“In radio it’s Burns and Allen, and Fred Allen and Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor.  The films particularly in the thirties you know not only Jolson but The Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields, the Ritz Brothers, Wheeler and Woolsey, lots of big teams who were big in Vaudeville were huge stars in the early thirties and then sort of got forgotten like Wheeler and Woolsey.” 

 

 

Yowza, Yowsa, yowza. This is Brian Marcus Decker, for the Jolson and Friends Blog located on the web at www.JolsonBlog.com, the first tech-nostalgia blog dedicated to the musical influences of Al Jolson and friends.  Ladies and gentleman, we continue with Part II of our seven-part series on Vaudeville starring Trav S.D., an author, journalist, playwright, director and performance artist.  He has recently published a fascinating and entertaining book entitled “No Applause, Just Throw Money” which provides a provocative look at the history and impact of Vaudeville on American culture. 

 

The book also addresses a triage of topics including the performers, the Vaudeville circuit theaters as well as their owners.  Highlighted in this book are the musical, comedic, and magical talents of, of course, our one and only Al Jolson, as well as Eddie Cantor, Bert Williams, Sophie Tucker, Fanny Brice, Harry Houdini, Jack Benny, George Burns, Gracie Ellen, Jimmy Durante, Judy Garland, The Marx Brothers, Mae West, W.C. Fields, Bob Hope, Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Milton Berle, Norah Bays, George M. Cohan, Weber and Fields and many, many more.  

 

Free Vaudeville Part II Interview Podcast

After collecting audio assets for five Jolson related interviews, in the last few months I have launched the First Jolson Podcast and you can listen to my 7-part interview on Vaudeville with author Trav S.D. 

 

To listen to the free Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast published audio files

Use http://feed.jolsonblog.com and click on:

 

Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast: Vaudeville Interview Part II

 

To subscribe to the free Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast published audio files

 

Use http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ or http://www.podcastalley.com or http://bloglines.com/ to set-up account and then search on Jolson and Friends Blog Podcast.

 

If you are currently using a RSS or atom reader add http://feed.jolsonblog.com to you subscribed content list.

 

Tribute to Rudy Wissler (1928 – 2007)

 

Original photography and collage by Brian Marcus Decker Copyright © 2007

 

Rudy Wissler has passed away last Thursday, January 11^th.  Rudy Wissler was best known as the dubbed singing voice for young Al Jolson, played by Scotty Beckett, in “The Jolson Story”.  Rudy had sung, in this monumental tribute film, “On the Banks of the Wabash”, “Sabbath Prayer”, “Ave Maria”, “When You Were Sweet Sixteen”, “After the Ball”, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon” and “Good Bye My Blue Bell”. Rudy Wissler had attended many of the recent annual The International Al Jolson Society events. I feel especially fortunate and privileged to have met Rudy and saw him perform (on and off stage) at the 2006 IAJS convention in Philadelphia.  Rudy was another important connection to the legacy of Al Jolson and will be missed.

 

International Al Jolson Society: 2007 Jolson Festival in Toronto

This exciting annual Jolson event will take place on Friday, May 25, 2007 through Sunday, May 27, 2007 in Mississaugaosta, Ontario, Canada.  Special entertainment will include Tony Babino (The heart of Jolson), Richard Halpern (Mr. Tin Pan Alley) and William Campbell (Scotland's Own Jolson).

 

For more information, go to www.Jolson.org and click on the Click for information on May, 2007, Jolson Festival near Toronto, Canada link.

 

Janet Cantor Gari

Janet Cantor Gari, youngest daughter of Eddie Cantor, was recently mugged in New York City.  Janet has sustained multiple injuries is still unable to walk.  As a personal friend of Janet and her son Brian, this is outrageous that anyone could hurt such a sweet person.

 

Anyone who would like to extend their personal wishes for a fast recovery can send an email to Garisongs@aol.com or a letter or card to:

 

Janet Cantor Gari

c/o Brian Gari

650 West End Avenue

New York, NY
10025>

 

 

Jolson and Friends Blog Special Feature: Clive Baldwin Video Play List

 

 

Copyright © 2007 Brian Marcus Decker

 

For those of you, who have not had the opportunity to see Clive Baldwin, the Jolson and Friends Blog, is featuring a few video links on www.youtube.com.

