Gong Hey Fat Choy!

Happy New Year to our Chinese chums - as the Year of the Bitch hands over to the Year of the Pig!

To help cheer in this "year of prosperity" (apparently), how about a few appropriately pork-flavoured songs? Such as these...

...from the Andrews Sisters:

Andrews Sisters - Booglie Wooglie Piggy

...Vic Damone:

Vic Damone - Cincinatti Dancing Pig

...the sublime Bessie Smith:

Bessie Smith - Gimme a Pigfoot

...and, best of the lot - an entire "porcine musical extravaganza" [that we went to see back in 2011]! It's Betty Blue Eyes. Of course:

Betty Blue Eyes theatrical trailer

All about Chinese New Year

Latch on to the affirmative

It's the last day of freedom, peeps...

Even though it is a Bank Holiday, however, it is still a Tacky Music Monday - and who better to provide the opening number of this New Year than our Patron Saint Bette Midler? Here she is (with Bing) paying tribute to those other icons here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the Andrews Sisters (one of whom, Maxene, would have been 101 tomorrow).

We'd better Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive!

Better Midler - Bing Crosby Special - Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive

Have a good week, folks!

Till I come marching home

Gone to Fabulon - Patty Andrews, last of the Sisters, has died aged 94.

Andrews Sisters - Don't Sit Under the Apple Tree

RIP.

Patti Andrews obituary in the Guardian

Boogie-woogie ladies

Another centenary to celebrate! One hundred years ago today, a certain Laverne Amdrews was born.

With her siblings, a legend was formed - as The Andrews Sisters conquered the world, won the war, and set the trend for a million "rolled-up" hairdos and generations of drag impersonations and fancy dress parties to come...



Remarkably, the youngest sister Patty Andrews is still alive...

Andrews Sisters on Wikipedia

Ac-cent-tchu-ate the Positive

My word! Who would have thought that any of the Andrews Sisters was still alive?

But yesterday Patty Andrews, youngest member of that fabulous vocal group, celebrated her 88th birthday. Inspiration for hundreds of impersonators, drag queens and fancy dress parties, the girls were wildly successful in the dark days of WW2 and brightened everyone's mood with their brand of swing harmony.

Their influence carries on and on - in the music of Bette Midler, the Puppini Sisters, and lately Christina Aguilera, and we owe them a huge debt for their camp contribution to female vocal styling... Happy birthday, Patty!!

Bing Crosby with The Andrews Sisters - Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive

You got to ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister in-between!

You got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
And have faith, or pandemonium
Liable to walk upon the scene

To illustrate my last remark
Jonah in the whale, Noah in the ark,
What did they do, just when everything looked so dark?
Man, they said, we better

Ac-cent-tchu-ate the positive
E-lim-i-nate the negative
And latch on to the affirmative
Don't mess with Mister in-between!

Andrews Sisters official website