Saturday, January 03, 2015

Spike Jones: 1941-1948

To make up for my lack of posts during my winter break, here is every single record Spike Jones and His City Slickers released in their first 7 years, 106 songs in all (split up into three sections). More radical than most academic avant-gardists, but a damn sight funnier,  bandleader/ drummer/ occasional vocalist / sound fx maker Jones and his numerous cronies weren't the first novelty orchestra (bands like the Korn Kobblers preceded them by a few years), but they did set the standard that musical anarchists have been striving for ever since.
  
As familiar as Jones is, it's still enlightening to listen to all these songs in chronological order, as one can hear the development of the band from a compact unit specializing in a kind of crazed Dixieland jazz, to an increasingly open-ended project, incorporating more and more musical styles, guest vocalists, and tracks that are more like sketches than songs. And tho I knew about their biggest hit single "Der Fuehrer's Face" (and the infamous "You're A Sap, Mister Jap"), I didn't realize how many WWII songs they did record. In "Leave the Dishes in the Sink, Ma", a song celebrating a sons' return home, the sense of relief that the war is finally ending is palpable.

As Spike used to deadpan after every song in concert: "Thank you, music lovers."


Spike Jones 1941-1948  pt1
1. Barstool Cowboy From Old Barstow
2. Behind Those Swinging Doors
3. Red Wing
4. The Covered Wagon Rolled Right Along
5. don`t talk to me about women  (1941)
6. Yankee doodler  (1942)
7. Pack Up Your Troubles In Your Old Kit Bag
8. Three Little Words
9. When Buddah Smiles
10. You're A Sap Mister Jap
11. Never Hit Your Grandma With A Shovel
12. Horsey, Keep Your Tail Up
13. Camptown Races
14. John Scotter Trot
15. Love For Sale
16. Moanin' Low
17. Cheatin' On The Sandman
18. Come Josephine In My Flying Machine
19. The Sailor With The Navy Blue Eyes
20. Der Fuehrer's Face
21. Hotcha Cornia (Hotcha Chornya-Russian Folk Songs)
22. I Wanna Go Back To West Virginia
23. Water Lou (Drip, Drip, Drip)
24. Clink, Clink, Another Drink
25. Little Bo-Peep Has Lost Her Jeep
026 - Dinah  (1942)
027 - 48 reasons why  (1942)
28. The Sheik Of Araby
29. Oh! By Jingo
30. I'm Going To Write Home
31. Hi Ho My Lady
32. I Know A Story
33. St-St-St-Stella
34. Hotcha Cornia (Hotcha Chornya-Russian Folk Songs)
35. Down In Jungle Town

Spike Jones 1941-1948  pt2
36. As Time Goes By
37. People Will Say We're In Love
38. G.I. Haircut
039 - hitch old dobbin to the shay again  (1943)
40. It Never Rains In Sunny California
41. Wang Wang Blues
42. My Little Girl
43. The Sound Effects Man
44. Ragtime Cowboy Joe
45. The Vamp
46. He Broke My Heart In Three Places
47. Besame Mucho
48. I'm Goin' Back To Where I Came From
49. There's A Fly On My Music
50. Row, Row, Row
51. I Wanna A Gal Just Like The Gal That Married Dear Old Dad
52. Jingle Bells
53. Cocktails For Two
054 - they go wild, simply wild about me  (1944)
55. And The Great Big Saw Came Nearer And Nearer
056 - paddlin` madeline home  (1944)
057 - oh! how she lied  (1944)
58. Red Grow The Roses
59. Jamboree Jones
60. Whittle Out A Whistle
61. Casey Jones
62. At Last I'm In First With You
63. Down By The O-Hi-O
64. Holiday For Strings
65. Cocktails For Two
66. Leave The Dishes In The Sink, Ma
67. Serenade To A Jerk
68. Drip, Drip, Drip (Sloppy Lagoon)
69. Chloe
70. The Blue Danube
71. Black Bottom
72. Toot Toot Tootsie, Goodbye

Spike Jones 1941-1948  pt3
73. MacNamara's Band
74. Siam
75. Liebestraume
76. You'll Always Hurt The One You Love
77. That Old Black Magic
78. Mother Goose Medley
79. Hawaiian War Chant
080 - i gotta girl i love (in north and south dakota)  (1945)
081 - hedda hopper`s hats  (1945)
082 - george m. cohan medley  (1945)
83. Old McDonald Had A Farm
84. I Dream Of Brownie In The Light Blue Jeans
85. The Glow Worm
86. Laura
87. Jones Polka
88. The Jones Laughing Record
89. My Pretty Girl
90. Rhapsody From Hunger (Y)
91. I'm In The Mood For Love
92. When Yuba Plays The Rhumba On The Tuba
93. (I'm Forever) Blowing Bubble Gum
94. William Tell Overture
95.  Love In Bloom
96. The Man On The Flying Trapeze
97. Popcorn Sack
98. Our Hour (The Puppy Love Song)
99. My Old Flame
100. People Are Funnier Than Anybody
101. By The Beautiful Sea
102. I'm Getting Sentimental Over You
103. I Kiss Your Hand Madame
104. All I Want For Christmas (Is My Two Front Teeth)
105. Ill Barkio (Il Bacio)
106. None But The Lonely Heart (A Soaperetta)


21 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm a life-long Spike Jones fan. I have a large collection of his recorded output, but I've never had the opportunity of acquiring his complete recordings from 1941 to 1948 in chronological order.

