I Heard the Voice of a Pork Chop

I haven't ever had a pork chop speak to me yet, but I suppose it's because I don't spend a lot of time in their company. Lyin' and triflin' things that they are. Anyway, they have made themselves known to Jim Jackson and he wrote a little song about it. I'm not sure why his palaver with a porkchop wasn't as noteworthy as a talking burning bush or talking snakes, maybe Jim Jackson just didn't get the right PR person.

Musical eccentricities of the Jazz Age

Popular Science takes a look at some oddball musical instruments of 1926.
The "Siamese banjo" looks a bit like the Thai jakhe — any ethnomusicologists out there recognize it?


Here's an ad for the "weird" one-stringed Jazzitha which promises to have everyone stepping in ten minutes.

Istanbul 1925

Istanbul 1925 - "presents a collection of legendary performers from one of the most exciting periods in Middle Eastern music. Belly dancing, folk music and classical styles were merged together, creating a sound that became the rage of Istanbul - a city situated literally at the crossroads of Europe and Asia. The greatest cabaret singers, musicians, dancers and classical artists from various ethnic backgrounds - Turks, Armenians, Jews, Greeks and Gypsies lived in Istanbul, creating a musical style that dominated the city for more than half a century.
Hundreds of recordings were made by His Master's Voice in Turkey and issued on 78 rpm records. Presented here are performances of Turkey's greatest artists recorded during that era, digitally remastered from the original metal parts" (quoted from the liner notes)
Shared by A Closet of Curiosities.


Kemani Haydar Tatliyay - Raks Bedia

Gladys Bentley

I really can't fathom why a black crossdressing Lesbian who made a fortune in Harlem speakeasies of the 20s and married her white girlfriend would be virtually forgotten today. She was pretty doggone entertaining on Groucho's "You Bet Your Life" (video below). You can read her bio here, and hear her early recordings at Honey Where You Been So Long and here.

Gus Visser and his Singing Duck

Any bets on what he's doing to make that duck quack?

Cotton Club Legends

Page Mr. Volstead is offering a succulent collection of music from legendary musicians who played Harlem's Cotton Club from the late 20s through the early 40s, including Jimmie Lunceford, Duke Ellington. Eubie Blake, and Cab Calloway. I'm loving Billy Banks' Scat Song, featuring some tips on writing your own Depression era wedding vows, skate 'n skeet, and hidey-hi, and scat-a-lat-a-lat indeed.

And now that you're in that era's musical groove, try the interestingly named Young Man With an Organ collection by Fats Waller courtesy of Good Old Ones.

Garden of Allah

Hollywood's Garden of Allah was owned by silent film star Alla Nazimova, and was the home and partying grounds of many notable performers and writers in the 1920s and 30s, such as F. Scott Fitzgerald, the Marx Brothers, Robert Benchley, Garbo, and Errol Flynn. Within walking distance of the hotel and its surrounding bungalows were Ciro's, the Mocambo, and Schwab's Drugstore. You can see a lovely small collection of images and memorabilia about the hotel's glory days here, and read the 1959 Time magazine story of its eventual demise.

Galen Gough

"October 5, 1923. Washington, D.C. The war hero and former invalid Galen Gough, known as the "Miracle Strong Man" after recovering from having his head caved in by bomb shrapnel in France."
Click image for full size at Shorpy.

"Gough's most serious wound came after an exhausting 24-hour march up to the front lines and into battle with the Marines at Vierzy, near Soissons. It was there shrapnel from an airplane bomb caved in the left side of his head and pierced his brain. By all standards he should have been dead. Service personnel at the scene thought he was dead and deposited his lifeless body with the other war casualties.
When officials finally discovered that Gough was still alive he was transferred back to New York where he was treated for his wounds. He was eventually discharged as permanently and hopelessly disabled.
Gough remained in that helpless condition for three years.
However, during those early years, Gough began experimenting with various exercises. He finally settled on crude isometrics and started a regiment of activities that eventually led him to a full recovery. In the process he dispelled the opinions of medical experts on two continents who said he would never be anything more than a hopeless invalid.
His strength didn't stop though, Gough continued to build up his twisted and wrecked body to a point that his recovery was beyond human belief. Noticing that his health had reached super-human proportions, Gough set off on a course that would lead him to such billings as "The Strongest Man on Earth," "The World's Miracle Strong Man" and "The Daringest Daredevil in The World."" (Quoted from this source)

Coming Attraction

"Rockville Fair, Maryland, 1928." Exhibit promoting the motion picture as educational tool.
Note: Click photo for full view at source.

Coming Attraction: 1928 as shared by Shorpy.

Question: Is that a TV? No! It can't be! Not in 1928. Well - what is it then??

