Honky Tonk and Western Swing star Hank Thompson “Songs for Rounders”   Capitol Records.   (1959)

(31 votes, average: 3.97 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Bozo Meets the Moon Goon”  Bozo “the Capitol Clown” featuring Larry Harmon as Bozo.   Capitol Records EAP-1-3250  (1959) .  From Associated Press:

Larry Harmon dumped from Clown Hall of Fame

years, promoter and entertainer Larry Harmon claimed to have both
created the character and said he was the original.

Now the International Clown Hall of Fame in downtown Milwaukee is formally
endorsing a different version: Capitol Records executive Alan Livingston
created Bozo for recordings in 1946, and the late Vance “Pinto” Colvig was
the first person to play the clown.

On Friday, the hall is posthumously inducting Colvig as the first Bozo.

That reverses the hall’s “Lifetime of Laughter Award” given to Harmon in
1990 as Bozo’s creator. The hall has since taken Harmon’s plaque off its
honor wall.

Kathryn O’Dell, the hall’s executive director, said the hall was duped to
believe Harmon created Bozo and didn’t find out the truth until ABCnews.com
columnist and entertainment producer Buck Wolf reported Harmon was wrongly
laying claim to the character.

“It was something that was hinted at and hinted at and we started to do
research and sure enough the information we were getting from outside
sources was true,” O’Dell said.

While Harmon popularized the character since the 1950s, Livingston and
Colvig were first to develop it, she said.

Colvig’s voice was used in the first recordings and he wrote some of Bozo’s
first songs, made the first live appearances and was the first Bozo on
television.

Capitol Records Inc. sold all the rights to Bozo the Capitol Clown, except
the masters for the previous records, in the mid 1950s to Harmon, who a few
years earlier had answered a Capitol casting call to be a Bozo.

Harmon ended up training more than 200 Bozos over the years and turning Bozo
into a character for 156 cartoons that he sold in the United States and
around the world.

Harmon, 79, said from his home in Los Angeles that he’s saddened to have the
hall remove his plaque and he denied misrepresenting Bozo’s history.

“Isn’t it a shame the credit that was given to me for the work I have done
they arbitrarily take it down, like I didn’t do anything for the last 52
years,” he said.

He said he has always acknowledged that Livingston created Bozo The Capitol
Clown. But he said he created Bozo’s personality and image today as Bozo The
World’s Most Famous Clown.

“What I created for the world was me and my image, what I sound like, what I
look like, what I walk like, what the costume looked like, with my animation
studio,” he said.

Bozo The Capitol Clown had red mop hair and spoke with a drawl. Harmon’s
Bozo had bright orange-red yak hair and spoke faster and made up an entirely
new vocabulary, like “wowie-kazowie.” The laugh was also different.

from abc.com:

In light of claims from officials at the International Clown Hall of Fame
that Harmon misled the museum when he was honored for creating TV’s Bozo,
the Wolf Files investigated the matter.
An extensive review of publications and materials from Harmon’s office
and numerous press interviews indicates that Harmon has frequently stuck a
Bozo-sized, big, red, floppy shoe in his mouth — describing himself over the
years as Bozo’s creator and the man who created Bozo for TV.
Both assertions are highly questionable. When the Wolf Files approached
Bill Lange, founder of the Clown Hall of Fame, about Harmon and the Bozo
legacy, he said: “I now regret that we gave him that award. Personally, I
think Larry Harmon is a jerk and other clowns deserve some credit for Bozo.”
Recently, the Hall of Fame changed Harmon’s credit on its Web site from
Bozo’s “creator” to his “franchiser” — and no one has argued that Harmon is,
indeed, a world-class marketer.
But questions remain: Has one man tried to rewrite clown history and
take all the credit for a pop culture institution that touches millions of
children? What about the origins of that beautiful orange-wing hairdo and
those “wowie-kazowie” custard pie fights? And if Larry Harmon isn’t the
original Bozo, who is?
Harmon’s Bozo often said he had one lesson to teach children, above
all: “It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.” Now,
it would seem, Harmon might want to listen to his own internal Bozo.

Clowning With History
Harmon, a 73-year-old show business entrepreneur and performer, denies he
ever tried to rewrite clown history. He declined to be interviewed. But in a
written statement, he says there have been thousands of articles about him
and some are simply wrong. In the statement, he says he has always
acknowledged that Bozo was created by another man.
“In some of those articles, I have been misquoted and blatantly
misrepresented,” the statement says. “I cannot be responsible for misquotes
or incorrect information printed by the media and routinely recycled over
and over a long period of time.”
But to believe Harmon, we must also believe The Associated Press, The
New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and at least six other major newspapers
misquoted or misunderstood him, often times repeatedly.
Moreover, Harmon offered no explanation for a 1996 licensing brochure
copyrighted by his production company and titled “50 Years of Clowning
Around With Bozo.” It begins:
“Bozo. You can’t even say it without smiling. Bozo the Clown, created
by Larry Harmon half a century ago, has gone from children’s recording star
to international TV star, joining the American vocabulary along the way.”
[Italics added.]

