the 1949 radio shows actually billed them as "Dick and Freddy Morgan"), but this was not true; Freddy's real name was Morgenstern.
Peter James (born Peter James Accardy, sometimes billed as Bobby Pinkus) and Paul "Mousie" Garner were former members of Ted Healy's stage act on Broadway. James joined Healy for a two-year run in the Shubert revue A Night in Spain (1927–1928) where he worked alongside Shemp Howard and Larry Fine. Mousie joined Healy as a replacement stooge in the 1930s, after the original Three Stooges left Healy for movie work.
Spike Jones's second wife, singer Helen Grayco, performed in his stage and television shows.
Record hits "Der Fuehrer's Face" A strike by the American Federation of Musicians in 1942 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 (1941–1946) and have been reissued on a CD compilation called (Not) Your Standard Spike Jones Collection.
Recorded just days before the recording ban, Jones scored a huge broadcast hit late in 1942 with "Der Fuehrer's Face", a song ridiculing Adolf Hitler, which followed every use of the word "Heil" with a derisive raspberry sound, as in the repeated phrase "Heil, (raspberry), Heil (raspberry), right in Der Fuehrer's face!".
More spoof songs
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.
Other Jones spoofs followed: "Hawaiian War Chant", "Chloe", "Holiday for Strings", "You Always Hurt the One You Love", "My Old Flame" and "Laura".
"Ghost Riders" Spike's 1949 parody of Vaughn Monroe's rendition of "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was performed as if sung by a drunkard and ridiculed Monroe by name in its final stanza:Cocktails For Two, Pro-Arte PCD 516,1990, Side 2, Track 5. CHORUS: ...'cause all we hear is "Ghost Riders" sung by Vaughn Monroe. I.W. HARPER: I can do without his singing. SIR FREDERICK GAS: But I wish I had his dough! Vaughn Monroe, a popular RCA Victor recording artist and also a major RCA stockholder, demanded the dig be edited out of the recording.[ Allmusic: The Best of Spike Jones, Volume 2]. The original, unedited version was released by HMV in the European market. (A limited number of unedited RCA Victor 78 rpm pressings were mistakenly distributed on the West Coast and are a prized rarity today.) The original recording with the unedited ending was later issued on a German RCA LP collection and on some CD and audio tape releases.
"Trailer Annie" In the 1940s, Spike also recorded a comedic song titled "Trailer Annie", about a woman who tries to find a job in the United States military.
"All I Want for Christmas" Jones's recording, "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth", with a piping vocal by George Rock, was recorded in 1947, too late for that year's shopping season; the record was withheld and was finally released in the fall of 1948, becoming a number-one hit. (Dora Bryan recorded a 1963 variation, "All I Want For Christmas is a Beatle".)
Murdering the Classics
Among the recordings Spike Jones and his City Slickers made in the 1940s were many humorous takes on classical music such as the adaptation of Liszt's Liebestraum No. 3, played at a breakneck pace on unusual instruments. Others followed: Rossini's William Tell Overture was rendered on kitchen implements using a horse race as a backdrop, with one of the "horses" in the "race" likely to have inspired the nickname of the lone chrome yellow-painted SNJ aircraft flown by the U.S. Navy's Blue Angels aerobatic team's shows in the late 1940s, "Beetle Bomb". In live shows Spike would acknowledge the applause with complete solemnity, saying "Thank you, music lovers." In 1971, RCA issued an LP (on the prestigious Red Seal label) compilation of twelve of these "homicides", titled Spike Jones Is Murdering the Classics. The album includes such tours de force as Pal-Yat-Chee (featuring the hillbilly satirists Homer and Jethro), Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours, Tchaikovsky's None but the Lonely Heart, Strauss's Blue Danube waltz, and Bizet's Carmen.
In 1944, RCA Victor released "Spike Jones presents for the Kiddies" version of Tchaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, in three 10-inch, 78 rpm records, P-143, arrangement credited to Joe "Country" Washburne with lyrics by Foster Carling. The set was also issued by RCA Victor on three 7-inch vinyl 45 rpm records in 1949 as WP-143 and on one 45 rpm "extended play" record, EPA-143 in 1952. An abridged and re-sequenced version of the recording is also included in the aforementioned RCA Red Seal 'classics' album, with the complete original version available on the CD collection Spiked: The Music of Spike Jones.
Radio After appearing as the house band on The Bob Burns Show, Spike got his own radio show on NBC, The Chase and Sanborn Program, as Edgar Bergen's summer replacement in 1945. Frances Langford was co-host and Groucho Marx was among the guests. The guest list for Jones's 1947–49 CBS program for Coca-Cola (originally The Spotlight Revue, retitled The Spike Jones Show for its final season) included Frankie Laine, Mel Torme, Peter Lorre, Frank Sinatra appeared on the show twice (October 1, 1948, and December 3, 1948) and Lassie in May 1949. Jones's resident "girl singer" during this period was Dorothy Shay, "The Park Avenue Hillbillie." One of the announcers on Jones's CBS show was the young Mike Wallace. Writers included Eddie Maxwell, Eddie Brandt, and Jay Sommers. The final program in the series was broadcast on June 25, 1949, with Don Ameche.
Spike Jones and His Other Orchestra While Jones enjoyed the fame and prosperity, he was annoyed that nobody seemed to see beyond the craziness. Determined to show the world that he was capable of producing legitimate "pretty" music, he formed a second group in 1946. Spike Jones and His Other Orchestra played lush arrangements of dance hits. This alternate group played nightclub engagements and was an artistic success, but the paying public preferred the City Slickers and stayed away. Jones wound up paying some of the band's expenses out of his own pocket. Some of the City Slickers band members appeared and recorded with the Other Orchestra, but most of the Other Orchestra personnel consisted of "serious", accomplished studio musicians from the Los Angeles area.
The one outstanding recording by the Other Orchestra is "Laura", which features a serious first half (played exquisitely by the Other Orchestra) and a manic second half (played for laughs by the City Slickers).