@@rotunda57 Guy died so soon, I'm now at the age he was when he died. He could've accomplished so much more with his talent. If only he wasn't such a heavy smoker. That's a damned addiction.
The bug sprayer ensemble at 6:07 has to be one of the most impressive things I've seen them do. I always thought they were "faking it" and there was an organ or something being played off-screen, but you can clearly see (and hear) Spike hit a wrong note at the very beginning, and he quickly switches the sprayers around to correct it. The coordination among ALL of them to accurately play Tchaikovsky on a bunch of bug sprayers blows my mind lol.
That's what most people fail to understand: to play songs like this, in the middle of the self-created insanity, you had to be one helluva good musician to do it! Not a slouch in the bunch!
Sigourney Weaver’s uncle Doodles Weaver was Spike’s chief sound effects man. It so happens that when “Doodles” was born, his mother thought he was “funny looking” and nicknamed him Doodles. Doodles’ brother was the chief executive of CBS. Later I saw Doodles on the Groucho Marx show, he admitted he “needed a job.” He was the one who did the sound effects of Beetlebaum. (Aka “Beetle bomb”) When I was a child, all us grandchildren would go to her house on Sundays and laugh hysterically at “Love in Bloom”, Beetlbomb, and other standards of the day as interpreted by Spike Jones’ extremely talented musicians. Virginia Simpson Whedon
Sigourney's father was Sylvester "Pat" Weaver who was president of NBC (not CBS) from 1953-1955. Pat was the older brother of Winstead Sheffield "Doodles" Weaver who had an extensive acting and voice resume but killed himself in 1983 over failing health.
When I was about nine years old in the early 50s, my mother bought a striped sports jacket for me. It was sorta loud, but not a screamer. When I wore it to Sunday School, I could not understand why so many older people called me Spike Jones. Now I understand!
Same, I had it explained to me that all the effects were done live but until you see it on video you don't appreciate the sure spectacle and raw talent it took to keep up with Spike Jones and his City Slickers
What you have to admire is that Spike, being the creative mastermind behind it all, always looked as if he was the most bored or irritated person in the room when he performed. His deadpan adds a whole new dimension of humour to the madness of the routine, because you´re aware he is the center of it all
@cathydoyle8804 ppl fir some reason don't get humor like this anymore! I tried telling an old Reagan joke and ppl were like,.....huuunnnhhh,,,??? First they were 'offended, ' that is was Reagan telling the joke, & 2nd, they didn't get it. Omgosh. Gee u have to THINK?? and who the hell CARES of it was Reagan?! He's DEAD! 🙄
I discovered Spike Jones through his "Nutcracker Suite" when I was five or six years old. My high school orchestra teacher was a huge fan. RIP Larry Maupin.
I was born in the 70's. I am forever grateful that my dad introduced me to Spike Jones when I was 6 years old. Everything rolled into one comedy, musical and acting talent. This is the stuff I appreciate even more at my current age. Thank you for posting.👍🤪😂
That band had a superhuman sense of time. To be able to play accurate 16th notes is not easy. But having each individual 16th note assigned to separate players, played with such accuracy, is other worldly. Every one of those players were genius musicians and comedic performers. I challenge any Symphony orchestra to do that.
I am guessing@@joeday4293 you are thinking about the bells they play at around 6:40 those are cowbells, they just have a handle om them so they easy can pick them up
This is the very definition of a well-oiled machine...my goodness, what incredible talent, I wish this was still a thing! My mouth was open the entire time. I just couldn't believe it.
Loved Spike Jones and His City Slickers since I first discovered "Beetlebaum" on an old 45 record when I was 6 years old. Between him and Ernie Kovacs, television was so much more creative than now.
Memories of my childhood come flooding back, before we had TV our family together huddled around the 'wireless', listening to the Spike Jones show,. Outstanding talent combined so well to resemble chaos. Great fun. And all those sound effects! Wonderful times.
James Peyton : So you are from my parent's generation "The Baby Boomers " who were the first young generation to grow up watching television. Very remarkable life your generation lived.
We got our first TV in 1956. My mom was totally against any type of humorous music. We would watch Liberace, that and later Laurence Welk, but that was about it. The big radio-record player was for classical music only. Only saw Spike a couple of times back then, but loved him instantly.
My dad had I Went to your Wedding on a 78rpm. My poor heart was praying, to hear the groom saying, I do-hooh, I do hoo-hoo-hoo, I doooooo-hooh-hoo-hoo.....