Pin-ups

Click image for exposure at source.

ASIFA has pin-ups by Alberto Vargas.

What Sex Brings to the Girl

TEXT: Sex endows the girl with beauty of body, vivacity, and charm of manner. It is the sex or creative impulse which inspires her warmth of affection, her intensity of purpose, her desire to devote herself to the welfare of humanity.

The social hygiene movement of the early twentieth century combined moral indignation and public health methods in an attempt to combat prostitution and venereal disease. ...
..."Youth and Life" [edit: slideshow] was a 48-poster series, designed to educate teenage girls and young women about the dangers of sexual promiscuity and urged them to embrace moral and physical fitness. It was adapted in 1922 by the American Social Hygiene Association."
Social Hygiene Posters

"The true dadas are against Dada."

Untitled, 1920 by Max Ernst

"Dada blasted onto the scene in 1916 with ear-splitting enthusiasm: rowdy, brazen, irreverent, and assaulting. Its sounds were clamorous, its visions were shocking, and its language was explosive. Yet Dada was not aimless anarchy. Rather, the artists were responding to the violence and trauma of World War I—and to the shock of modernity more generally—by developing shock tactics of their own. They critiqued traditional conceptions of the artist as master of his medium by using prefabricated materials or relegating aesthetic decisions to chance. They scoffed at the conventional definition of artistic media, expanding it to include the stuff of modern life—newspapers, magazines, ticket stubs, mechanical parts, food wrappers, pipes, advertisements, light bulbs, and so on. Through their performances, publicity stunts, and manipulation of mass media, they further altered perceptions of what constituted a work of art by blurring the boundaries between art and life."
An introduction and exhibition to DADA at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

The Poley McClintock Sound Machine

Drummer Poley McClintock was surely the inspiration for the voice of Popeye in the Max Fleischer cartoons of the 1930s. Poley's gravelly voice punctuated many of the novelty tunes recorded in the late 20s through the 50s by Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians. I'll have to blame Twindowlicker for my case of Poley Fever (which sounds much more indelicate than I had intended); she has several links to Waring songs and videos featuring Poley for your enjoyment.

So naturally the Poley McClintock Sound Machine, which instantly generates Poley clips at a moment's notice, was of great amusement to me for veritable....minutes. So if you think you would derive great pleasure from a froggy-throated fella singing "I say it's spinach and to hell with it", this is absolutely the site for you.

And really, isn't this the sort of thing our Founding Fathers had in mind when they fought and died for America's Independence?

Image found at the Library of Congress site. Poley is the drummer, on the far left.

E. O. Hoppé

Fritz Lang, 1928 (Found in the gallery for Visual & Performing Artists) & Adrah Fair (Found in the E. O. Hoppé section of Vernacular Photography)
[Click images for enlargement at source]


'Open air cafe, Bombay, 1929' (Found in the gallery for "The Face of Mother India", 1935)
[Click image for enlargement at source]

E. O. Hoppé - photographer: galleries. (sort of via Vintage Photographs)

Cool golf ladies ... chillin'

'July 9, 1926. "Golf and bathing suits." For the first day of summer, we revisit the lovely ladies seen here a few days ago strumming ukuleles. Now they're on the links with an early air-conditioned golf cart.'
[Click any leg for a very COOL enlargement over at Shorpy]

Pingo Pongo

It's not often we get a real glimpse of what vaudeville was really like....here, Winnie Lightner performs a saucy little number, "Pingo Pongo". This may be from a Vitaphone short rather than a clip from a feature film.

Vest Tester

" ... When the bullet hit, Murphy never batted an eye. Inventors ot the bulletproof vest, which weighs about 11 pounds, have put iten the market for the protection of police and other officers in emergency cases. The bullet which Deputy Smith fired into the vest Wednesday was presented to him for a souvenir"
I'd say he was worth it.

Vest Test: 1923, at Shorpy.

Broadway photographs 1900-1930

Jerome Kern & Ona Munson

Broadway photographs - Art Photography & the American Stage 1900-1930 (thanks to KD over at Pop Culture Links)

Caught in the Web of Love

This clip is from "The Great Gabbo", a musical drama from 1929 featuring Erich von Stroheim and Betty Compson. And drama it is!

Video added by LordWham

Note: The full movie can be enjoyed here.

Waldman's music store in New York, 1921

"Waldman's music store in New York, May 1921. A nice selection of records and Victrolas, with Nipper keeping an eye on things."


"Another view of the Waldman's music store in Manhattan from 1921, showing records, listening booths and Victrolas. The inscription on the negative also says "N.Y. B'd Inst. Co."

Note: Click images for much, much better view over at Shorpy.