 

Click here to view Clive Baldwin’s video performing the Jolson classic, “Let Me Sing and I'm Happy”:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=hs__BiwIwps&mode=related&search=

 

 

NEW SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT: Video tape to DVD transfer services

 

My overall mission for this blog is to preserve and archive an important part of our cultural history as it relates to Jolson, as well as related music and the performing arts.  Too often, many of these historical treasures, including people, films, recordings, artwork and theatres have disappeared and have been long forgotten.

 

In our personal lives, many of us have kept copies of videotapes of important friends and family events including vacations, birthdays, weddings and holiday celebrations. After 10 years of lying on the shelf in a closet, you may find out that some of your video tapes are no longer playable and these precious moments are lost forever.

 

As a special service to the Jolson and Friends community, Affinitee LLC is offering an affordable way to preserve these priceless memories digitally for generations by transferring your VHS tapes to DVDs.

 

VHS (unedited) videotape transfers to DVD is $14.99 plus shipping. Additional DVD copies of the same VHS tape are $9.99.

 

• Return U.S. shipping costs for up to three original videotapes and DVD copies is $9.95 via FedEx Ground or UPS with no signature required.
• These DVD-videos are 100% compliant to the DVD standards and will play on DVD players that read DVD-R media. Almost all DVD players made in the past 3 years play DVD-R media.
• Your tape transfer to DVD will include chapter markers every 10 minutes. Just use the fast forward function on your DVD remote to jump forward or backwards.
• These prices are based on up to two-hours of continuous tape conversions without any editing for VHS format tapes only.
• This service can not duplicate materials that are copy protected including commercial films.

 

To place a videotape transfer to DVD order or request additional information, payments through Pay Pal, please contact: brian@affinitee.com .

 

 

Save on limited edition T-shirts up (Includes FREE Shipping)

 

You will be “Sitting on Top of the World” with these limited edition T-shirts.  These are perfect holiday gifts for collectors of nostalgia and a must have for anyone interested in the legendary Al Jolson and Eddie Cantor. Each t-shirt comes with a FREE matching gift card.

 

AffiniTee LLC only uses brand new Hanes Beefy-Ts premium 6.1 oz. heavyweight pre-shrunk 100% cotton.  These unique vintage images are applied using a high pressure industrial heat press and professional grade hot transfers and a proprietary process for extended wear.

 

This unique T-shirts is available in white or black in adult sizes including small (34-36), medium (38-40), adult large (42-44) and XL (46-48) sizes. Additional sizes including children, adult XXL and XXXL are available on a special order basis and are subject to a $3.00 surcharge to prices listed below

 

 

 

     Jolson Singing Fool                          Cantor Tell to the Judge                      Moon Rocket Ride

 

         Jolie                                       Old Time Baseball                   Asbury Park Clowns

            Sherlock Double                            Sherlock Improbable                          Sudoku Puzzle

 

 

 

Here’s the Deal:

 

Al Jolson Limited Edition T-shirt: The Singing Fool

This is a vintage color reproduction of a 1928 theatrical program.

 

Eddie Cantor Limited Edition T-shirt: Tell it to the Judge

This is a vintage two-color reproduction of 1930s board game.

 

Moon Rocket Ride Limited Edition Carnival T-shirt

This is a vintage color reproduction of a hand painted tin carnival sign.

 

Jolie NEW Black & White Limited Edition T-shirt:

This is a vintage B/W illustration of Jolie from the 1920s.

 

NEW Color Old Time Baseball Limited Edition T-shirt:

Forget the Dodgers; this is real deal, a turn of the century Brooklyn Baseball T-shirt.

 

NEW Asbury Park Clowns Limited Edition Boardwalk T-shirt

This clown no longer graces Asbury Park Boardwalk, but this vintage color reproduction lives on.

 

NEW Sherlock Double Limited Edition T-shirt

Looking left and right “the game is afoot” with this vintage, black and white illustrated, Sherlock t-shirt, with no clues overlooked. 

 

NEW Sherlock Improbable Limited Edition T-shirt

Vintage Sherlock, black and white illustrated profile, on t-shirt with famous quote, “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

 

NEW Sudoku Clueless Limited Edition T-shirt

Sudoku aficionados can proudly challenge the world with this puzzling T-shirt.