It takes exceptionally brilliant musicians, who truly admire and love the works of Tschaikovsky and other great classical composers, to perform them so comically!
Yeah these guys must go home and listen to every type of music ever recorded. A real musician will appreciate the skill that these guys have and also the sense of humor.
A high energy effort indeed. Spike eventually gave up spoofing popular music after rock-and-roll hit the scene. He said he couldn't satirize such music because it satirized itself. He may have been right.
@@Paladin1873 So you are from my parent's generation The Baby Boomers and your parents are from my grandparent's generation called " THE GREATEST GENERATION " who were the first young generation to hear big band & Spike Jones music during the 1940's decade.
He's good. He has a lot of charm, is loveable, and we all know and love him from Gilligan's island, but he's one of those guys that did a whole career in a single character.
Isn't it nice to know that these old broadcast signals from the Fifties are winging their way through outer space as ambassadors of Earth culture?! "They" probably will love Spike Jones! :)
I grew up listening to Spike and other musicians of that era. It's great to SEE how awesome they were instead of just hearing. Thank you for the videos!
I don't know why but I remember this I was 5 yrs old but a lot of Spike Jones I'm 70 yrs now. This brings back memorizes of me and my family and neighbors (we had the tv) Thank You for sharing this!!!!!
Billy Stokes : Then you are from my parent's generation "The Baby Boomers " who were the first young generation to grow up watching television. Remarkable.
These routines are filled with musical references that few in today's audiences would understand. There was an adage that "you don't chew gum in the orchestra" that was widely known of in popular culture. The upturned trombone bell is no doubt a reference to Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet. The giant portrait of Spike behind the band comes from Paul Whiteman, who used a similarly placed caricature of himself with his band. References to "all girl bands", players opening their case and blowing the dust off their instrument (they never practice...), a harpist knitting during a piece (they count a lot of rests and of course the harp isn't utilized in most pieces of symphonic repertoire..). The tuba which expels bubbles (ala Lawrence Welk), and many more. And Spike calmly presiding over all of the bedlam, chewing away on a stick of Beeman's. Among his sidemen for this NBC TV series: George Rock, trumpet; Mickey Katz, clarinet; Tommy Pederson, trombone. Thanks for the laughs, Spike, we love you.
It's funny how much which just seems irreverent today was actually topical in it's time! (Knew something was up with the gum chewing... thanks for nailing-it-down!) Another was the anti-Soviet barb at the end! This show was done after the start of the Cold War! Stuff he did during WWII praised the Russians as allies! (HEY... Schikelgruber… Why you run so quick??? From the Bolshevik?!?)
Does anyone know of a transmitter that incorporates a macro recording capability of the maneuvers that you were making so that you can replay it in a particular segment at the flip of a switch for the touch of a button that would be very helpful for us robotics this so that when we’re trying to do multiple maneuvers all at the same time we could just flip a switch and you can do these various tasks automatically and therefore doesn’t put such a high demand of skill on the operator
This was on the recommendation list and I'm not sure why but I watched it and I'm glad I did. These people are very talented and creative. I enjoyed the video.
These musicians included some of the top studio players of the era! This stuff was hard!! In fact fact, Spike was a studio player himself! He played on Bing Crosby's White Christmas, and many other hits of the times. I would have Killed to be on this band!!
@@cathydoyle8804That was definitely something. A wonderful bit of calm and relative normalcy in the middle of a sea of zany antics. My personal favorite part, though, was the headless banjo players.
Just came across this video and it sure brought back so,e very old memories! I’m guessing I saw Spike Jones on TV way back in the early 1950s - I was born I. 1947 so I know I was young - but I laughed and laughed! Loved this guy and his band! I had forgotten how crazy they all wore - and those suits!!! Thanks to whomever posed this!
Frank says he was a big fan of Jones and was influenced a lot by Jones. They were doing comedy in with great musicians. The music quality wasn't clowning around.
@@jackempson3044 yeah I believe he was. He probably also like people like professor Tom lehrer or Stan freberg or Shel Silverstein. And also guitar slim. 😁
The music score is pure genius. It is one thing to write it but to keep it that tight? Take the writing and rehearsals there couldn't be many days left in a year to prep a full show.
And they wrote and prepped and rehearsed and performed a new show on TV every week. And being LIVE! there wasn't any pre-recording or dubbing. They did it and the chips fell where they fell.
