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Columns Pop & Circumstance Pop & Circumstance: Five Wild Classics from The Andrews Sisters | Pop & Circumstance: Five Wild Classics from The Andrews Sisters |
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| Written by Max Sparber | |
| Monday, April 28, 2008 at 11:31 AM | |
 The Andrews Sisters salute you But a lot gets lost in this picture of the Andrews Sisters. Firstly, it forgets that their origins were in real jazz. Their primary inspiration, beginning when they were performing on the Midwestern vaudeville circuit, was a New Orleans act called The Boswell Sisters, a close-harmony singing trio whose influence in jazz was significant enough that Ella Fitzgerald patterned her singing style after them. You can hear the similarities between Ella and the Andrews, too; lead soprano Maxine often affects the same girlish sass that Fitzgerald was famous for. And the sisters swung mighty hard. They frequently performed duets with Bing Crosby, and their responses to his laconic singing style involved radical time-shifts, wild syncopations, and sudden changes in pitch and key. They had an experimental sense of rhythm that would have left Buddy Rich gasping for air, and their understanding of harmony was unparalleled. They were, first and foremost, musicians, and highly skilled. But there's another aspect of the Andrews Sisters that is frequently forgotten. They were viewed as a "fun" trio, and so a large percentage of their voluminous output consisted of novelties, often ethnic, beginning with their first hit, a reworking of a Yiddish standard called "Bei Mir Bist Du Schon." With their broad smiles, conservative looks, and pale complexions (never mind that they were half Greek), the sisters were "safe" in a way that darker-skinned, darker-themed artists wouldn't have been, and so the Andrews Sisters were often the ones exposing a mass audience to the really wild artists of their era. These included the babbling hepcat Slim Gaillard, who often sang in invented foreign languages, and jump blues honker Louis Jordan, who would sometimes flop on his back while playing long saxophone solos and push himself across the stage with his legs. As a result, among the thousands of songs recorded by the Andrews Sisters, you find some really lunatic material. Here are five of their wildest: 1. "Civilization": Recorded in 1947 as a duet with song and dance funnyman Danny Kaye, this novelty tune, which reached #3 on the Billboard charts, is shocking to modern ears. Also knows as "Bongo, Bongo, Bongo (I Don't Want to Leave the Congo)", it tells the story of an African tribesman who dismisses the words of a missionary, making his case that his so-called "primitive" life is far more civilized than what you might find in America. Unfortunately, the lyrics paint the Africans in broad, grotesque caricatures, with them hanging from bamboo trees like chimpanzees (worsened by the fact that Danny Kaye chatters like a primate when impersonating them in the song). In all fairness, Kaye's primary influence here is almost certainly Slim Gaillard, in a pitch perfect impersonation of Gaillard's singing in ersatz foreign tongues, but it takes a moment to get beyond the song's cartoonish sensibility regarding Africans to appreciate the lyrics' devilish, stinging satire. Download "Civilization" here or stream below: 2. "I Didn't Know the Gun Was Loaded": Every so often, the Andrews Sisters would do a Broadway-styled cowboy song. Two of their bigger hits were "Don't Fence Me In" and "Lay That Pistol Down," both duets with Bing Crosby based around a rollicking, clopping horse rhythm; the latter song has the sisters brandishing pistols at a philandering Bing as he begs for his life. "I Didn't Know the Gun Was Loaded" is a sort of sequel to this, telling of a sharpshooting cowgirl named Effie who has the bad habit of shooting holes in her suitors, and then instantly proclaiming her innocence. The song features one of the sisters' wildest arrangements, with a clarinet occasionally intruding to play what sound like klezmer riffs, and the entire orchestra occasionally breaking into a New Orleans jazz funeral-style rave up. Download "I Didn't Know the Gun Was Loaded" here or stream below: 3. "A Man is Brother to a Mule": "When a man meets a woman, she's liable to think he's human," the Andrews Sisters warn us in this vaguely Latin American-styled tune. They know the truth: With their ornery tempers and sheer contrariness, a man's closest biological relative is the ass. Download "A Man is Brother to a Mule" here or stream below: 4. "Strip Polka": Perhaps the clearest indication that the Andrews Sisters were Minnesotans was their tendency to record polkas, which they did with alarming frequency. Their oddest is this one, recorded in 1942, about a burlesque artist names Queenie who, for unaccountable reasons, pulls her clothes off while her band plays oompa oompa music. The song's middle bridge has the Andrews Sisters' band playing history's sleaziest polka as the sisters cry out "Take it off! Take it off! Take it off!" Download "Strip Polka" here or stream below: 5. "The Yodeling Ghost": Not to be mistaken for the Patsy Montana song of the same title, this is a duet with Bing Crosby about a mysterious yodel, the product of a dead Swiss man who is haunting the girl who rejected his affections. What could be less terrifying? Download "The Yodeling Ghost" here or stream below: Max Sparber is a playwright, arts critic, and current editor of MnSpeak.com. He writes about topics as diverse as the films of William Shatner, comic meditations on old album covers, and puzzling candy produced in China, and his thoughts on these subjects can be found on at www.maxsparber.com. |
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| Last Updated: Monday, April 28, 2008 at 01:45 PM |
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