With apologies to author Judith Viorst for stealing her phrase, it has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad stretch of days in an what has been an unrelentingly godawful year thus far. Just when a momentary respite from the unending horrid, vile, appalling, sickening, disgusting, horrifying current events is desperately needed, there's the news that Sly Stone and Brian Wilson, two GIANTS, innovative composer/arranger/performer/bandeaders gifted in leading one's heart, soul and consciousness to a better place, passed within the same 48 hours. . . WHAT? THAT CAN'T BE!
At least Sly lived long enough to finish his memoirs and receive rousing recognition from music fans and prominent musicians in the last decade of his life.
Sly Stone, a brilliant musician and arranger who's on the funk Mount Rushmore with James Brown, Curtis Mayfield, George Clinton and Prince (wonder if Prince met Sly), sure made the rounds in his heydey. His importance cannot be overstated. Must buy this release of a set Sly and his first version of The Family Stone performed in my old stomping grounds, Redwood City, CA. Sly was already a bonafide Bay Area celebrity from his successful stints as a deejay on KSOL and KDIA.
Sly & The Family Stone, featuring Larry Graham (electric bass), Cynthia Robinson (trumpet), Rose Stone (keyboards, vocals), Freddie Stone (electric guitar), Greg Arrico (drums) and Jerry Martini (saxophones), were a devastating powerhouse band from the git-go.
Here's Sly with Dick Cavett.
And David Letterman. . .
Sly & The Family Stone were inducted into The Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame in 1993 at long last - and that was overdue. Sly makes an appearance at the end of the clip, following his bandmates, including the outstanding vocalist-bandleader-songwriter-bassist Larry Graham.
As all who have seen the fantastic Summer Of Soul can attest, Questlove is a superlative documentary filmmaker.
This music aficionado's favorite Sly record? The 1973 album FRESH, which presents a stripped-down yet ingenious version of the essential sound, minimalistic and beautiful.
Another composer/pianist/arranger/bandleader of astounding abilities was Brian Wilson, the master of symphonic pop.
While I knew he was seriously ill and that Brian's wife Melinda passed last year, this still came as a shock.
Indeed, when heard on headphones, the "pocket symphonies" on the original SMILE sessions can be quite astonishing.
After The Beach Boys hit a lengthy stretch of creative stagnation following the departure of Carl Wilson and the untimely, tragic passing of Dennis Wilson, Brian quite fortunately got to enjoy an extended comeback in the 1990's and oughts, backed by The Wondermints (Darian Sahanaja, Mike D'Amico, Probyn Gregory and the late Nick Walusko), percussionist Nelson Bragg, multi-instrumentalist Paul von Mertens and the late, great Beach Boys tours veteran Geoffrey Foskett.
In this clip, Brian's pal Sir Paul McCartney inducted him into the Songwriter's Hall of Fame.
Much enjoy this tune Brian and Burt wrote together.
Here's a documentary, Pet Stories, about the making of Pet Sounds, which, along with the 1966-1967 Smile sessions, remains this music fan's favorite Brian Wilson/Beach Boys album.
Much enjoy the interviews in which Brian talks music!
In closing, this blogger got a chance to meet Brian and his bandmate and the aforementioned "CEO of falsetto" Geoff Foskett at a record signing in San Francisco, made sure to tell him that his music got me through tough times. Brian's response: a smile and "thanks, man!"
Unfortunately, I never got to see Sly Stone in concert - he retired right before I started seeing tons of live music performances - or meet him. Sly did occasionally do interviews, but one would imagine that due to the many bad things that happened to him and individuals who did him wrong over the decades, perhaps he'd be a tad reticent. Thankfully, Sly's three children did a great deal to assist him.
All the thanks in the universe to all the master musicians noted in this post!
Today we pay tribute to one of the most important figures in 20th century pop culture: vocalist, songwriter, producer, civil rights activist and recording/music publishing entrepreneur Sam Cooke (January 22, 1931- December 11, 1964).
Second only to Elvis Presley as a maker of hit records at the end of the 1950s and early 1960s, Sam Cooke was poised at the time of his death to be one of the kings of show business.
