Spike Jones: The Perfect Synthesis of Comedy and Music

Born this day in 1911, Lindley Armstrong “Spike” Jones isn’t too young to have been in vaudeville (plenty of people started in the business as children). Nevertheless, he wasn’t (in vaudeville, that is). He merits a listing in these annals on account of the vaudevillian spirit he infused his music with, a spirit that inspired musicians of his own generation but also the following one.

Jones cut his teeth in big bands (he was a percussionist). The anarchy of Jones’ stage shows and record albums calls to mind that of the Marx Brothers, and the Olsen and Johnson of Hellzapoppin, as well as straight up musical nuts acts like Borrah Minevitch and His Harmonica Rascals and Freddie Fisher and His Schnicklefritz Orchestra, of which his lead singer and trumpet player was a George Rock, was a veteran. Spike’s band The City Slickers seems to have started out fairly seriously, but turned the corner with his 1942 hit “Der Fuehrer’s Face”. This opened the floodgates for hundreds of humorous arrangements of well known songs employing wacky instruments and sound effects, and a stage show that relied on slapstick, including the services of a little person well known to show biz buffs: Billy Barty. Other notable members of the band at various times included Doodles Weaver, Mickey Katz, Mousie Garner,Purv Pullen (a.k.a Dr. Horatio Q. Birdbath),Red Ingle, and seven foot tall Lock Martin. The band also showcased Jones’ wife, singer Helen Grayco and, on radio, Dorothy Shay, the Park Avenue Hillbilly. 

Other songs in the Jonesian repertoire (many of them charting hits) included “Cocktails for Two”, “Hawaiian War Chant”, “Holiday for Strings”, “You Always Hurt the One You Love”, “The Sheik of Araby”, “Ghost Riders in the Sky” and “The William Tell Overture”. In keeping with the season and his December 14, he also had several holiday hits: “All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”, “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” and his own take on “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer”. 

The group was also natural on radio and their constant presence on the airwaves truly sold their fame. They started out as the house band on Bob Burns’ The Arkansas Traveler (Burns had his own comedy/music gig, his invented instrument the bazooka). After getting his own summer replacement series in Edgar Bergen’s Chase and Sanborn slot in 1945, he was given his own regular program The Spike Jones Show from 1947 to 1949. 

But of course, the City Slickers were also a highly visual act. They appeared in the movies (1943),  (1944),  (1945),  (1946), (1947), and Fireman, Save My Child (1954). They had their own TV variety show, which ran in various versions in spurts of several months between 1954 and 1961, and also appeared on The Colgate Comedy Hour,The All Star Revue, and The Ford Show, et al. In 1950 they worked with veteran comedy director Eddie Cline to create pilots for two sit-coms, Foreign Legion and Wild Bill Hiccup, neither of which were picked up. 

Emphysema killed Jones in 1965 — tragically early, so that he was unable to see how his “Anything Goes” approach to music-making inspired the generation of rock groups and comedians who came up during the 60s, notably The Beatles, the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, Frank Zappa, Firesign Theatre and Monty Python….but a thousand others. Irish-British comedian Spike Milligan of The Goon Show took his name from Jones, as did (more’s the pity) the director Spike Jonez, whose movies I like, but causes confusion with his name. 

Two of Jones’ children went on to make marks in show business: Spike Jones’ Jr is a amajor TV director and producer; daughter Leslie Ann Jones is a Grammy-winning sound engineer and director of music recording and scoring at Lucasfilms. 

For more about show business historyconsult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, And please stay tuned for my upcomingElectric Vaudeville: A Century of Radio and TV Variety.