The Father of Bozo Speaks
To Bozo’s true creator, Alan W. Livingston of Beverly Hills, Calif., Harmon’
s claims have been hurtful, though somewhat amusing.
“I hired this guy years ago. He was an out-of-work actor at the time
and now he is taking credit for my work,” Livingston says. “It is such a
joke.”
In 1946, Capitol Records asked Livingston to write and produce a
children’s record. He delivered “Bozo at the Circus,” the first read-along
recording. “Kids, whenever I clap my hands, you turn the page,” Bozo would
say. It sold more than a million copies, and a clown legend began.
Livingston worked with an artist to develop Bozo’s basic look. The
clown’s name, now a household word, was born during a late-night
brainstorming session. Circus folk had long used “bozo” to refer to tramp
clowns. But Capitol somehow copyrighted the whole enchilada and hired actors
such as Harmon for promotional purposes.

Harmon’s Bozology
While Harmon regularly accepts the title of Bozo’s creator, he got specific
in 1990, according to an Aug. 29 edition of the Chicago Tribune, in which he
was reported as saying he based the clown’s name on a famed Gypsy humorist
named “Bozolowski.”
“What stuck with me was those four letters,” he told the paper. “It was
a name everyone can pronounce. I tried it in all the languages. It came out
the same.”
He then went into detail about how he designed the hair and other
characteristics: “I knew I wanted sort of a cotton-like fabric that I curled
up and brought out to the sides,” he was quoted as saying. “Red is one of my
favorite colors. Red, white and blue I love. That’s America.”
Harmon has also claimed he created Bozo for TV. Indeed, beginning in
1959, he did raise a clown army of some 200 Bozos, putting a Bozo on local
TV in almost every major city and in countries such as Thailand, Greece and
Brazil.
Yet research shows that Bozo first appeared in 1949 on KTTV, channel 11
in Los Angeles. Pinto Colvig, who served as Bozo on Livingston’s records,
brought the character to life. Harmon was not involved.
Colvig lived the quintessential clown’s life. As a teenager, he ran off
and joined a circus, eventually working for Ringling Bros. He also served as
the voices of Goofy and Grumpy in Walt Disney cartoons and helped songwriter
Frank Churchill write “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf.”
“Those were great days in TV,” recalls Lee Carrau, floor manager on the
first Bozo TV show. “It was a live show, two cameras in a small studio, with
animals and screaming kids. We never knew what would happen, monkeys jumping
around everywhere. Every week was absolute pandemonium.”
Carrau, 76, remembers Colvig well. “He used to go to the bar after the
show in Bozo costume for laughs,” he says. “He was a fun, fun guy.” Asked
about Harmon, Carrau said, “Never heard of the gent, and I knew everyone on
the show.”

Clown for Sale
Capitol closed its TV operations in the early 1950s. Harmon and some
partners subsequently bought the rights to Bozo, except for the audio
recordings. From there, Harmon went market-to-market selling the Bozo
concept of a live clown show for kids in the dawn of the TV age. “Larry
deserves credit for licensing Bozo,” Livingston says. “He’s made it last for
a long time.”
Livingston went on to sign Frank Sinatra and the Beatles to Capitol
Records. He didn’t waste too much time correcting Harmon, he says, because
Bozo is not tops on his resume. But it’s still a source of pride. The Clown
Hall of Fame now honors Livingston, too. But he’d really like to see
recognition for his old friend Colvig, who died of lung cancer in 1967.
“Pinto did a great job,” Livingston says. “He got Bozo’s voice down
perfectly and he really knew how to make kids laugh.”