How big was the Cooke phenomenon in the late 1950's and early 1960's?
He appeared multiple times on THE TONIGHT SHOW (in this instance on February 7, 1964).
Here's Sam with fellow titan of early rock, pop and soul Jackie Wilson.
Cooke was also a passionate advocate on the front lines in the civil rights movement.
This is reflected powerfully in Cooke's best known and most covered song, A Change Is Gonna Come.
Sam Cooke began his career as the star of the top gospel ensemble The Soul Stirrers and would be among the few to successfully transition from gospel to r&b and pop.
The following interview with Dick Clark indicates the direction Sam Cooke was going in at the time of his death, as head of a record company that produced hits with a roster of artists as Berry Gordy had begun doing at Motown/Tamla Records.
Sam had been running his own L.A. label (SAR Records), as Curtis Mayfield would do a few years later, as part of a team that ran Curtom Records, but did not live to see his ambitious expansion plans come to fruition. One wonders if organized crime and sleazy music industry individuals joined forces to make sure Sam did not succeed A.K.A. rub him out.
There are a several documentaries, all worth watching and more than a bit sad, on the life, times and tragic demise of Sam Cooke.
The sordid circumstances of the still unsolved murder of Sam Cooke at the seedy Hacienda Motel couldn't be more fishy if they were a massive catch (no doubt including flounder) left out in the sun to stink. Why there was NO investigation, we can only imagine.
In closing, will spotlight the Sam Cooke recordings. A favorite record of the r&b aficionados at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog is Cooke's classic Live At The Harlem Square Club.
While Cooke's music tended to be more in a pop vein than soul, the incendiary sounds of Live At The Harlem Square Club rock the house with blazing r&b and look forward to Otis Redding's devastating set from the 1967 Monterey Pop festival.
Tony, one of the greats of 20th century music, passed in NYC at 96 earlier today. Here's Tony and Bill Evans on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Since Tony waxed a gazillion recordings over his eight decades in music, can't post all of them. The 1962 Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall album is a good place to start. Tops with this music fan would be the two albums Tony waxed with pianist Bill Evans.
There is a connection between the two of them rarely equalled in popular music.
While Frank Sinatra concerts feature a duo on "One For My Baby and One For The Road" with pianist Bill Miller, and undoubtedly Tony Bennett performances, between swinging uptempo numbers, delivered incredible duos with his pianist/music director Ralph Sharon, on recordings, these Tony Bennett- Bill Evans albums can't be topped.
In closing, Mr. Bennett, of course, has also been intertwined with the city of my birth, San Francisco.
After a San Francisco Giants victory at Oracle Park, a serenade of "I Left My Heart In San Francisco" - usually from the p.a. system, but sometimes from Tony in person - inevitably would be heard, and always sounded beautiful.
It's time for a music post at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog! Today we pay tribute to the guitarist, vocalist, recording artist and consummate entertainer Glen Campbell (April 22, 1936 - August 8, 2017), seen here on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
Have been reading writer Paul Sexton's excellent and scholarly article about Glen Campbell on the udiscover music website, while checking out compilations of Glen's guitar solos on YouTube.
Here's Glen, rocking the twelve-string big time in a duo with fellow stringed instrument virtuoso Roy Clark.
Before he hosted his own TV show and made memorable guest appearances on such popular programs as The Tonight Show and The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, Glen was one of the ace session musicians of the legendary Wrecking Crew, whose musical genius enlivened darn near every pop record to be waxed in Los Angeles throughout the 1960's.
Along with Louie Shelton, Tommy Tedesco and Barney Kessel, Glen was prominent among The Wrecking Crew's roster of ace guitarists.
For maestro Brian Wilson, The Wrecking Crew was his New York and Los Angeles Philharmonic!
Glen, session player of numerous Gold Star Studio recordings, toured with The Beach Boys in 1965 and played bass while Brian was busy writing new songs and arrangements for their next album, Pet Sounds. Brian produced a memorable single by Glen Campbell, backed by The Wrecking Crew.
