Should mention that Byrnes played the lecherous dance show host in Grease. That's how most post-boomers recognize him. And he was wonderfully funny in the role.
《Grease is the quintessential symbol of youth. 💖 Every time I watch it, I'm transported back to that era's swing and restlessness. The dance programme host's performance was spot on.
When the top 40 radio format was being formulated, the creators determined that the average pop radio listener was a 13 year old girl, she was "stupid" and got poor grades in school besides, and she mostly wanted to hear love songs. She would not change the station to seek out her favorite song, but she would change the station to get away from commercials or a song she didn't like.
I thought that a refreshingly realistic take, looking at the consumers you actually have.
Those radio programmers were well aware that a teenybopper's money is just as green as the most sophisticated opera lover's. From the point of view of the music business, a dollar earned from "Kookie Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb" is worth exactly the same as a dollar earned from a timeless Joan Sutherland tour de force.
This is the nature, and, if you like, the fundamental flaw of capitalism. The value of a dollar is ever always only exactly one dollar. It does not matter whether it is AI schlock or a transcendent artistic statement, whether the artist is a good person or not, whether it comes from teaching inner city kids to read, or selling poison to those same kids. A dollar is the same as every other dollar.
A favorite leftie slogan of the Cold War years. Put you on the side of Free Trade, yet not opening one to charges of Commie doctrinaire. Also, without opening one up to being swallowed within market-driven US cultural sensibilities in evaluating 'new product' (and sub-culture).
It also can open the door to introducing folks to deep yuks and practical applications via LP's like the Various (Non-Singer Celebrity Vocal\Situ 'stylists') such as Central Casting circa 1950's cop templates like Jack Webb who carry well-orchestrated (even R&B 'hip' arranged tracks in the 1960's on Various Artist collections that became multi-generational TV gag tracks beloved on late-night FM free-form radio:
ripped from Various Artists collected LP that yielded a Volume 2 when such TV celebrities and A&R selections created demand for such yuks at the expense of TV celebrities: posted by Jarrett McCall
1 / 15
...Also a la truly underground surreptitious prank phone-callers and entertainment\political activist situational hoaxers a la this pair that took it to big & small screen film success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men
Hmm, I knew of Avakian from his jazz background, but not this. Would he have said, "Dude looks like a jazz horn player; can't blow, so what?" (Remember Jack Klugman on Twilight Zone?)
What's sad about GA's attitude is that by this time (1958), Buddy Holly had demonstrated rock's potential by crossbreeding R&B with country and succeeding while looking nerdy. Then the Everly Bros put tight harmonies into rock and we're halfway to The Beatles.
Although this novelty song is silly, at least it isn't vulgar. Eventually there were well-written/produced novelty tunes; the mini Pop Opera "Leader of the Pack" comes to mind.
I was in elementary school then and really wanted hair like Fabian. All I ended up with was a standard flat top. I keep telling my grandsons that if they really want to be counter culture, forget the green or purple hair (nobody cares) but go flat top, and maybe the whole NASA engineer look.
Unparalleled and Unmatched: Flying High is a textbook example of comedy! That rap slang segment remains an eternal classic. Don't forget, Koo Chi was a pioneer of his era.
This was where my mind went. ‘Oh yes, officer, I speak jive’. Second, I’m reminded of Stan Freeburg, ‘high school ooh ooh’. Which unfortunately for us jazz cats, was not an eventual description of reality.
On whether Kookie was the first influencer or not, it depends what you mean by an influencer. A true influencer acts as a thought leader for his or her followers. Kookie wasn't that. He was a manufactured Elvis who came three years after the King hit it big. I remember him as a cosplay rock star, and the screaming girls as cosplay fans. Everything in the '50s had that party-time silliness to it.
Later, The Beatles inspired their own cosplay imitators, The Monkees. I tried out for that show and was the first runner up for Peter Tork's part. As much I wanted to act and write songs for A BIG SHOW, I'm now glad I didn't make the cut. I'd still be straining to sing "Last Train to Clarksville," a song actually written by Boyce and Hart, with my shaky 78-year-old voice.
I put "Kookie" as a safe made for TV James Dean. As TV always, it was 5 years late for the whole early 50's Brando/Dean rebel movement. Face it he wasn't an influencer, he was a clown and foil for the straight characters. As to his "music", it wasn't the first time a producer saw a way to make a buck off a valuable product. The remarkable thing is that somebody was able to make a saleable record.
