And now, Schickele Mix. Ready, Mr. Schickele? You better believe it. Here's the theme.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
Hello there, I'm Peter Schickele, and this is Schickele Mix, a program dedicated to the proposition that all musics are created equal. Or as Duke Ellington put it, if it sounds good, it is good. And it is with a good deal of gratitude that I report that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this commendable radio station, where I produced these shows prior to their distribution by PRI.
And I need all the help I can get, because I am Mr. Low Tech himself. To me, a Mac is a truck, and a website is a glimpse of Sergeant Joe Friday. But I do have friends who know that download does not mean a vein of goose feathers, and sometimes they pass things along to me, like the complaint that showed up on one of the internet bulletin boards about my signature intro.
The complainant took great exception to the proposition that all musics are created equal, pointing out that some music is better than other music. Fortunately, someone else responded that what he or she thought I meant was that no type of music is inherently bad. There's good and bad stuff in all areas of music. I say fortunately because asking me to defend myself on the internet would be like asking Charlie Brown to defend himself against Sonny Liston.
I wouldn't even know how to get to the arena. Of course, what's good and what's bad is a subjective call, but that's cool. I respect a lot of people with strong opinions, even if I don't agree with them. My dad, for instance, wouldn't let me listen to Spike Jones records while he was home. Now, in case some of you youngsters out there think that that's incredibly draconian, let me point out that in the late 1940s you didn't have an entertainment center in every room of the house.
We had one radio, one phonograph, and one telephone, all in the living room, so there wasn't much in the way of privacy. In fact, the first time I phoned a girl to ask her out on a date, I made the rest of the family, the whole rest of the family, leave the house. They went for a drive while I made the call. She was a nice girl, Marianne, and I'll bet it took me months to get up the courage to ask her out.
She was one of the few kids at Fargo High who played piano, or classical piano anyway, and she...
[sound: phone rings]
You know, they won't let me turn this thing off. Excuse me. Hello? Hi honey, what's up? Well, of course I never told you about her. She turned me down. Well, I was devastated, but we never went out together. There's nothing to tell. Okay, look, I gotta get back. I'll see you later. Bye.
Huh. No comment. Now, where was I? Oh yeah, about my dad not wanting to be subjected to Spike Jones. The point is that... Oh man, I hope it isn't going to be one of those days.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Oh, hi mom.
Yeah, well, that's very interesting mom, but I've really got to get on with the show, okay? I'll call you later. Okay.
Well, my mother says that when they came back from the drive, I was happy. I was relieved that Marianne turned me down. Well, look, I was scared about going out on my first date, and I may have been asking her to a dance, which would have been the scariest thing of all. So, yeah, maybe I was relieved, but that doesn't mean I wasn't heartbroken. I mean, if she had... This is incredible.
[sound: phone rings]
Hello?
Really? Well, it's nice to hear your voice, too. Talk about a surprise. What's it been? 45, 46 years? Hey, I'd love to talk, but listen, now's not a good time. Are you here in town? Great. Well, I'll tell you what. There's a place called Smidgen's. It's nice and quiet and sort of out of the way. It's by the old train station. You want to meet there in about an hour? Terrific.
Yeah, well, there's a lot to talk about. Okay, see you there.
Wow. That was, uh, well, it's hard to remember what this show's supposed to be about with all these interruptions. You know, I'm sorry that my dad isn't around anymore, but at least it means he's not gonna call up and tell me why he didn't like Spike Jon- I can't believe this.
Hello? Uncle Otto, how are you? To what do I owe- yeah. Yeah, no, I'm sure you're right. It was a German cultural thing, right? I mean, music was just not something you made fun of.
Well, and also, there was a strong Dixieland jazz element in Spike Jones, and Dad didn't really like jazz much. Yeah, okay, Billie Holiday, but even there, I think that Strange Fruit was the only record of hers we had. Hey, Otto, I've got to get back to the show, so thanks for calling, and I'll see you next time I'm out, okay? Okay, bye. I really apologize, folks. I don't think it's ever been this bad in terms of interruptions. Look, it's time to get to some music here.
