Klarinet Archive - Posting 000960.txt from 1999/07

From: Ken Wolman <kwolman@-----.net>
Subj: Re: [kl] Clarinet Related Topics
Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 20:06:41 -0400

>> OK, here's a clarinet question. Who played clarinet in Spike Jones' band?
>> (For that matter, how about the bands of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche?) ;-)
>
>Well, I can't answer the Schopenhauer and Nietzsche part :^), but Spike had
>_at least_ the following on clarinet at one time or another:
>
>Mickey Katz, Emilio Malione, Julian Matlock, Eddie (Edwin C. ) Metcalfe,
>Del (Delmar Smith)
>Porter, and R. S. Walker.

I never heard of any but the first one, and oy vey, do I feel OLD. Mickey
Katz was one of those guys I grew up on as a Jewish kid in the 1950s Bronx.
His Hit Songs parodies made what Alan Sherman did a decade later look sick
by comparison. "Herring Boats are a-comin'" was especially funny because
shrimp--the original in the song--was about as far from kosher as you can
get. The parody of "I Wanna Go Where the Wild Goose Goes," set in a kosher
slaughterhouse ("Ich wil geht mit die Kotchkeh geht!"), the one to the tune
of "Sixteen Tons" ("I couldn't go out 'cause it was Yom Kippur!"). I
didn't remember that Mickey Katz played the clarinet: but I guess he could
play klezmer to die for as well as screw around with stuff like Spike
Jones' barking-dogs arrangement of "Cocktails for Two."

The genes really DO carry: when I found out that Joel Gray is Katz's son,
it was proof to me that the fruit really doesn't fall far from the tree,
but may put out its own glorious shoots.

Ken

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