I have cd's, all 3 editions of a book on Spike, and all dvd's I can find. I CANNOT imagine the talent that was involved with that band. What I would give to be able to play with such a group. His personnel in '48, '49 and 50 were probably the most awesome group of entertainers ever assembled. God Bless Spike Jones; the Wackiest Band in the Land!
+burnleyize I like the story of when Spike and his band jammed with another band - I forget if it was Goodman or a Dorsey - and Spike told his guys to play twice as fast, and the other group couldn't keep up. For all the over-the-top gagging, they were incredibly tight and disciplined. Weird Al Yankovic (influenced by Jones) is similar in his way. When he performs his material live, you can see some super musicians at work, and it's easy to not notice it.
I was watching a Toronto drummer name of Jorn " john" Andersen-son ? The guy is likely one of the top 5 Rock & Roll drummers I've ever witnessed and I've seen them all, I'm 56. There was a guy with a Rush t-shirt on, who of course had to state how much better Neil Peart was and that Andersen didn't have a tenth of the drums Peart has. I told him that I saw Peart with his 4 drum kits around him and the other 20 things as well and Pert only played one kit at a time and during a solo stood up and walked to another set and played that one, just stopping everything and honestly very disappointingly playing on both. Just then Andersen opened up and after the show the guy turned to me and said wow best drum solo ever. My point ? Andersen played so well with so many different left hand solos alone on the snare, but was so great he made it look easy. The very best always make it look so easy. To play and do all these things took master players and athletes all in one. Spike was a master !
Now that's entertainment! Spike's band was filled with guys who could really play their instruments well, but boy could they make a comical mess of the music when it was called for.
For all the chaos, this was a disciplined band. Watch how Spike holds the final note (7:50) until the right moment, then gives the signal and everybody stops together. It was reportedly said of him "He conducted the band with a baton in one hand and a revolver in the other".
Imagine this act in today's hypersensitive environment when Spike fires off a few (blank) rounds during one of his many parody numbers. They'd have him cancelled overnight.
All former radio show orchestra / recording studio session players and former Big Band members. You will never find better musicians able to time and play anything in any key whenever, however. AND belt down a few shots during the breaks...Spike Jones was the drummer during 1938-1940 during NBC's Fibber McGee and Molly show in the Billy Mills Orchestra.
@@musicom67 I did this in high school as we did variety shows and stuff on the local level and I was okay but we had one guy that was one of those that could do anything any instrument he went on to be a professional musician I ended up in radio and he wasn't even the guy that can play two parts on Two Trumpets at one time now that skill was amazing
I remember sitting in my grandmothers tiny living room watching this show. I was about 7-8 and couldn’t take my eyes off the screen. They were amazing musicians and dancers.
Spike was a genius, but so was every single member of his band. They were the absolute GREATEST musicians of their time. Great timing, absolute awesome with their instruments and awesome comedians that make everything look like it's just "silly", but when you look at it carefully, you can see just how perfectly executed every single "silly" move is. You might come close to the genius of comedy music in people like Al Yankovic today, who almost certainly took Spike Jones as a role model.
They all were Brilliant Musicians ,actors and Comedians ,all wrapped up into the Mad Cap mind of Spike Jones ! His movies were hilarious and glad there so much of his insanity & genius on YT !
@@spikejj I played drums for you, when you rehearsed a band , in the canyon, (don't remember the name) doing your dad's music, in the early 70's (I think). I had a great time, thanks.
Neat "blast from the past" with a cameo by Jim Backus to boot! But darn, THOSE SUITS!!! Spike Jones looks like he survived an encounter with a giant waffle iron! Hard to believe this was from 70 years ago!
Many years ago I met a musician who had worked with Spike Jones back in the 1950s. He said only the best musicians could keep up with the manic goings on in the land of the City Slickers.
All in ONE take. Spike Jones was amazingly talented, as was his orchestra. He can even chew gum at the same time, that's incredible focus. And yet if they premiered on America's Got Talent, they'd lose to someone singing Adele covers.
Many Happy Hours spent laughing hilariously with joy thanks to the antics and skits by Spike Jones and company, the many guest appearances of different actors, singers, dancers, and comedians.... Making fun of how super serious we all tend to take ourselves was always and will always be the great levelers when we need to step back and take a break from the seriousness of politics and war... Thanks Spike and Company , for those already gone REST IN PEACE .
The guy that comes out at 4:34 is an amazing physical performer. Hes doing so many things that require strength, flexibility, and energy and makes it seem effortless. I can see the beginnings of break dance moves in a few instances. The whole show is fantastic.