 

 

 

Here’s the Deal: Save up to 10%

 

White or Natural T-Shirt: $18.00 with FREE U.S Shipping and Matching Gift Card (Regular price $20.00)

 

Black T-Shirt: $20.00 with FREE U.S Shipping and Matching Gift Card (Regular price $22.00)

 

Pack of 5 gift cards: with envelopes is $9.00 with FREE U.S Shipping (Regular price $10.00)

 

Pack of 10 gift cards: with envelopes is $16.00 with FREE U.S Shipping (Regular price $18.00)

 

 

For additional information, special orders, discounted shipping outside theU.S., payments through Pay Pal, please contact: brian@affinitee.com .

 

To order please specify style (Jolson, Cantor, Moon, Jolie, Brooklyn Baseball, Asbury Park Clown, Sherlock Double Profile, Sherlock Improbable, Sudoku), quantity, size, t-shirt color (white/natural or black), type (t-shirts or matching gift cards) and your shipping address. Please send checks to:

 

AffiniTee LLC c/o

Brian Marcus Decker

24 Arverne Road

West Orange, NJ

07052>

 

  

Part II: Vaudeville Interview with Trav S.D.

Author Trav S.D.

Copyright © 2007 Brian Marcus Decker

 

Brian Marcus Decker:  In the last few years we’ve seen PBS, the Public Broadcasting System produce a documentary on Vaudeville.  The New York Public Library Performing Arts producing a fascinating exhibit and film series called The Vaudeville Nation and even performers who have successfully integrated sort of old-time comedy into their musical acts such as The Asylum Street Spankers.  What is fuelling this contemporary interest in this important art form?

 

Trav S.D.:  This is a question I really struggle with and I don’t think there’s … there’s one, but possibly two reasons.  One is that it’s simply time.  For a while, for a generation or two at least, there are going to be people who consider Vaudeville old-hat and so everything they did was going to be a sort of reaction to it and I think that’s what you know rock and roll and sick comedians and that sort of era of entertainment was a reaction to old-school show business. The other reason is I think we live in this era where there’s an explosion of electronic access to performance that just never existed before, so that through the Internet and through, you know, reissues on CD and DVD of old cylinders and film and stuff like that, gives young people access to these performances they never had before and so people are starting to get really interested and excited about it.

 

Brian Marcus Decker:  In your book you share with readers a number of intelligent, quirky, and informative perspectives on Vaudeville.  One of my other favorite quotes is “Over the course of a couple hours Vaudeville audiences might encounter singers, comedians, musicians, dancers, trained animals, female impersonators, acrobats, magicians, hypnotists, jugglers, contortionists, mind readers, and a wide variety of strange uncategorizable performers usually lumped into the category of ‘nuts’”.  Can you talk about some of the most unusual acts?

“William Demarest … was huge in Vaudeville.  He would play some classical music on the cello and then all of a sudden he would stop and he would get down on the floor and he’d do like this big acrobatic belly flop and then flip up onto his feet and then finish the cello piece.”

Trav S.D.: Yeah, I can talk about a couple.  You know it’s funny to me because that’s most people’s most favorite aspect of Vaudeville and somehow it’s not mine, but I know of a couple.  One that interests me is William Demarest who people probably know best from being Uncle Charlie on My Three Sons, he was huge in Vaudeville.  He was a MC at The Palace and he was you know, but before that he was in act with his wife Estelle Collette and what he was famous for doing was he was actually an excellent cello player which is counter-intuitive because he seems like kind of a rough guy, but he would play some classical music on the cello and then all of a sudden he would stop and he would get down on the floor and he’d do like this big acrobatic belly flop and then flip up onto his feet and then finish the cello piece.  There’s Professor Backwards, who was very famous.  He could say everything backwards. Hadji Ali was a regurgitator and so he’s famous for this unique ability he had to swallow some water and swallow some kerosene and them somehow or other, I still can’t figure out how, he would be able to at will spout, you know he’d spout the kerosene onto a flame which would make it flame higher and then spout the water and put the fire out.

 

Brian Marcus Decker:  Also William Demarest was in the “Jolson Story” and “Jolson Sings Again” acting as Jolson’s original mentor, bringing him into Vaudeville and beyond. William Demarest was certainly an important character in Jolson’s career (at least in in both of these classic movies). 

Also I wanted to talk a little bit about why you think Vaudeville is considered the catalyst for most mass-entertainment mediums, including audio recordings, radio, both silent and talking pictures, television, the book musical, as well as stand-up and skit comedy.