I once received a birthday card with a message on the front that said, "It's not who you are, it's just what you wear that counts." On the inside, it read, "Because, who really cares who you are, anyway." It still seems like all you need to do is roll up your collar on the back of your neck, and everything is cool, Daddy-o.
Speaking of musical connections: I remember "Kookie" from 77 Sunset Strip, which starred (among others) Efrem Zimabalist, Jr. -- the son of the famous classical violinist.
So great! I was 14 and watched American Bandstand every day after school when doing my homework. I can't believe that I found Kookie's antics normal. They look so bizarre to me now.
I disagree that Shatner's Rocket Man is a "novelty song". In this instance singing is irrelevant because he completely transforms the song into another form. It is an example of his incredible skill as an actor and an orator and shows off every single bit of his Shakespearean training. It's always been an incredibly sad song, but he brings a pathos to it that is unparalleled, and also a bit of humour.
Today's stars that cain't zing a note (too many've em) are quite an'nuther thing as there's no sense of camp-schtick like their clearly wuz with Kookie.
Novelty numbers were a thing then an' thru the 70's (mah time)....But today? nix.
Today is fakery palmed off as the real thing--but Byrnes wuz just a funny footnote... an' the trends he set were not due ta his vocal chops (or lack thereof) but more b/c of the vain hipster "character" that became near archetypal...
Callin' ta mind Mae West (in her later years--yep, as a young gal she DID have a fab voice! but losin' it--totally!--didn't stop her from recordin' lol)
I eat this stuff up so if I may opine... Shatner & Nimoy (bless 'em both) fall WELL inta the camp smorgasbord tradition--it's more've a "why the heck not"/enjoy the kosher ham tradition... tongue well in cheek, side of WRY & mustard...
Nobuddy in their right mind would compare this ta the likes of J-Lo tryin' ta "zing zerious"...nah
imho George Avakian wuz "fallin' with style" (a Buzz Lightyear Move ta mask non-flight)--an' his chutzpah paid off--humorously!--but nobuddy took the poseur seriously I'm assumin'.
It's an old Broadway/Music Hall tradition to "talk sing"--witness Rex Harrison! (and fils, later on).
Whereas I find today's fakery DEE-TEST-Able, I find Kookie an' other novelty hits hilarious cuz we're all in on da yolk!
AYAND..... check out Irwin Chusid's "Songs in the Key of Z" outsider moosick series & the awesome April Winchell's personal ("poisonal") collection of doozies (sadly her website's defunKt but here's a playlist...not all Golden Throats but all gems of a "sort!"):
I know I’m showing my age, but the name of that show was “77 Sunset strip.”
Followed by two finger snaps
That's right, Daddy-O.
It must’ve caught on. Cf: Dobie Gillis and the Addams family.
They were supposed to be private dicks, as I recall, but they seemed to spend more time tooling around in their convertible looking for girls.
There’s always been some quotient of talent in every generation, but talentlessness has never been encumbered by limits.
Should mention that Byrnes played the lecherous dance show host in Grease. That's how most post-boomers recognize him. And he was wonderfully funny in the role.
《Grease is the quintessential symbol of youth. 💖 Every time I watch it, I'm transported back to that era's swing and restlessness. The dance programme host's performance was spot on.
It worked.
When the top 40 radio format was being formulated, the creators determined that the average pop radio listener was a 13 year old girl, she was "stupid" and got poor grades in school besides, and she mostly wanted to hear love songs. She would not change the station to seek out her favorite song, but she would change the station to get away from commercials or a song she didn't like.
I thought that a refreshingly realistic take, looking at the consumers you actually have.
Those radio programmers were well aware that a teenybopper's money is just as green as the most sophisticated opera lover's. From the point of view of the music business, a dollar earned from "Kookie Kookie, Lend Me Your Comb" is worth exactly the same as a dollar earned from a timeless Joan Sutherland tour de force.
This is the nature, and, if you like, the fundamental flaw of capitalism. The value of a dollar is ever always only exactly one dollar. It does not matter whether it is AI schlock or a transcendent artistic statement, whether the artist is a good person or not, whether it comes from teaching inner city kids to read, or selling poison to those same kids. A dollar is the same as every other dollar.
This 13 year-old girl sounds a lot like Frank Zappa's description of Debbie, in his autobiography.
what would a system look like that had "empty dollars" and "whole dollars" like empty calories and whole nutrition? something worth considering...