The Wrecking Crew proved particularly mind-blowingly stellar on Good Vibrations, the Beach Boys' hit single and "pocket symphony," Brian Wilson's magnum opus between the epic Pet Sounds album and the unreleased (until 1993) SMiLE sessions.
In closing and in tribute to the great Glen Campbell, interview shows on late-night TV I liked a great deal included those of Tom Snyder, Bob Costas and Larry King. All interviewed Glen!
Thanks a million for the enduring great music, Glen Campbell and fellow Wrecking Crew stalwarts (Carol Kaye, Lyle Ritz, Don Randi, Hal Blaine, Earl Palmer and the aforementioned Louie Shelton and Tommy Tedesco, to name just a few).
Fondly remember the halcyon days before the narrowcasting that took hold in the 1980's when music in varied genres, from Sinatra to Roy Clark to Aretha Franklin to British invasion rock and pop bands to Count Basie & His Orchestra, could be seen on network television.
The lads - Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork - still hold a soft spot for many of us of a certain age, those of us who were elementary school students when The Monkees TV show (a.k.a. A Hard Day's Night meets The Marx Brothers) and first three albums hit the pop culture zeitgeist.
For starters, we recommend watching the Hey Hey Were The Monkees documentary, directed by Alan Boyd & The Monkees. For those not steeped in the group's history and mid-1960's pop culture, this is an excellent primer.
As is the following. . .
Hit songs by The Monkees, musically closest to the contemporaneous Pacific Northwest garage rockers turned popsters Paul Revere & The Raiders, had an enduring impact and have been covered by very diverse recording artists. One enthusiastic and enjoyable example is Run DMC's cover of Mike Nesmith's song Mary Mary.
To answer the question of who, besides Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz and Peter Tork, were The Usual Suspects in the story of The Monkees, the short list includes Don Kirschner, Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart, Jeff Barry, Chip Douglas, Paul Mazursky, Larry Tucker, Bob Rafelson, Burt Schneider, James Frawley, Gerald Gardner, Dee Caruso, The Wrecking Crew, (Brill Building songwriters) Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin . . . and none other than Jack Nicholson.
Kirschner, the hitmaker with the magic touch, produced the first two Monkees albums, which featured a slew of songs by Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart. Working with Kirschner: Jeff Barry.
Boyce & Hart wrote incredibly catchy tunes both for The Monkees 1966-1967 heydey and the later reunion albums and tours (Dolenz, Jones, Boyce & Hart).
The Monkees TV show was developed by (future feature film director) Paul Mazursky, Larry Tucker, Burt Schneider and Bob Rafelson.
Among the scenarists on The Monkees TV show - in between stints on the U.S. variation on That Was The Week That Was and as head writers on season 4 of Get Smart - were Gerald Gardner and Dee Caruso.
Hollywood studio virtuosos The Wrecking Crew provided inspired backing on darn near every pop record waxed in mid-1960's Los Angeles, from Brian Wilson to The Mamas & The Papas to Arthur Lee & Love. They're all over the first two Monkees albums, and appear to a lesser degree on subsequent records (after The Monkees demanded they be allowed to play on their own records and Kirshner was fired), beginning with Headquarters, produced by Chip Douglas.
Always wondered if that EPIC drum riff on The Monkees theme song was Hal Blaine and whether it was Glen Campbell or Tommy Tedesco who played the outstanding lead guitar break. Who wrote the hits (in addition to Tommy Boyce & Bobby Hart)? the Kingston Trio's John Stewart wrote one of their best songs, Daydream Believer, and Neil Diamond, Carole King and Gerry Goffin penned many more excellent tunes.
Rafelson and his friend Jack Nicholson concluded that it was time, after the cancellation of the TV series in 1968, to finish off The Monkees as surely as if the boys were a rival gang in a 1930's Warner Brothers crime flick starring Jimmy Cagney.
The plan: casting the beloved TV stars and bubblegum popsters in a bizarre stream-of-consciousness movie utterly counter to their wholesome image and titled Head. The objective: kill The Monkees once and for all. The uncredited scribes of Dangerous Minds wrote all about the film, which acheived its objective and then some.