 

Trav S.D.:  Well part of it’s just an accident of timing, you know, it was the forum in which all of these entertainers trained and so when these new mediums were born these artists were just unleashed into them, and you know you go right down the line.  In radio it’s Burns and Allen, and Fred Allen and Jack Benny and Eddie Cantor.  The films particularly in the thirties you know not only Jolson but The Marx Brothers and W.C. Fields, The Ritz Brothers, Wheeler and Woolsey, lots of big teams who were big in Vaudeville were huge stars in the early thirties and then sort of got forgotten like Wheeler and Woolsey.  And TV obviously borrows the format of Vaudeville with the Milton Berle Texaco Star Theater and Ed Sullivan and that thrived for decades until at least the seventies and then there’s kind of a reaction to old-school showbiz, but it lasted at least long enough for someone like me to at least get interested in it because it was still around in the seventies.

February 1, 2007: Vaudeville Interview Part III

• Jolson successfully worked in the Vaudeville circuit for several years excluding his time with the Lew Dockstader’s Minstrels.  He was also moderately a successful gambler who loved the track, boxing, and betting on cards.  As a gambler he also achieved stardom in making a successful transition to the legitimate book theater.  He is also recognized as a successful recording artist, as well as a first feature film length talking star of the silver screen as well as his success in radio.  What is it that you think that drove Jolson’s successful transition into all these mediums?
• The Vaudeville era experienced its first premature burial around 1931 but you emphatically state that, “the Vaudeville business didn’t die, it just grew and modernized.”  How did this fable era of entertainment continue to reinvent itself and maintain a mass audience?
• In talking about what was needed to get into Vaudeville you mention that there were two key ingredients, “chutzpah and moxie”.  This seemed to be much more important in many cases than talent.  Can you share with us a few examples of some of the most unusual but successful acts in Vaudeville that were a little light on talent?
• In talking of theaters, of all the many Vaudeville theaters, why was it The Palace, why was it considered the Mecca of show business?

 

 This is Brian Marcus Decker and thank you for joining us on the Jolson and Friends blog.  This is the first and most important blog dedicated to the life and musical influences of the legendary Al Jolson, The World’s Greatest Entertainer, as well as his friends.  And please visit us again http://www.jolsonblog.com. 

 

Jolson and Friends Blog Required Reading List

No Applause--Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous by Trav S.D.: >

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

 

 

My Fifteen Minutes: An Autobiography of a Child Star of the Golden Era (Paperback) by Sybil Jason.

 

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

 

When Jolson Was King: (Paperback) by Richard Grudens.  Richard Grudens has written an entertaining and informative (must read) book for anyone interested in the legendary, Al Jolson "The World's Greatest Entertainer".

“The book contains many facets of Jolson' career including those around him, his competition, employers, and comments from those he inspired enough to form their own careers, the issue of minstrel, blackface performers, fabled stories of the famed Friar's Club, a chapter of the infamous Shubert Brothers, and chapters covering Jolson's experiences in film, radio and his extensive USO travels. Covered too are vignettes of the theatres in which Jolson performed, and of those great theatrical competitors like the Barrymore's and where they were voicing their talents while Jolson was pulling them in at the Winter Garden, and a full feature on Jolson's films from the first talkie, The Jazz Singer to his famed bio-pics The Jolson Story and Jolson Sings Again.” – Richard Grudens

Click here to shop and buy this book from Amazon

 

 

Changes to Jolson and Friends Blog

 

In the upcoming months I am looking to continue to evolve the Jolson and Friends Blog and wanted preview some upcoming changes.  As of this post, I am promoting the sale of Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor and fifteen new Limited Edition T-shirt designs (featured above) and matching gift cards (with free shipping). The sales from these items will help offset the cost of maintaining this blog.

 

Due to the time intensive nature of ongoing research, content development, production and maintaining and the Blog, I will am publishing twice a month instead of weekly. The next blog update will happen on February 4, 2007.

 

 

I am starting to work on several future Jolson and Friends projects including:

·         Video tapes to DVD transfer service.

·         Jolson and Friends Recommended Reading and Viewer Lists including cost-saving shopping links to find out-of-print books, videos and more.

·         Expanded global coverage of local events.

·         Future podcasts of upcoming interviews and special performance-based content.

 

To ensure that you are automatically informed about new postings, please enter your email address at the sidebar on the left of this blog page or send an email to my attention, with the subject line “Subscribe”, to: brian@JolsonBlog.com.

 

 

 

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