I don't honestly know, perhaps like a fish might have a hard time explaining water.
that's certainly the problem with getting there... but can it be imagined? dream it to do it :)
like... if you're saving the whole dollars vs the empty dollars, maybe the empty dollars lose value over time while the whole dollars gain?
i'm no economist, just enjoy thinking about these things...
that's certainly the problem with getting there... but can it be imagined? dream it to do it :)
like... if you're saving the whole dollars vs the empty dollars, maybe the empty dollars lose value over time while the whole dollars gain?
i'm no economist, just enjoy thinking about these things...
This reminds me of the phrase that goes, "He knows the price of everything, and the value of nothing."
A favorite leftie slogan of the Cold War years. Put you on the side of Free Trade, yet not opening one to charges of Commie doctrinaire. Also, without opening one up to being swallowed within market-driven US cultural sensibilities in evaluating 'new product' (and sub-culture).
It also can open the door to introducing folks to deep yuks and practical applications via LP's like the Various (Non-Singer Celebrity Vocal\Situ 'stylists') such as Central Casting circa 1950's cop templates like Jack Webb who carry well-orchestrated (even R&B 'hip' arranged tracks in the 1960's on Various Artist collections that became multi-generational TV gag tracks beloved on late-night FM free-form radio:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jo522Wb40bU&list=PL17Gx3vFMOc7zbDWCp7sGRVde4vVlZZZl
"Golden Throats"
ripped from Various Artists collected LP that yielded a Volume 2 when such TV celebrities and A&R selections created demand for such yuks at the expense of TV celebrities: posted by Jarrett McCall
1 / 15
...Also a la truly underground surreptitious prank phone-callers and entertainment\political activist situational hoaxers a la this pair that took it to big & small screen film success: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Yes_Men
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gE8BK2RFFTA
"The Yes Men Fix The World (2010)--Part 7/7"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7J1t-F7DA
"The Yes Men Fix The World (2010)--Part 1/7"
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Hmm, I knew of Avakian from his jazz background, but not this. Would he have said, "Dude looks like a jazz horn player; can't blow, so what?" (Remember Jack Klugman on Twilight Zone?)
What's sad about GA's attitude is that by this time (1958), Buddy Holly had demonstrated rock's potential by crossbreeding R&B with country and succeeding while looking nerdy. Then the Everly Bros put tight harmonies into rock and we're halfway to The Beatles.
Although this novelty song is silly, at least it isn't vulgar. Eventually there were well-written/produced novelty tunes; the mini Pop Opera "Leader of the Pack" comes to mind.
Phase II was Frankie Avalon, Fabian, Annette etc. Thank God the Beatles showed up.
We used to call them "Cute guys with great haircuts."
I was in elementary school then and really wanted hair like Fabian. All I ended up with was a standard flat top. I keep telling my grandsons that if they really want to be counter culture, forget the green or purple hair (nobody cares) but go flat top, and maybe the whole NASA engineer look.
I know. Flat tops weren't exactly Bill Haley's flip curls, but, with some Vasaline, they were pretty cool.
For whatever reason, the Edd "Kookie" Byrnes clip reminded me of the "speaking jive" scene in the movie Airplane. Similar cadence and intonation.
Too bad we didn't have subtitles back then. June Cleaver would make a credible mom to Edd Byrnes.
Unparalleled and Unmatched: Flying High is a textbook example of comedy! That rap slang segment remains an eternal classic. Don't forget, Koo Chi was a pioneer of his era.
This was where my mind went. ‘Oh yes, officer, I speak jive’. Second, I’m reminded of Stan Freeburg, ‘high school ooh ooh’. Which unfortunately for us jazz cats, was not an eventual description of reality.
There really should have been an Edd Byrnes "Twilight Zone" episode.
On whether Kookie was the first influencer or not, it depends what you mean by an influencer. A true influencer acts as a thought leader for his or her followers. Kookie wasn't that. He was a manufactured Elvis who came three years after the King hit it big. I remember him as a cosplay rock star, and the screaming girls as cosplay fans. Everything in the '50s had that party-time silliness to it.
Later, The Beatles inspired their own cosplay imitators, The Monkees. I tried out for that show and was the first runner up for Peter Tork's part. As much I wanted to act and write songs for A BIG SHOW, I'm now glad I didn't make the cut. I'd still be straining to sing "Last Train to Clarksville," a song actually written by Boyce and Hart, with my shaky 78-year-old voice.
I put "Kookie" as a safe made for TV James Dean. As TV always, it was 5 years late for the whole early 50's Brando/Dean rebel movement. Face it he wasn't an influencer, he was a clown and foil for the straight characters. As to his "music", it wasn't the first time a producer saw a way to make a buck off a valuable product. The remarkable thing is that somebody was able to make a saleable record.