This is a splendid post.

Thank you very much, Mr. Fab, for sharing it with us.

- der bajazzo

Anonymous said...

great, thanx!

Anonymous said...

Welcome back - I was starting to wonder if you'd given up, but clearly you haven't. And what a splendid post! I've got a couple of "best of" compilations, but apart from the really well-known tracks, the compilers have taken "best" to mean "wackiest", irrespective of whether the number is genuinely all that funny and/or has any real musical merit. This is a gold-mine of all the hard-to-get stuff. Thanks a million!

By the way, I was once told by a dealer in 78s who presumably knew what he was talking about that he had a rare multi-disc set of these guys performing, of all things, Stravinsky's "Rite Of Spring" in their own inimitable fashion! Of course, I was interested in buying it, but he couldn't find it, and assumed that the other man who co-owned the shop must have already sold it.

Since this compilation purports to be everything they ever recorded, am I talking about a recording so obscure that it's not even included here, possibly because they made it under another name? Or did the guy just misremember some other novelty version of the same composition, or dream it or something?

DonHo57 said...

Fab indeed! This is a nice little collection of the stuff of Spike legends. Thanks!!!

Ed said...

Question inre "Wang Wang Blues": The lyric goes "Oh Lord what she did to me/ I'm just as sad as can be/ I got those wang wang blues". Did "wang" mean "penis" in 1943 like it does now?

Plague said...

I don't think they ever did Rites Of Spring.
They did do The Nutcracker Suite though...

Domenic Ciccone (AKA Martooni) said...

Thanks for collecting and sharing. All we have to do enjoy it. Your efforts are appreciated!

Anonymous said...

Thanks, Plague! I obviously hadn't quite remembered the exact details of something which took place about 25 years ago. Nutcracker would make more sense stylistically anyway, so it must have been that. So this isn't the complete recordings then - any chance of a second helping?

Mr Fab said...

Appreciate the comments folks, you all are very welcome. And I'm taking this on faith that this is the complete discography thru '48 - so sez the collector who uploaded this for me. Perhaps I should have said that these were all his singles, as Nnutcracker was indeed a (short) album. Its def not the complete Spike, as he made many records all the way up to his death in the '60s.

But I do love the idea of Spike-goes-modern. Imagine a City Slickers take on John cage, Minimalism, psychedelia, punk...imagine them doing the entirety of "Dark Side of the Moon". He died way too soon!

Rob said...

Wonderful, Happy New Year!!!

Sampoerna Quatrain said...

Thank you so very much for this!!!

Cat A. Waller said...

monstro kewl!

thanks, man!

B'O'K said...

i swear upon my own grave that i will MAKE the Rites of Spring out of all this Spike Jones material... you have my solemn word. that is too good an idea to pass up!

Anonymous said...

Hey, B'O'K - if you can really do that, I for one will hail you as a genius, because that's the most Dada idea I've heard in a long time! And therefore ideally suited for this website. I can't wait...

Mr Fab said...

If anyone can do it, Buttress O'Kneel can. And if this really happens, I will seriously consider organizing a whole Spike-goes-modern compilation.

Anonymous said...

If this "Spike-goes-modern" thing is indeed going to be a thing, while I have neither the skill nor the patience to attempt something on the scale of "The Rite Of Spring", I will pledge a more modest contribution.

Once the idea had been mooted by our esteemed host, it occurred to me that I could very clearly hear in my mind's ear a certain rather famous sixties track played in this fashion. So put me down for 3 minutes of Spike Jones on acid.

PS - How many people actually read these comments? Might it be worth announcing the "Spike Lives!" challenge in the main thread to make sure everybody knows about it?

vilstef said...

The idea of Spike doing Darkside of the Moon is just incredible. Making it out of his takes would be daunting!

Thanks so much for this collection Mr Fab. :)

Gregory.Frost said...

Wonderful madness. Thank you.

Anonymous said...

Thanks a lot for taking the time to share these with us!

Ted Hering said...

"Rite of Spring" -- Spike Jones never made a version, but the Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band did. See it on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B94-9clMGRE

Javy said...

Thank you for this music.