What is Funny, Anyway?

In 1956, I was 17. I made my first trip to New York that year. Jazz was seriously on the place. Teagarden at the Round Table, Gene Krupa at the Metropole, Red Allen was there too in another band. I went to Jimmy Ryan’s every night for there the great Wilbur de Paris band was at its zenith. And what a band it was.

All these things will be chased around in future blogs. But wait!

While I was in New York in 1956, one of the movie houses was running W.C. Fields movies- a week-long festival. I went there and saw a different Fields film every day. The classics I saw included “It’s a Gift,” which is often spoken of as Fields’ masterpiece.

I left New York with a better understanding of what a jazz band should be and with my concept changed forever about what was and what was not funny.

The more modern comics I mostly prefer to skip, enjoying so much more the works of Chaplin, Laurel & Hardy, Ben Turpin, Fields and a few others. I have suggested to my wife Tina that if I am ever confined to a bed, she will almost certainly cause me to become well by setting me up to watch the old comedy movies. “It’s a Gift,” is my favorite movie of all time.

But there is another more modern movie that I would like to have included: “Young Frankenstein” by Mel Brooks. This movie is for me! If you haven’t seen it, I recommend a quick trip to Blockbuster video or Netflix.

Recently, my wife, Tina, and I went to see “Young Frankenstein – the Musical,” a road show touring from what I assume was a hugely successful run on Broadway.

Here in San Antonio, these things almost always play at the Majestic Theatre and the Majestic Theatre is one of a cluster of classic movie palaces across the USA. Just to walk into the place and see it without a play is worth a lot. But, of course, we were there for all the bells and whistles.

Okay, here is my verdict: This “Young Frankenstein” was about the most fun I ever had at a play. I thought it was, as Louis would quip, “a gasser!”

If you have, as we used to say, “even a Chinaman’s chance” you should grab it and pay the bread and see this thing fast.

Of course, the famous climax of “Young Frankenstein” is the monster in top hat, white tie, tails and walking stick dancing and singing “Puttin’ on the Ritz,” all out of meter.

At intermission I peered into the orchestra pit and saw several of our San Antonio aces resting their chops having wailed out the first half of the tricky New York score. One was John Carroll, who also is the principal trumpet player in the San Antonio Symphony. Also looking up from the floor of the pit, was Ron Wilkins, trombonist and jazz virtuoso the likes of which cannot be found anywhere, even New York (no kidding). Ron used to play a lot at the Landing and he still blows a set at the Landing on rare occasions, but usually he is a big shot over at the University of Texas.

Back to what is funny. Check out the amazing tickling scene from Laurel and Hardy’s “Way Out West.”

“Give me that deed to the gold mine,” a woman says to Stan Laurel.

Stan shakes his head and puts the deed in his shirt.

“Give me that deed or else,” she says, approaching slowly with clenched fists.

Stan is resolute.

The woman makes a dive for the deed and an insane tickling scene ensues – a perfectly choreographed wrestling match full of Stan's insane, high-pitched laughter and convulsing.

The scene is crazy, random and hilarious.

Here’s what Stan Laurel thought about comedy: “A friend once asked me what comedy was. That floored me. What is comedy? I don't know. Does anybody? Can you define it? All I know is that I learned how to get laughs, and that's all I know about it. You have to learn what people will laugh at, then proceed accordingly,” he said.

Okay, this is the end of Le Blog Hot for today, but listen, and seriously, try to see that road show. I posted videos of Stan Laurel being tickled and "Puttin' on the Ritz" following this blog for your enjoyment.

No More Daylight Savings Time. What?!

I am opposed to Daylight Savings Time. We need more music of the night. How about Night Savings Time?

This is true, baby. It is night time when you hear the beautiful music. The world’s great concert halls and the symphony orchestras that pour out the banked up work of our musical geniuses of the centuries do not happen at mid-morning.

The great music of the night goes off after dark.

The jazz player will tell you that it’s damned hard to get the creative juices going at noon. We go hear jazz after dark – at night clubs! That is when it happens! Right? Count Basie’s Band was built playing this schedule at the Reno Club: start at 9 pm and play until 4 am.

A lot more than the music happens after dark, you know. You look across the table and search deeply into her eyes and there is a thing in there that causes you not to be able to look away for she is giving you something you have never known before and you don’t know what it is yet, but whatever it is you are not nearly as likely to see it at the coffee shop at 7:30 am with the hard sunlight blinding you through the plate glass.

No, this kind of thing, and every human hungers for it, almost always happens at night. For the night is when we drink the fine red wine in the delicate bowl-shaped stemmed glass. And we also drink up what she is saying with her eyes. All this stuff that goes into the big container we label “romance” happens almost always at night.

To get down to it – the love-making is not going to be happening at mid-morning either. At least, not much!

