Monday 17 January 2022

If you want to hear that Swanee River played in a ragtime


I wish.

It's been a very relaxing three-day weekend. I did get some stuff done, such as cleaning off the black mould caused by condensation around our bedroom window - oh, the delights of an old home! - but generally I was mainly sedentary. Now it's time to dust off the laptop once again, and see what joys the working week's going to bring...

To alleviate the forthcoming frustrations, let's indulge ourselves this Tacky Music Monday in the company of another of this weekend's birthday girls, the irrepressible Ethel Merman - doing Disco!

Those poor kids must have been threatened with unspeakable punishments to cheer the way they did...

More about Ethel's infamous "Disco phase" in a post I did way back in 2009.

Ethel Merman (16th January 1908 – 15th February 1984)

14 comments:

  1. If Ethel was British do you think she'd be a Cockney?
    Have a good week, Jon!
    Sx

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    1. She'd have been a match for the likes of Rita Webb and Peggy Mount in the "battleaxe" stakes, that's for certain! Jx

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  2. I adore Ethel. But your right. If Im a teen Im not overjoyed to see her do disco. Was this a form of punishment for the bad seeds?

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    1. It seems to be from a programme called "Kids are people too". Maybe this is some kind of borstal, and they meant "Kids are CONVICTS too"? Jx

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  3. The horizontal lifestyle is for me.

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  4. WHAT!!!!! Ethel and disco!?!?!?!

    Just no. That's almost as painful as Crocs.

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    1. We have the entire album - on vinyl and on CD.

      Drink lots of strong spirits before you listen to it - you'll need it. Jx

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  5. I had a friend who had the Ethel Merman Disco Album. We would listen to it and laugh as we prepared ourselves to go out for the evening. It was a laugh and a lark and I'll never know what possessed her to record it (desperation, perhaps?) Ethel didn't sing - she yelled. Belted it, as it were. A pity she was wound tighter than a doomsday watch - otherwise, she could have been the mother of a certain school of drag queens. Kizzes.

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    1. Ethel was indeed arguably the earliest of "the great belters" - they didn't rely on microphones to reach the back of the auditorium in them days! - but it's the anecdote another such "belter" Elaine Stritch told about The Merm (from her "At Liberty" one-woman show we went to see in 2002) that I love the most.

      Apparently, Miss Merman was just hitting the biggest notes from the biggest number of whatever show she was on stage in that week, and a drunk started heckling. With that, she clambered to the wings, down the stairs, into the auditorium, grabbed the man by his collars, frog-marched him to the door of the theatre, threw him out, trotted all the way back, up the stairs to the stage, into the spotlight again - and carried on the crescendo of big notes exactly where she left off!

      Now THAT's what I call showbiz!

      None of those wannabees on Drag Race could even come close. Jx

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  6. *sucks breath over teeth and winces* and this is from someone who used to own The Dame Edna Party Experience CD

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    1. You could have hours of wincing over some of the "treasured" items in our collection! A friend of ours once bitterly observed: "The Essential Anita Harris"? "The Best Of Lita Roza"?

      Jx

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  7. "Where the hell is Swanee anyway"

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