Today's show is about some of the ways you can make music with just your body, aside from straight singing. Now, when it comes to the human body, there are certain sound-producing techniques that I'll skip over. But if you're talking about unusual noises in a musical context, Spike Jones is certainly one of the names that springs to mind, or rather, one of the names that boing-oing-oing-oings to mind.
Here, in the humble opinion of this correspondent, is one of his best cuts.
[music: Freed/Noble/Leleiohaku, "Hawaiian War Chant" (The Spike Jones Anthology); Spike Jones]
Recording: As the sun pulls away from the shore, and our boat sinks slowly in the west, we approach the island of Lulu. Spelled backwards, Ul Ul. Ah, in the distance we hear Spike Jones and his wacky wacky kids.
[No speech for 101 s.]
Hawaiian War Chant, as rendered by Spike Jones and his City Slickers. You know, it's true that Spike Jones turned my life around in a way, if a nine year old's life can be said to be turned around. He was one of the main reasons I got interested in music at all.
But because of my involvement with the equally irresponsible music of P.D.Q. Bach, a lot of people assume that the funny stuff was the only thing that attracted me to the City Slickers. But that band was also my introduction to jazz, or at least the Dixieland style. Most beboppers and postboppers have no use whatsoever for Dixieland, but at its contrapuntal, freewheeling best, to me it has the exhilarating feeling of ecstatic dancing.
[music excerpt: Freed/Noble/Leleiohaku, "Hawaiian War Chant" (The Spike Jones Anthology); Spike Jones]
Hey, what's that famous Matisse painting called, The Dance, you know, with the dancers in a circle? If you asked, what music would you put to that painting, I suppose a lot of people would say Ravel's Daphnis and Chloe or something, but I'd say Spike Jones Band playing Dixieland. But of course, I'm not saying that I wasn't attracted to the funny noises.
Around the time my brother and I were 8 and 10 we and our friends used to spend hours on summer afternoons acting out Spike Jones records and even when the richest kid on the block got a little home record cutting machine recording our own wacky versions of popular songs. My brother was just beginning to play violin, but aside from that and a few things to hit, like ashtrays and each other, we had no instruments.
So we got pretty good at using our voices in unusual ways, and we also worked on other kinds of mouth music. Tongue clicking, for instance. Most people do a soft tongue click, but
[sound: soft tongue click]
I developed a considerable facility with the hard tongue click.
[sound: hard tongue clicks]
Changing the shape of your cheeks while you do a click produces a sound that never fails to enchant babies.
[sound: tongue clicks, changing the shape of the cheeks]
Later on, I used to wow them at parties by performing the On the Trail theme from Ferde Grofé's Grand Canyon Suite all by myself. I mean, just humming and tongue-clicking. Oh no, hey, I can hear you as well as if you had the microphone, but there's no way I'm going to do it. Listen, tongue-clicking is something that, in me anyway, seems to be affected by age, and I just can't do it as well as I used to, so forget it. You'll just have to take my word for it.
[sound: phone rings]
Here we go again. Hello? Yes, sir. All right. Yes, sir. Goodbye. It went something like this.
[music: demonstration, "On the Trail" hummed with tongue clicks]
Pretty silly, really. And in terms of virtuosity, nothing at all compared to the work of the masters. Carl Grayson was the guy who did that gliggity glug singing on Hawaiian War Chant, and if you think it's easy, just try it yourself. We've got a suite coming up here, and the middle section of the first number is practically a concerto for Carl Grayson.
In the second number, we will hear singing, breathing, hissing, clapping, heel stomping, cheek snapping, tongue clicking, tooth tapping, and chest and thigh slapping. The last number, in addition to some whistling, contains a duet between two chickens and laughing. I know several songs that include laughing, but this is the only one I can think of in which the laughing is performed with definite pitches.
The Body Music Suite lasts about ten and a half minutes, after which I shall return.
[music: Coslow/Johnston, "Cocktails for Two" (The Spike Jones Anthology); Spike Jones]
[music: Terry, "Body Music"; Keith Terry & Crosspulse]
[music: Gallop/Rose, "Holiday for Strings" (The Spike Jones Anthology); Spike Jones]
Spike Jones started and ended the Body Music Suite, started out with Cocktails for Two, I love the country fiddle illustrating the words exquisite chansonette, and ended it with Holiday for Strings. In between, we heard Keith Terry performing his Body Music.
