Klarinet Archive - Posting 000653.txt from 2003/07

From: Dan Leeson <leeson0@-----.net>
Subj: [kl] Tijuana bibles and Benny Goodman
Date: Wed, 23 Jul 2003 16:44:48 -0400

I'm in Washington, DC right now and had an interesting experience. I
had a brief 15 minutes to run over to Border books to check out a date
in Grove's dictionary. After I found it, I was heading towards the exit
when I saw a copy of a book called "Tijuana Bibles" on a reading table.

For those unfamiliar with the term, "Tijuana Bible," they were little 8
page, crudely drawn, pornographic booklets, that began to be printed in
the 1920s. I saw my first one as a kid under a porch, -- holding hands
with a girl named Zelda -- in the late 1930s. They were all the same
except that the characters varied. In one it might be Popeye and Olive
Oil, in another it might be Blondie and Dagwood. That was sex education
in the 1930s and 40s. (Be patient. I'm getting to my clarinet surprise
in a moment.)

Anyway, as I went through this very carefully-crafted and scholarly
book, I noticed that the material was divided up by this or that
parameter, one of which showed cartoon characters, another drawings of
famous people in various (on often bizarre and/or unachievable)
positions. This included very bad cartoons depicting May West, Cary
Grant, Fay Wray, Joan Blondell, etc. And on plate 105, in all his naked
glory was Benny Goodman in a Tijuana Bible depicting a variety of
activities with a woman who was, apparently, awestruck by his giant
clarinet, namely the one that did not have keys on it.

No kidding. This hand-drawn, crudely pornographic Tijuana Bible, had
Benny doing things that, even in my salad days, I would have been unable
to duplicate. It was worlds more sophisticated than the one I saw of
Mutt and Jeff with two charmers named Tillie and Tessie under the porch
with Zelda in 1939.

At that point, I had to go back to my meeting at the Marriott Hotel. All
I could wonder as I went back to the meeting suite was if Benny might
have had a low C on that thing!! It was certainly long enough.

I was hilariously entertained by the discovery. I didn't have a pencil
with me to write down the publisher or ISBN number. Will someone look
that up and post it to klarinet (Title: "Tijuana Bibles" and published
in 1997). Then everyone can run out, buy a copy of the book and try to
achieve what I now refer to as "The Clarinetist's Position" (if you can
get one's legs at that kind of an angle).

--
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*Dan Leeson *
*leeson0@-----.net*
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