This flim is witness to the level of talent these folks had, great video! The show is fast paced in the same vein as earlier vaudeville acts, as were many other Golden Age television shows. However, they surely would not be appreciated in more modern times, and would have most likely been "Gonged" on the Gong Show!
My granddad played this music. Listened to Spike Jones as a kid.. Frank Zappa has an album called Does Humor Belong in Music? Yes .. it very much does.
My father's mother listened to Spike Jones on the radio in the 50's, so when I was staying there, so did I. It was a large wooden Motorola, as I recall. Huge thing, as tall as I was at seven, dials and buttons and all the radio frequencies being used from short wave up! Great sound from that old piece... She also had 45 RPM records of Spike Jones and likely got sick of me playing them over and over. My mother the Librarian thought he was tasteless. However -- this is the first time I've gotten to see the clothes they wore! OH MY! What wonderful fun they must have had thinking up these suits! And my mother was rights -- tasteless. I still love them! Then again -- I love certain aspects of the Circus and Vaudeville and volunteered to work for the Moisture Festival in Seattle for a number of years. The One-Man-Band has always been a fascination for me.
Imagine doing a show similar to this in Vaudeville before TV five shows a day, six days a week. It's long forgotten now and since it was all LIVE! and just the of its day, which is why so little of the routines of the great Vaudevillians was never preserved - it just wasn't filmed. People just took meticulous timing and precision for granted as nothing out of the ordinary. And Spike Jones put it on steroids. That's how they make it look so easy after working that much in front of an audience, from before the turn of the century (1900) until well into the 1940s (until TV came along on top of movies with sound) ... in a different city every week... By 1952 performers out of that era could do this at this level in their sleep.
papikito It takes a measure of talent to recognize talent when you see it. Today's youth are stuck "rapping" ( low brow, foul mouthed rhyming and bragadoccio (sic) about non-existent sexual prowess and conquests - by people who have to continually insert their street names so as not to forget them, and to fill in their songs in lieu of real lyrics that prove talent). All the highs in the world are no substitute for talent. It would just leave you high- and bored. I see more talent in garbage-can drummers than I do among rappers- who, being misguided, mistake hyper-hype for talent. They mainly thrive due to the reputations of the few rappers who DO demonstrate talent, skill and originality in their works.
@One MercilessMing Well as for myself. I'm only old enough to have remembered Mr. Yankovic. By the time I was born Mr. Jones had already passed on 6 yrs earlier. However, I wish I could have seen him when he was still alive. But, fortunately I can enjoy his remarkable talent on RU-vid videos.
@@martynspeck Cool! I knew she'd been at Branson in the late 90's I think when I was there, but had no idea she was able to enjoy dancing that long. That's truly wonderful!
People in those days did full tours of stage shows. TV was an upstart medium that many thought would not last. The energy you see here was crafted over months and years of being on the road 340 days a year, and doing the same set of gags in every performance. If anything, watching these folks proves the old adage "practice makes perfect." because they make it all look so easy and spontaneous. The only guy I know that could compete with SJ was Ernie Kovacs and his crew.
I used to play with Spike Jones, Jr. in the 70's. Great time. Recorded a spoof of "raindrops falling on my head" by B.J. Thomas. Was played on Dr. Demeto Radio show on Sunday. You had to be on your toes. A lot of breaks and effects.
My great aunt introduced me to Spike Jones and his City Slickers in the 1980's, via one of her cassettes. I was instantly in love with his take on "My Old Flame," "Coctails for Two" and the rest - but I had never "seen" one of his performances. It's awesome to finally get some visuals, to enhance my childhood imaginings!
Awesomely good fun... I remember back in the late 70s driving around with friends and listening to Spike Jones Greatest Hits. We knew all the words and tunes. Ahhhhh good times.
We might have mixed fairly well, cruising and singing Zappa songs from Uncle Meat, 200 Motels, Chunga's Revenge, and Waka Jawaka...... and some of Pink Floyd's "UmmaGumma" LP, and Genesis' "Lamb Lies Down on Broadway" :) Anywhere near the region of Baltimore, Maryland? :) Zappa's hometown, of course :)
The tune that starts at 6:08 (first on flit guns with reeds and then with a vocal "squawker" and finally on tuned bells) is the "Melody in F" by Rubinstein.
It didn't end with the bells, the headless banjo players continued and ended the medley on it. I am wondering what this medley has to do with Tchaikovsky, and the best I can come up with is that Rubenstein was the university professor who taught Tchaikovsky, and was his predecessor as head of the university's music department.