Keith was a roadie and stagehand for some of the P.D.Q. Bach tours, and I hope he won't mind if I say that everything he does traces its origins back to his work with me. But he probably will mind, because it isn't true. Very talented guy. You know, I was talking about my rendition of On the Trail being silly, and as a matter of fact, sometimes I am more or less dumbfounded by how silly I could be.
And then I listened to some of those Spike Jones records or the radio appearances back then, and you know, those were silly times. There was a lot of very silly humor, often abbreviated V.S.H., during the 1940s, and those guys were grownups. Long after I became an adult, a delightful English friend of my wife's used to say, Peter, you're so stupid! And it's hard to argue with that. Starting with my name, I guess.
Joan Baez once recorded a bunch of pop standards. I don't think the album was ever released. And I did one chart for it. And when I was brought into the studio, which was full of commercial musicians, you know, the jazz pop guys, the regular arranger, whose nickname was Trade, he said, I want to introduce you to the band. What's your name? I said, Peter Schickele, and he said, well, we'll have to do something about that. But you know, I never got around to it.
My name is still Peter Schickele, and the show is still Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
Today's show is called, I Sing the Body Eclectic, and we're looking at ways to make music with the body other than ordinary singing. The singing we are about to hear is extraordinary. It might be thought of as extended singing, but it's most often called throat singing. It consists of singing a low fundamental tone and then, by manipulating the various parts of the mouth, focusing the natural overtones of that low note until they are amazingly distinct and audible.
The singer can actually produce a melody on top by focusing on different overtones. Now my friend from college, David Robinson, he can sing two notes at once, but it's sort of a freakish thing, if he doesn't mind my saying so. He just goes and two notes come out, but he can't really control them much. It's more like a train whistle than a musically useful tool.
Throat singing, on the other hand, is a highly controlled technique in which one person can provide a drone and a melody at the same time, which is why I call this suite two voices for the price of one. The first selection demonstrates several techniques of throat singing, and the second one shows what can happen when you get a half a dozen or so throat singers together doing independent parts. I'll see you in six minutes.
[music: Trad., "Medley of various throat singing styles" (Tuva: Voices from the Center of Asia)]
[music excerpt: Hykes, "Hearing Solar Winds"; The Harmonic Choir]
Our suite-let, which is called Two Voices for the Price of One, somehow a humorous title doesn't feel so good at the end of that suite-let. It began with the ensemble Amarack from Tuva in Central Asia on a Smithsonian Folkways recording, and ended with an excerpt from Hearing Solar Winds by David Hykes, director of the Harmonic Choir, who was singing.
The label is Ocora, distributed by Harmonia Mundi France, but it's an LP, I don't know if it's still around. It's an enthralling sound, and I don't use that word casually. It really puts you in thrall.
My mother says that people don't whistle as much as they used to, and she may be right. If so, I can't help thinking that it's somehow connected to my politically unpopular theory that the higher people's standard of living gets, the less they sing spontaneously. When Vaughan Williams and Bartok and Lomax were out there collecting folk songs, they didn't go to bankers and lawyers and doctors. They went to farmers and cowboys and laborers.
When was the last time you heard somebody whistling as they walked down the street? Oh, all right, I suppose there are other factors, too. The next three numbers feature whistling as an important element, but since it's all done by professional musicians, I call this the Work While You Whistle Suite. I'll be back in eight and a half minutes.
[music: Haggart/Bauduc, "Big Noise from Winnetka" (Finest Vintage Jazz, 1917 -1941); Bob Crosby Orchestra (Bob Haggart & Ray Bauduc)]
[music: Ives, "Momories"; Jan DeGaetani, mezzo-soprano/Gilbert Kalish, piano]
The Work While You Whistle Suite began with two members of the Bob Crosby Orchestra performing the Big Noise from Winnetka. Bob Haggart whistling and playing bass, Ray Bauduc on drums, and then Jan DeGaetani and Gilbert Kalish performed Memories, a charming binary song, as in binary star, by Charles Ives. And finally, we heard Fred Lowrey whistling Rossini's William Tell Overture. He's pretty good, all right.