Which Bozo Is Your Bozo?
The Bozo you saw on TV depends on where you grew up. Through Harmon’s
licensing, many men portrayed the clown.
The most famous Bozos: Willard Scott in Washington (yes, the NBC Today
show weatherman), Frank Avruch in Boston (whose show has been syndicated in
markets with no local Bozo), and Bob Bell in Chicago (who started the
longest-running children’s TV show still on the air, now starring Joey D’
Auria).
Altogether, Bozo shows have logged more than 50,000 hours of recording
time, a Guinness record.
At times, Harmon portrayed Bozo, though he never starred on a show for
a sustained period. Among his performing highlights: training at zero
gravity with Apollo astronauts and providing Bozo’s voice in cartoons.
The cartoons reportedly once bore a credit line for Livingston as Bozo’
s creator. That has been deleted over the years. A recent videocassette of
the cartoons pictures Harmon in greasepaint with the caption describing him
as, “The Original Bozo.”
Harmon has maintained that he trained his Bozos and their writers. But
some people involved in the shows and their families feel he overstated his
involvement.
In a 1984 magazine article in the Chicago Tribune, Harmon admitted that
Bell was self-taught. “He was a natural Bozo,” Harmon said. “Bob was able to
jump into my soul … He was able to reach into my mind and my emotions,
because Bozo was me … And Bob has my love for the children, my sensitivity,
my understanding.”
The article quotes Bell as recalling a cooler relationship with Harmon:
“I haven’t seen him for years. He never calls. He never comes around. Even
when he’s at the station, contracting for his cartoons, he never stops in
and says hello. Never.”

The Hard Way to Greasepaint Fame
Bell’s daughter, Joan Roy, says that Harmon failed to offer his
congratulations when Bell was inducted into the Clown Hall of Fame in 1996
and Harmon made it difficult for Bell to attend the ceremony in his Bozo
greasepaint. “My father was 74 and frail,” Roy says. “It was outrageous.”
In artwork from the ceremony, Bell appears as the only honored clown
out of makeup, a sure disappointment to fans.
It was only after Bell’s successor, D’Auria, appeared as Bozo at
another Clown Hall of Fame event that Harmon began to press for his own
award, recalls Lange, the Clown Hall of Fame founder.
“It is a shame that Harmon tried to take credit for creating Bozo,”
says Kathryn O’Dell, the Hall of Fame’s executive director. “He might have
won the award anyway because of the job he did marketing Bozo. But he really
bamboozled us.”

(17 votes, average: 3.71 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Here’s a departure from our many years of posting interesting cover art – the inner sleeve.  I found this one today and it made me nostalgic for those innovative years during the 1960’s when the record labels hired young people to do the marketing and gave them the freedom to be creative and groundbreaking, irreverent and anti-establishment.   You can see this in the packaging, liner notes, advertisements, billboards, promotions and collateral of the time.  Unfortunately, when the business got so big and bloated in the mid-seventies, the crazies that were running the asylum got put back in their rooms and corporate suits took back the reins.   Here’s an example from the guys in the marketing dept. of Buddah Records.  (Click on the cover to enlarge!)

“Temporary Sleeve”

“We sat around for a couple of weeks, here in our offices, trying to figure out what to put on our album sleeves.  It wasn’t easy.  We didn’t want to do a hard sell, the old “show-them-the-other-album-covers” approach … and we didn’t want to get esoteric and cute.  So we blew it!  We didn’t have it ready in time to go to press.  So we did this.  A non-sleeve … the softest sell in music business history.  Just let us say, however, that the album you are now holding is only part of THE BUDDAH GROUP.”

(22 votes, average: 4.41 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Let’s Put the Lights Out”  Columbia Records  (1947)  Jane Russell    At the age of 25 in 1946, Jane Russell was a big movie star without many movies to justify her status. She had been signed to a seven-year contract by Howard Hughes at 19, and Hughes had spent nine months shooting her first film, The Outlaw, a western that was more about her cleavage than about its nominal subject, Billy the Kid.  That got it in hot water with the Hays Office, and years went by while Hughes tinkered with the picture, then fought to get it released properly. Meanwhile, he had tens of thousands of photographs taken of Russell and lent her out for one other film, Young Widow. While she was waiting around for her movie career to take off, she got an offer from bandleader Kay Kyser to appear on his radio show, and after hearing her he signed her to a 12-week contract and even took her with him to Columbia Records for a couple of sides.  As The Outlaw finally neared a New York opening, Columbia signed Russell on her own for this album, originally released on four 78s in 1947.  The eight original tracks are bedroom ballads that she coos in a drowsy voice dripping with sex.  The sentiments are well represented by such titles as “Do It Again” and “Love for Sale,” and on two songs, the title track and “Two Sleepy People.”

