Novelty

  • Yesterday’s Ding-a-Lings

    “It’s one of the crazier quirks of the rock era that ‘My Ding-a-Ling,’ a forgettable rude novelty song, is Chuck Berry’s only number one single.”  The words are from Fred Thompson’s Billboard Book of Number One Hits. I cannot argue with them.  Indeed, it’s hard to know what’s more embarrassing — the silly song itself or the fact that it achieved a mark of success that eluded such classics as “Johnny B. Goode” and “Roll Over Beethoven.”
     

    Another irony is that, although Berry was credited as the songwriter, that distinction properly belongs to someone else.  Have a listen to the original 1952 version by Dave Bartholomew.
     

    Bartholomew is best remembered as the man who discovered Fats Domino and co-wrote many of his hits.  This Christmas Eve he will celebrate his 98th birthday.  (Some sources give an earlier date of birth that would make him 100).
     
    Recently, I was reminded of Chuck Berry’s dubious achievement when reminiscing about the music I was listening to in the early ’70’s.  Personally, I never had much interest in ding-a-lings.  But as a twelve-year-old, the fact that the song below could be heard on the the local “black” radio station surprised and delighted me.
     
    The singer of this vaginal riposte is listed as

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  • Edgar Leslie and the Jazz Age Gender Benders

    At twenty-two, he made his songwriting debut with “I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” (the subject of our last post).  Eighteen years later,  Edgar Leslie wrote a novelty song on an equally surprising topic, this time with the aid of a rollicking  score by James V. Monaco. It was so successful that over half a dozen versions were released in 1926 and 1927.  Listen here to one of them:

     
     
    I first encountered this ditty a half-century later on the Dr. Demento radio program. That was an era with its own gender controversies — the heyday of David Bowie and Alice Cooper.  It was not too far removed from a time when even shoulder-length hair on men was viewed as a threat to the natural order. But Leslie’s song suggested that our grandparents’ generation had itself been ridiculed for being androgynous. That came as a revelation to me.
     

    The Roaring Twenties were a period of social experimentation and rebellion.  Women took up smoking, bobbed their hair, and adopted “mannish” styles.  Cross-dressing was gist for humorous silent films and publicity photos.  And in what became known as the Pansy Craze, female impersonators were popular on the New York nightclub scene.   The 1930’s saw a retrenchment:  ironically, while Prohibition ended and politics swung left, Hollywood was constrained by a puritanical motion pictures code and most of the the “pansies” were driven from the stage.  Leslie probably intended his song as little more than light entertainment. Yet he captured something of the spirit of the age before the fall.

     
     
    Among his more intriguing lyrics are the following:
     
                       Since the Prince of Wales in ladies’ dresses was seen,
                       What does he intend to be, the King or the Queen?
     
    The Prince of Wales refers to the man who was then heir to the British throne — the future King Edward VIII.  Was he really seen wearing dresses?  In some online versions of the lyrics, the word “kilts” appears next to dresses in brackets.  It is true that the Prince was photographed in a kilt, perhaps in an effort to appeal to his future Scottish subjects, but that’s probably not what Leslie had in mind.  In October 1925, the Prince had entertained sailors aboard the H.M.S. Repulse by appearing in drag as a “red-haired vamp” in a farce entitled “The Bathroom Door.” The incident was covered in both the American and British press and reportedly embarrassed the royal family.  The Prince may also have been a target, not only as a fashion-conscious celebrity who had recently visited the United States, but because of rumors about his private life.  Those rumors persisted to the time of his coronation in 1936, when a song was released entitled, “The King is a Queen at Heart.”   You may be surprised by

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  • Tough Guy Levi and the Jokey Jewish Cowboy Song Tradition

    The September 1908 Edison Phonograph Monthly is out.  Let’s see what’s listed for sale. Hey, this looks interesting:   “A dandy new cowboy song with Western effects galore.  Among them — the tom tom, cowboy chorus, cowboy and Indian yells, hoof beats, etc.” The ad also says that  the vocalist “sings this number with the spirit and fire that the unusual words and music call for — so plainly too that not a word is lost, even in the yiddish dialect portion.”   Let’s have a listen:
     

    “I’m a Yiddish Cowboy” was performed by Edward Meeker (who had also sung the first recorded version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame”).   The composers were Al Piantadosi and Halsey Mohr.  Of primary interest, however, is the overall theme as reflected in the lyrics of Edgar Leslie.  What was funny about Jewish cowboys?  And what about this one was viewed as Jewish in the first place?  His Yiddish vocabulary appears to be limited to a single word — “oi” — and, while he insists on sending for a rabbi to preside at his wedding, the bride is Native American.   Perhaps the key is his status as an upstart — brashly courting a “blue blood [sic] Indian maiden” and crassly refusing the offer of a peace pipe in favor of cigarettes.  What chutzpah!  Yet as a manly creature of the frontier, he appeared positioned to counter some negative stereotypes. 
     
    That promise was squandered in a follow-up song  in which our protagonist, Tough Guy Levi, makes a guest appearance.  Al Piantadosi again supplied the score, but this time the words were by Jeff T. Branen.  As far as I can tell, no recording has survived, but the cover for the sheet music shows a caricature of a man with a black beard and huge nasal appendage in an Indian headdress.  The lyrics state in part:  
     
              Cohen got tired of the simple life
              And turned his pawnshop over to his wife….
               [O]whoopska, owhoopska
               Big Chief Dynamite, oi, oi,
               I’m a tough Jew-Indian boy,
              Who’s afraid of the western life?
              What care I for the cowboy’s knife?
              Tough Guy Levi and his bunch,
              I will eat them for my lunch….
     
    Spoiler alert — he’s Big Chief Dynamite because he blows up Tough Guy Levi in the second stanza.
     
    Another specimen from the sheet music collections is almost as offensive.  The chorus of a song from 1907 went:

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