You might call him the mother of all whistlers, as opposed to Whistler's mother. That's originally off an LP he had all to himself, but this cut is part of a CD called Incredibly Strange Music, Volume 1. The host of this program, on the other hand, is called Peter Schickele, and the program is called Schickele Mix, from PRI, Public Radio International.
I sing the body eclectic, ways beyond singing of making music all by yourself. Everybody assumes, because of my reputation as a musical demi-mondaine, that I'm a master of all the less highly regarded ways of melodically utilizing the body. But a lot of those techniques elude me, or I avoid them. For instance, the old finger-in-the-cheek routine.
The inside of my mouth is very sensitive. I do about four or five of those and I've got like a rash for a week. Same with cheek snapping.
That's for masochists. Speaking of masochists, I once had a guy demonstrating his virtuosity as a, you know, you knock your knuckles on the top of your head and change the cavity of your mouth to produce pitches. I'm not even going to do it. And it was backstage after a concert. And he said, it's too noisy here. You can't hear it. So he grabs two empty Coke bottles and starts clonking himself on the top of his head while mouthing the William Tell Overture. Not for me.
And you know whistling with your hands cupped sort of like making an ocarina with your hands? When I was in sixth grade, I was a patrol boy helping younger kids get across the street safely. I had a broad white canvas belt thing that went around my waist and diagonally up over one shoulder. Very military. Anyway, I spent a lot of time on that corner, and I tried for hours to whistle by cupping my hands. Someone had shown me how to do it, but it was beyond me.
Then one day I blew a long, beautiful note, and that was it. I never could do it again. I'm telling you, I've had a life full of disappointment. Our last suite featured whistling, featured. In the next one, it's simply regarded as one of the many sounds available to the composer, which is why I call the suite A Whistler in the Band. It has three movements and lasts about five and a half minutes. See you then.
[music: Schnittke, “Moz - art (nach dem Fragment K416d) for Two Violins; Mateja Marinkovic/Thomas Bowes]
[music: Morricone, "The Good, the Bad & the Ugly" (Film Music, Volume 1); Ennio Morricone]
[music excerpt: Orff, "Music for Children"; Instrumental ensemble directed by Carl Orff]
A Whistler in the Band began with the first part of a piece by Alfred Schnittke called Moz-Art. It's based on a Mozart fragment for two violins, and that was Mateja Marinkovic and Thomas Bowes on violin. And then we had Ennio Morricone, the theme song of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly, surely one of the great movie titles of all time.
And then finally a little instrumental piece played by kids who look from the picture to be, say, between the ages of four and seven. This is from a set of pieces called Music for Children by Carl Orff and Gunild Keetman. I can't believe, after the way this show started off, that we've gone as long as we have without the phone ri-
[sound: phone rings]
I guess there's a lesson there, huh?
[sound: phone rings]
Hello? Well, I tell you, I don't usually do requests. You know, I don't have that much right easily available. But what did you want to hear?
Okay, the tune is called Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island, and it's Larry Parker whistling without any accompaniment, and it's an LP released in the 1970s by Dixie Swing Bop Productions, New York City. I think we can do that. Thanks for calling.
[music: "Manhattan, the Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Staten Island"; Larry Parker]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, by the National Endowment for the Arts, and by this radio station and its members. Thank you, members. And not only that, our program is distributed by PRI, Public Radio International.
We'll tell you in a moment how you can get an official playlist of all the music on today's program with album numbers and everything. Just refer to the program number. This is program number 119. And this is Peter Schickele saying goodbye and reminding you that it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that certain je ne sais quoi. You're looking good. See you next week.
[music: Terry, "Body Music"; Keith Terry & Crosspulse]
If you'd like a copy of that playlist I mentioned, send a stamped, self-addressed envelope to Schickele Mix. That's S-C-H-I-C-K-E-L-E, Schickele Mix. Care of Public Radio International, 100 North 6th Street, Suite 900A, Minneapolis, MN 55403.