(56 votes, average: 4.45 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Peggy Lipton Ode Records   (1968)     For me she’ll always be “Julie” from the “Mod Squad” (which was on during my formative, and heavily TV influenced, pre-teen years).   But she’s also been Mrs. Quincy Jones, Norma Jennings on “Twin Peaks” and is the mom of Rashida Jones’ (from “The Office”).   This is the first of two LPs that she made.   Each includes a composition by Laura Nyro:   Stoney End (1968), and Lu (1970) and they both made the Billboard Charts.   (As did many others with Nyro songs – Barbara Streisand, Three Dog Night, The Fifth Dimension, etc.).   It’s not as bad as most of the “golden throats” recordings by TV stars.   And the cover shot of Lipton, a former Ford model isn’t bad either.

(58 votes, average: 3.64 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“The Whistler and His Dog”   Golden Crest Records     This was the theme song for a 1960s local TV show in New York , Officer Joe Bolton’s Fun House.   This piece was written in 1905 by ARTHUR PRYOR (1870-1942), who was a trombonist/arranger in John Philip Sousa’s band.

(43 votes, average: 2.98 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Bedtime Stories Italian Style”   by Giuseppe, the Italian Baby-sitter!   Box Office Records   “…a decidedly different delineation of a half-dozen famous fairy tales.   Combining today’s adult world of reality with the time-honored world of fantasy…”     “Taking farcical liberties under the protection of his pizzeria palaver, he puts the accent high on hilarity”     Giuseppe is in reality a prominent orchestra leader born and raised in NYC.   His Italian accent is strictly for this album, recorded at the repeated urging of friends who have joyfully sampled his performances at private parties.

(52 votes, average: 3.79 out of 5)

 Loading ...

“Blood on the Saddle” Tex Ritter   Capitol Records   Listen as Tex really slows down and stretches out the lyrics on this baby.   Nice pulp Western painting on the cover.

John Ritter’s pappy was well suited to the role of singing cowboy. He looked and acted the part and was singing the type of songs he loved best.   Although Ritter’s films never had the production values of films starring Gene Autry or Roy Rogers, he still enjoyed considerable success at the box office.

In 1942, after a decade of recording with little success, Ritter became one of the first artists signed by the newly formed Capitol Records. He soon began scoring major hits with records such as “Jealous Heart,” “ Rye Whiskey,” “I’m Wastin’ My Tears on You,” and “You Will Have to Pay.” Ritter would record for Capitol for the rest of his life.

In 1952, Ritter recorded the movie title-track song “High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darlin’) which became a hit. He sang “High Noon” at the first Academy Awards ceremony to be televised in 1953, and it received an Oscar for Best Song that year.

He achieved significant success with “Jingle, Jangle, Jingle,” and in 1944, he scored another hit with “I’m Wastin’ My Tears On You,” which hit #1 on the country charts and #11 on the Pop charts. “There’s A New Moon Over My Shoulder” was a country charts #2 and Pop charts #21. In 1945, he had the #1, #2 and #3 songs on Billboard’s “Most Played Jukebox Folk Records” poll, a first in the industry. Between 1945 and 1946, he registered seven consecutive Top 5 hits, including “You Two Timed Me One Time Too Often,” a country #1 which spent eleven weeks on the charts.   In 1948, “Rye Whiskey” and his cover of “Deck Of Cards” both made the Top 10 and “Pecos Bill” reached #15. In 1950, “Daddy’s Last Letter (Private First Class John H. McCormick)” also became a hit.

Tex bit the dust in 1974.

(64 votes, average: 4.33 out of 5)

 Loading ...

Vicente Celestino   “Alma e Coracao”   RCA Victor   (1960)   Born in Rio de Janeiro, he started out singing for neighbors and friends. Enrico Caruso was a big idol of his. At age 20, Celestino debuted at the Teatro São José, soloing on the waltz “Flor do Mal” (S.Coelho/D.Correia), a big hit. That recording, from 1916, was his first to sell thousands of copies, a phenomenon, at the time. Vicente sang the operetta “Juriti”, written by Chiquinha Gonzaga, and in 1920 he lined-up his own operetta company. But he did not abandon the carnival music, which granted him hits like “Urubu Subiu”. Celestino was one of the first Brazilian artists to use the electric recording system. He released hits like “Santa” (Freire Junior) and “Noite Cheia de Estrelas” (Índio). In the 1930s, he started writing music. The song that would make him known for generations to come was “O Ébrio”, turned into a motion picture and box-office hit by director and Celestino’s wife, Gilda de Abreu in 1946. The songs “Ouvindo-te”, “Coração Materno”, “Patativa” and “Porta Aberta” were also written by him. Having always performed in Brazil, he was an idol of different generations. During the tropicalist wave, Caetano Veloso “Coração Materno”. The singer died in 1968, just before a ceremony where the Tropicalists were going to do him homage, in São Paulo.

(46 votes, average: 2.87 out of 5)

 Loading ...