And his City Slickers

Because I'm feeling like I haven't alienated anybody in a while I'm going to load up a three record set of Spike Jones and his City Slickers live on the radio for you fine people.

3Lp set (1977)




I can probably trace a straight line for my love and tolerance of strange musical ventures to my earliest memory of a particular record. It was a copy of a cheap 1971 compilation of Spike Jones performing his musical mayhem to the stuff of Best Loved Melody compilations everywhere entitled "Spike Jones is Murdering the Classics"

I won't waste too much time and typing with his story. You can just google that shit.

The main thing is to remember that this is something that arose out of vaudeville and was finely honed in front of a live audience before making the transition to records and eventually television.

So here we have a cheap and dirty three record set taken from Spike's popular 1940's radio program performed in front of a live audience which just adds to the experience. It has that charge of performance that none of the studio recordings could match without an audience laughing along.

It's also really fucking funny and very very silly.

If you're so inclined, I'd also recommend looking up some of the originals that they're parodying so you can fully appreciate how far they took some of this material.

For an example: Here's the original version of "Holiday for Strings" by David Rose and Orchestra from 1942. Compare and contrast.

Definitely needs some clucking to really sell that tune...