This worked like a charm - this anti-Monkees experimental feature, written and produced by Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson, and directed by Rafelson, bombed at the box office, but not necessarily with the group's 420-soaked fans.
Hopefully, there were pizzas, tacos and plenty of crunchy snack items available at concessions for whatever stoned-out audiences showed up.
We're fans of this psychedelic anti-movie, especially the scene in which the Prefab Four are dandruff in Victor Mature's scalp. This is with the full understanding that continuity as such and any links whatsoever between the various segments are not a factor at any point in the film.
As fate would have it Monkee $$$$$$ from record sales would fund two subseqent projects of Rafelson and Nicholsen. . . Easy Rider and Five Easy Pieces, which he followed with The King of Marvin Gardens (1972).
Their last TV appearance was on the special 33 1/3 Revolutions Per Monkee, which aired on NBC on April 14, 1969. This is entirely a musical special and would be this writer's pick of all their TV work, much as The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees remains this music aficionado's favorite of all the Prefab Four albums.
After prog rockers Brian Auger & The Trinity introduce them, the lads do their individual specialties: Micky belting out r&b flavored rock/soul, Mike offering his spin on quirky country rock and Davy returning to his Broadway musical theatre roots. At one point, Micky sings with Brian Auger & The Trinity and does a duet with the group's commanding vocalist, Julie Driscoll.
As the Monkees were splitting up in 1969, with Peter Tork having already left, the band made a memorable appearance on The Joey Bishop Show. Micky's Stax-Volt take on "I'm A Believer" is a very good reimagining of the song.
The Monkees re-formed and toured again starting in 1986, after MTV revived their TV show to great popular success. Young fans who saw The Monkees for the first time on MTV and Nickelodeon got to see them in concert.
One can purchase Monkees albums at Rhino Records and buy Nesmith's
records and videos on Michael Nesmith's Videoranch. It has been a few years since this blogger has revisited the music of The Monkees, its offshoots (Boyce & Hart) and especially Mike Nesmith’s solo records with First National Band and other groups. Like The Birds, The Bees & The Monkees, the PreFab 4's best and most fully realized album, Nesmith's first solo record, The Wichita Train Whistle Sings, is a goody.
Thankfully, Mike (a.k.a. "Nez" "Wool Cap") and Micky are very much with us in 2021 and still making music, having just started the Monkees Farewell Tour.
The Monkees and The Box Tops share a certain era in pop music and cachet, along with the other pop/rock band with a TV show, Paul Revere & The Raiders (who Boyce & Hart also penned songs for). It’s tough to say whether the catchy as catchy can be songs from More Of The Monkees, the Raiders' Midnight Ride album or the hit Box Tops singles The Letter, Soul Deep and Cry Like A Baby win the prize for best ear worm ever; they may all be tied for that honor. Meanwhile, the post-1960's solo albums of The Monkees' Mike Nesmith and The Box Tops' Alex Chilton (with and without Big Star) remain Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog favorites.
While a year or two after The Monkees' first album, the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Cream, Yardbirds (morphing into Led Zeppelin), Traffic, Peter Green's Fleetwood Mac, the San Francisco bands (Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Big Brother & The Holding Company) and the impassioned soul music of Aretha Franklin, Otis Redding and James Brown would be spinning repeatedly and emphatically on our turntables and in our brains en masse, along with The Beatles and Rolling Stones (alas, Brian Wilson's symphonic pop suite "SMiLE" would not see the official light of day until 1993), in 1966, The Monkees were the cat's meow for us 1956-1959 babies.
We extend respectful tips of the top hats worn in a
Monkees episode to Mike Nesmith, Davy Jones, Micky Dolenz, Peter Tork, Tommy Boyce, Bobby Hart and the many backing band musicians who have contributed to their tours. Thanks, gentlemen, for making the transition from a TV show to a real touring band, starting in 1966, and entertaining succeeding generations well into the 21st century.