How about the candle light, the great dinners, the phases of the moon, the searching of the stars in the heavens? I can go on. You get the idea.

At mid-summer, we jazzers start up the first hot tunes at 8:30 pm and it is still daylight at the night club. You know, we set our clocks back to make the daylight stretch. But we all know the good stuff happens after dark. Maybe more daylight is what some of us want. I think it is a bad idea. It just happens to us, and I’m not sure anybody much thinks about the why of it.

They say it started during the World War II when the country was absolutely back-to-the-wall desperate for more production. But the war has been over for 65 years!

Why are we so anxious for more daytime hours? What happens in the day anyway? Most of us struggle and beat ourselves up in the traffic and feel bad and are not in happy moods and work frantically, talking constantly on our cell phones and driving while we do it. In the daytime, we eat standing up, sling down one more cup. The only music we might hear is on the car radio, or if you are a kid you may have it pumped through “Apple” gadgets straight into your ears. This is between text messages, and you’re certainly never hearing it straight from a Stradivarius as the practiced master’s hand guides the bow across the double stops, the perfect intonation making the violin speak with a soft growl.

Now, I am not saying that making it get dark earlier will fix everything so that we prioritize for music and for love.

No, I’m not saying that. But I am saying that if we didn’t mess with the clock and hold off the night, life might be a little more fun and that is worth a lot!

Maybe we should move the clock the other way, so that it got dark even earlier.

If we did that, life just might, in a generation or two, get to be a lot more fun with more of the good stuff such as real jazz bands playing in night clubs.

How about it? What do you think?

Bow Ties and Jazz for the World

I went recently to a wedding reception. Everyone there was very dressed up – many little black dresses. All the gentlemen wore sport jackets or suits.

But I was the only one there wearing a necktie. You may think, “Oh, thank God! No more ties,” and, if you do, it is obvious that most of the world is on your side on this.

Personally, I like ties. I wear them a lot – even when I don’t have to. Usually, I wear bow ties.

That really gets them: “Bow tie? And you tie it yourself? No! That must be a clip-on bow tie,” they say. I pull on one end and it comes undone and hangs there looking like Sinatra or Dean Martin at Las Vegas.

My cousin says that ties chafe his neck. I blew him off. At one time we all wore ties and I don’t remember anyone having neck problems.

Here is the real deal: Ties aren’t cool anymore. My cousin, whose neck has become sensitive in his old age, says that ties are for the elite and, while he is elitist down to his toenails, it’s my opinion that he doesn’t want to appear to be elite. So, no ties and he lines up with the elite – the type that attended the wedding. They were all very cool guys – too cool for ties.

Now I especially like bow ties for the following reasons:

1. They don’t bother my neck. In fact, no tie bothers my neck.
   
2. Bow ties don’t get in your soup.
   
3. If you wear a bow tie (and a jacket) out into the world, it sometimes, and in strange ways, helps with things like getting a clerk or a nurse to pay attention to you. Maybe that is just my imagination, but I don’t think so.
   
4. Bow ties seem to have helped me talk my way out of traffic tickets.
   
5. If you are called to jury duty and you show up in a bow tie you are very unlikely to be placed on a jury. A lawyer friend of mine, who happens to be a fellow bow tie wearer, insists that it usually works this way, because they know if you are eccentric enough to show up in a bow tie, you may dominate the jury, and this would be bad.

I have become expert at tying bow ties. I will give a tying lesson to anyone who asks me. I think I am very good at teaching an easy to remember formula that will have you tied up in no time flat.

Here are good bow tie sources:

• Carrot and Gibbs – Boulder, Colorado. These guys make very classy bow ties, the length of which is controlled by four buttons and corresponding buttonholes at the back of the neck.
  
• Beau Ties of Vermont. Their ties are great and Beau Ties of Vermont publishes a monthly catalog that presents excellent photos of their ties.

If you do go for a few bow ties, try turning them upside down. (What?) I mean turn the tie so that the label, which is sewn at the center of the back, is upside down – this before you tie the tie, you know. And the next time, try placing the label inside out, away from the back of your neck. The label, of course, will not show because it is under your shirt collar.

This is all getting pretty complicated. The reason for it is, however, that if you switch a bow tie around all the time, it will last four times as long. If you don’t, you will eventually wear some holes in the fabric right where the knot goes, but probably you won’t live that long.

Another advantage which you might welcome is that bow ties, particularly brightly colored ones, bring forth a host of favorable comments from young women. I can’t tell you why. Maybe bow ties are cool after all.

Come and see me at the Landing. I’ll show you how to tie your new bow ties.

And listen – jazz sounds better when you are there with a date, who will quickly figure out that bow ties make you completely different from all the previous men in her life. Maybe they were too dull for bow ties!