Jack
I once received a birthday card with a message on the front that said, "It's not who you are, it's just what you wear that counts." On the inside, it read, "Because, who really cares who you are, anyway." It still seems like all you need to do is roll up your collar on the back of your neck, and everything is cool, Daddy-o.
signed "the culture that made you" :)
Wow, i really like that card. Tis so true
Speaking of musical connections: I remember "Kookie" from 77 Sunset Strip, which starred (among others) Efrem Zimabalist, Jr. -- the son of the famous classical violinist.
So great! I was 14 and watched American Bandstand every day after school when doing my homework. I can't believe that I found Kookie's antics normal. They look so bizarre to me now.
He was the ginchiest...
I disagree that Shatner's Rocket Man is a "novelty song". In this instance singing is irrelevant because he completely transforms the song into another form. It is an example of his incredible skill as an actor and an orator and shows off every single bit of his Shakespearean training. It's always been an incredibly sad song, but he brings a pathos to it that is unparalleled, and also a bit of humour.
It is a compelling INTERPRETATION and what is IN that cigarette?
Bubblegum music is what stuff like this was called. Another term was filler.
Today's stars that cain't zing a note (too many've em) are quite an'nuther thing as there's no sense of camp-schtick like their clearly wuz with Kookie.
Novelty numbers were a thing then an' thru the 70's (mah time)....But today? nix.
Today is fakery palmed off as the real thing--but Byrnes wuz just a funny footnote... an' the trends he set were not due ta his vocal chops (or lack thereof) but more b/c of the vain hipster "character" that became near archetypal...
Callin' ta mind Louis Nye aka Sonny Drysdale on the Beverly Hillbillies (Teenage Beatnik) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xPh6fxIxBiM
All the celebs that made vanity albums...an' talked thru 'em!
Servin' some cheese (Opa!) from Telly Savales:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNVvlLAvswg
Jack Palance! (he's NEARLY as good at Shatner!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oySYk2F3g3w&list=RDoySYk2F3g3w&start_radio=1
CREEPY Peter Wyngarde
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jk_0vGJIUa4&list=RDxoBVuxuBdIQ&index=5
Callin' ta mind Mae West (in her later years--yep, as a young gal she DID have a fab voice! but losin' it--totally!--didn't stop her from recordin' lol)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8QL_hCuK2u4
Tell me Byrnes' warn't in the same hoot-wurthy tradition of THIS?!
Joe E. Ross! Ooh! Ooooh!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3y5lOlcHHhM
I eat this stuff up so if I may opine... Shatner & Nimoy (bless 'em both) fall WELL inta the camp smorgasbord tradition--it's more've a "why the heck not"/enjoy the kosher ham tradition... tongue well in cheek, side of WRY & mustard...
Nobuddy in their right mind would compare this ta the likes of J-Lo tryin' ta "zing zerious"...nah
imho George Avakian wuz "fallin' with style" (a Buzz Lightyear Move ta mask non-flight)--an' his chutzpah paid off--humorously!--but nobuddy took the poseur seriously I'm assumin'.
It's an old Broadway/Music Hall tradition to "talk sing"--witness Rex Harrison! (and fils, later on).
Whereas I find today's fakery DEE-TEST-Able, I find Kookie an' other novelty hits hilarious cuz we're all in on da yolk!
Diggit: Rhino records put out 4 volumes of such "Golden Throats"...!
got'em! (all!)
AYAND..... check out Irwin Chusid's "Songs in the Key of Z" outsider moosick series & the awesome April Winchell's personal ("poisonal") collection of doozies (sadly her website's defunKt but here's a playlist...not all Golden Throats but all gems of a "sort!"):
https://roseleo.wordpress.com/2019/09/08/mp3s-my-top-10-all-time-favorite-tracks-subject-to-change-without-notice-april-winchell-foley/
Wow! Thanks especially for those links to April's gems -- will incorporate them into my radio show "Puget Soundz" on KBFG-FM [where I do lots of 'wild covers'] and all shows archived like at: https://www.mixcloud.com/bruce-greeley/kbfgs-puget-soundz-wild-covers-12/
yer mighty welcome! I used ta dj m'self 'fore havin' kids but I'll check out yer show! cheers & happy turkeys (all kinds!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GnrcRS-ljZ8&list=RDGnrcRS-ljZ8&start_radio=1
Gobble Gobble Hey (have a good 'un!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b7Pgvbq2-Ec
So who is the kookie of today?