This blogger, darn near glued to the AM radio in the 1960's, when this medium was devoted entirely to Top 40 hits and sports, was always fascinated by the highly unusual song that would turn up in a mix full of icons (from Elvis Presley to The Beatles to Sinatra). In other words, songs that elicited ????????
Love the icons, but also love the outliers, so it is admittedly facetious to term their hits "non-wonders." One all-time favorite song remains the wonderfully indescribable "Let It Out" a.k.a. Let It All Hang Out by the even more indescribable group from Memphis, The Hombres.
Some of these tunes were not novelty records at all, but hits by popular regional bands. . . no surprise there, as such popular regional groups as The Kingsmen and Paul Revere & The Raiders had #1 hits (both recorded Louie Louie).
Lousiana's own John Fred And His Playboy Band had one ridiculously catchy hit.
There were a slew of these records in 1965-1967. Some were profoundly influenced by r&b music, such as Philadelphia's Soul Survivors.
Others personified the sound of soul music!
Quite a few worthy 1960's rock groups, such as Love with Arthur Lee and the San Francisco Bay Area's Beau Brummels did not make it into this post because they actually had more than one Top 40 hit! Very much drawing from the influence of The Beau Brummels, The Beatles and the Pet Sounds era Beach Boys, as well as The Left Banke, a stylish Baroque Pop group which had TWO hits in 1966-1967, the one hit record by The Mojo Men is pure pop delight.
Other bands heard on the radio in the mid-1960's were less from state-of-the-art recording studios in the George Martin - Brian Wilson tradition than from their garages. Fun With Fender, Gibson and Silvertone electric guitars sometimes translated into massive garage band hits. As the cornerstones of Rhino Records' vinyl and CD compilations, Nuggets volumes 1 and 2: Original Artyfacts From The First Psychedelic Era 1965-1968 + Original Artyfacts From The British Empire & Beyond, these tunes are also on Rhino's YouTube playlist.
A group that influenced later punk rock bands, San Jose's psychedelic rockers Count Five, their one album championed by Lester Bangs in his book Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, had just one national hit single, but made the most of their moment in the spotlight. Their hit Psychotic Reaction would later be a much covered garage rock classic, performed by bands ranging from The Cramps to Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers.
The mid-1960's was a time in which Captain Beefheart, closer to the surrealist soundscapes of Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler in his records just a few years later (Trout Mask Replica and Lick My Decals Off, Baby) than anything in pop, actually appeared on Where The Action Is singing his one hit, Diddy Wah Diddy.
Getting back to that one hit wonder sideline, the novelty record, sometimes a true oddball piece of genius, such as the aforementioned Rubber Biscuit by The Chips, would make it into the Oldies But Goodies playlist.
The first song this music nut remembers hearing on Top 40 radio that was definitely a Dr. Demento style novelty number, besides Bobby "Boris" Pickett's The Monster Mash, was this ditty by Napoleon XIV.
There were others, not just the great comedy records by Stan Freberg and Allan Sherman but the following, the only hit record by Jim Backus & Friend (Hermione Gingold?), backed by Appleknocker & His Group! Don't remember hearing this on our AM stations, but it is so funny, Delicious merits inclusion here as an inspired novelty record.
The song that got the ball rolling in the novelty record field was the infamous Okeh Laughing Record, from the same label that brought the world King Oliver, Louis Armstrong, Mamie Smith and Bix Beiderbecke.
Thirty years later, Tex Avery made a very funny and very diabolical cartoon based on this record.
Decades later, the 1-hit wonders captivated my imagination so much I was thrilled to see Tom Hanks' movie about a 1960's band, That Thing You Do.
Also absolutely love the Wonders' rather Dave Clark 5 like title song, their one hit.
As Mr. Hanks is now appearing in a 21st century movie about 20th century icon, educator, children's program mastermind and nice fellow Fred Rogers, ending on a reference to Tom's film strikes this writer as the best way to say adieu and wish all readers a good weekend.
While we at Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog missed the TCM Classic Film Fest and shall, having found ourselves increasingly and seriously homesick as our March-April CA trip progressed, also miss the epic 2019 San Francisco Silent Film Festival (and drive all the blog's cinephile readers away by covering other totally unrelated 20th century pop culture topics), we never miss a favorite song.
At the top of the list of ridiculously catchy tunes from the halcyon days of 1960's AM radio (KFRC, KYA and KDIA where I grew up), even higher than Mother-In-Law by Ernie K. Doe and Quarter To Three by Gary U.S. Bonds: the one, the only Gene Chandler's 1962 hit The Duke of Earl.
It's a great tune and Gene's snazzy getup tops Bela Lugosi, Liberace and Screamin' Jay Hawkins.
Gene Chandler sang this hit with pleasure for 50+ years!
Amazingly enough, The Duke of Earl made it into the late 20th century.
In 1991, the Latino American hip hop group Cypress Hill sampled it 29 years after The Duke Of Earl topped the charts.
What do the kings of doo-wop and hip-hop have in common? Well. . . in this writer's estimation, a certain goofy, tongue-in-cheek sensibility and humor underlying a strong desire to entertain and give the audience their money's worth, not unlike the aforementioned Screamin' Jay Hawkins.
Lyrically, Cypress Hill's (would-be) macho tough guy anthem Hand On The Pump is more akin to Elton John's Saturday Night's Alright for Fighting than Gene Chandler's doo-wop masterpiece, even though one suspects neither the glam pop star Englishman nor the very thoroughly 420-ed Cypress Hill in actuality administered "beat-downs" ever.
Few recording artists had the temerity to actually cover The Duke of Earl. One musician who did was Alex Chilton.
Alex Chilton, as he did with many 1960's tunes, rearranged Gene Chandler's classic as a rock n' roll song, gave it his all and had fun in the process!
The fact that
Alex Chilton, the uncrowned king of covers throughout his solo career and even in his concerts with Big Star and The Box Tops, tackled The Duke Of Earl should be no big surprise. Alex covered one of this blogger's favorite 1967 hits, Brenton Wood's classic "The Oogum Boogum Song."
As far as this blogger knows, Alex did not cover Brenton Wood's second big 1967 hit, Gimme Little Sign. Possibly he did and it was never recorded; didn't call Alex Chilton the uncrowned king of covers for nothing!
Meanwhile, here's Brenton Wood performing Gimme Little Sign on Top Of The Pops - and sounding great as usual.
While asking just how I might wrap up this post, the notion arises that some readers of Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog might want to sing The Duke of Earl at home. Why not? Here are the lyrics - have fun!
Totally stuck for a topic today, we'll go with monkeys (and Monkees) in the movies.
First and probably not foremost, there were the Snooky The Humanzee chimp comedies, noted in Steve Massa's Lame Brains And Lunatics: The Good, The Bad And The Forgotten Of Silent Comedy and a Trav S.D. post on Travalanche. Snooky wasn't the first ape headliner in movies - among many, there were Napoleon & Sally and Mr. & Mrs. Martin - but he was a hit. Chimp comedies were so big with moviegoers that there actually was a feature film titled Darwin Was Right, starring a simian trio.
The king of these monkeyshines was C.G. Chester's wildly popular Snooky The Humanzee series, which would be in demand through the 1920's, get reissued with music tracks well into the sound era, then sold to the home movie market via Castle Films and other 16mm purveyors.
To this we attribute the fact that, while Laurel & Hardy in Hats Off, horror guru Todd Browning's London After Midnight and F.W. Murnau's 4 Devils are still missing, lots of Snooky The Humanzee extravaganzas survive. As fate would have it, Huntley Film Archives has posted a slew of the chimp's adventures on YouTube.
Admittedly, Snooky's not exactly Chaplin or Keaton - or even Al Joy - in the comedy talent department, but there is something rather perversely funny about the simian's anti-social antics. The humor derives from the fact that Snooky is a bastard. No doubt the director of The Night Of The Bloody Apes grew up on this series.
In animation, of course, Walt Disney Productions, always on the cutting edge, preceded stop-motion genius Willis O'Brien's King Kong in riding the monkey bandwagon with this Silly Symphony.
Terrytoons in New Rochelle simply had to counter with a simian-filled epic, which looks pretty much indistinguishable from a 1927 Farmer Al Falfa cartoon, sans 15,000 Mickey Rats.
Then there's the Les Elton cartoon Monkey Doodle, starring Simon The Monk. Whatever Elton's independently produced cartoons lack in virtuoso drawing technique, they more than compensate for with imagination and originality. The animation of the dog in this cartoon reflects a certain oddball genius.
Also responsible for series starring monkeys: Paul Fennell's Cartoon Films Ltd., the modest but prolific Walter Lantz studio and the budget-busting former Disney animators Hugh Harman and Rudy Ising, the 1920's Disney cohorts turned independent producers (for Warner Brothers, then MGM).
While the monkey stars of the Gran' Pop series by Cartoon Films Ltd. and Walter Lantz' Meany, Miny and Moe have the collective personality of a bologna sandwich, their cartoons are pleasantly enjoyable, if no great shakes (of a monkey's tail).
More interesting are Hugh Harman's Gothic and weirdly imaginative mini-series featuring the callow, innocent and obnoxiously moralistic "See No Evil See No Evil See No Evil" monkeys, who also possess the collective personality and charm of a liverwurst sandwich on pumpernickel bread.
In their silver screen debut, the "goodie goodie monkeys", whose motto is "not a single wild oat will we sew," co-star with none other than Satan, hot off an appearance with Krazy Kat in The Hot-cha Melody.
The 1938 "goodie goodie monkeys" opus Pipe Dreams definitely anticipates the hippie era by almost three decades, especially the scene with the simian trio taking hits off a pipe like Dennis Hopper thirty years later.
Any letters between MGM brass to Harman demanding an explanation for this cartoon must be hilarious - and we all know darn well that Harman ignored them!
After the quixotic adventures in Pipe Dreams, the "See No Evil See No Evil See No Evil" monkeys would return for the 1939 spectacular Art Gallery, then be retired ignominiously.
Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog loves Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers and Marilyn Monroe - only every movie they ever made. Except for Marilyn, they get totally upstaged by a chimp in Howard Hawks' zany 1952 film Monkey Business. No doubt during production Cary had more than a few witticisms he uttered to friends regarding playing second fiddle to an ape.
One of this pop culture vulture's all-time favorites on TV was Nat Hiken's hilarious You'll Never Get Rich show a.k.a. Sgt. Bilko. The smart money is that the chimp in the following clip took direction far better than Joe E. Ross and Maurice Gosfeld.
Not exactly anyone's all-time TV favorite - other than the actors, writers and production crew that worked on the series and got regular paychecks - The Hathaways, starring Jack Weston, Peggy Cass and a bunch of chimps.
And speaking of the hippie era again. . . well, straight from The Wide World Of WTF, here's a musical number from Lancelot Link Secret Chimp. The show is funny, although we suspect that creators Chuck Jones and Friz Freleng took the 5th Amendment when asked about it. Frankly, it troubles this amateur musician that the chimps play the electric guitar than he ever did!
Hanna-Barbera's Banana Splits were to the Lancelot Link psychedelic band what The Turtles were to Roky Erickson and The 13th Floor Elevators.
The extremely funny punk rock band The Dickies made a career of playing cartoon theme songs enthusiastically and very very fast.
1960's popsters The Monkees were inspired by both The Beatles and the Marx Brothers and their very enjoyable TV show still holds up quite well (surprise surprise surprise, the surviving Monkees still sing and play most adeptly in 2016 and have a new album out). Way Too Damn Lazy To Write A Blog has a soft spot for their feature film Head, especially the scene in which the Prefab Four are dandruff in Victor Mature's scalp.
Here they are in January 1967, then in a 1969 TV special co-starring Brian Auger & The Trinity. The latter in particular is a fitting showcase for Messrs. Jones, Dolenz, Tork and Nesmith.
The Goose Gossage style closer today will be a "monkeys in space" sketch from The Ernie Kovacs Show. Would happily follow it up with a "Pigs In Space" segment from The Muppet Show but it doesn't quite fit today's theme.
