And now, Schickele Mix. Ready, Mr. Schickele? The answer to that inquiry is yes. 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 I'd like to take a moment here to point out, with a good deal of gratitude, that our bills are paid by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences.
And from this stellar station, whose state of the art studio is studded with stunningly sturdy stories... Oh man, there goes the alliteration alleviation alarm. So let me just say that what's produced here is distributed far and wide by PRI, Public Radio International.
I'm one of those people who hardly ever remember their dreams. I know that you can train yourself to remember them better, you know, writing them down and everything, and I guess if I cared enough, I'd do that. But I've always thought that one of the things that makes remembering dreams difficult is that you're trying, in a logical frame of mind, to reconstruct things that are inconceivable in a logical frame of mind. I'm not talking about things that defy the laws of nature, but you could represent them, say, with an animated cartoon.
I'm talking about things that you literally cannot imagine in a logical frame of mind. I caught onto the tail of such a dream once. It was when I was a student at Swarthmore College, and just as I was falling asleep, something woke me up rather suddenly. And because of that, I was able to capture the inconceivable thing I was dreaming. I dreamt that I was on the front lawn of the campus, and I was thinking to myself, now I wouldn't really do this, but if I wanted to make a big impression on campus, I would wear this certain musical chord around.
I remember exactly what it was, G6 in the first inversion. It's just like this.
It's a sweet chord, maybe even a sexy chord, but also a chord that's been used in a lot of, well, trite and kitschy music. And the point is that I wasn't thinking about wearing a big piece of paper with the chord written on it, What I was considering doing in that dream was actually wearing the chord in a way that I can't describe because in a waking state I can't picture it. I can't imagine it. It's logically inconceivable.
My description of that dream may tell you something about my deep down desire to make a flashy impression on campus, but it doesn't begin to let you in on the actual experience of the dream itself, because that is inherently irretrievable, even in any detailed way, by me. But what also interests me about that dream is the sartorial ambition it reveals. I think of myself as pretty much of a slob. It's not that I don't care at all. I like my favorite clothes.
It's just that I hate shopping for clothes. That is, I hate finding nothing I like and then having to go somewhere else. So I've become one of those catalog cowboys. And then when I do find something I really like, I hate giving it up when it starts to wear out. As, like the rest of us, it will do. So I end up wearing things that are a little bit frayed around the edges. But I shouldn't complain. As a man, I've got it easy. It's much more complicated for a woman. After all, one of the things that clothing is about is sex.
And power. Two things. Two of the things that clothing is about are sex and power. Especially sex.
And since most men seem to react, shall we say, more directly than most women do (notice how carefully I phrased that), since that's true, women, if they care, have to figure out how to be attractive without being too attractive. That is, attractive enough to be attractive, but not so attractive as to attract trouble. Men behaving badly often hold women responsible for their manly bad behavior.
But even if you believe, as I do, that men are behaving even more badly when they do that, it remains true that women's clothing, or lack of it, can have a megatonically powerful effect on men. Obviously, in addition to being protection from the elements, clothing can be a weapon, or a tool, or even currency, as the three songs in our first suite demonstrate. See you in about eight minutes.
[music: Donaldson Lewis Young arr. Dusing, "You’ll Have To Put a Nightie On Aphrodite" (Oh! You Beautiful Doll); Robert DeCormier Singers]
[music: Loesser, Guys & Dolls, “Take Back Your Mink” (Original Cast Recording); Vivian Blaine]
Our first suite was called To Clothe or Not to Clothe. It began with David Dusing's arrangement of a song from 1920 called You'll Have to Put a Nightie on Aphrodite, by Walter Donaldson, Sam Lewis, and Joe Young. That was the Robert DeCormier Singers from an album called Oh, You Beautiful Doll. Next was Ladies Underwear by the group called Drink Me. I say group, it's only two guys, Mark Amft and Win Evans. And if you're up for a laid-back but rather strange ambience, try to catch them live sometime. They're out of New York, I don't know how much they tour, but I tend to like their stuff. Then last we heard Take Back Your Mink from Guys and Dolls, one of the great works of art of the 20th century.
This was the original cast album, that was Vivian Blaine and the Hot Box Girls. Music and lyrics by Frank Loesser. And I'm sure you all know about his vicious twin brother Hank, who was known as the Evil of Two Loessers. I myself am known as Peter Schickele because that's my name. And the program is Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International. You never know what you're going to encounter on Schickele Mix.
And today we're encountering clothes, which is why the show is called Clothes Encounters, at least I think that's what it's called. It looks great on paper but it sure is hard to say. Clothes Encounters, so far so good. You know I read once that a famous author of books on children was such a controlling husband that when he and his wife were going out for the evening he would select the dress that she was to wear. He'd lay it out on the bed and I guess that was that.
Well, I'm nowhere near in that class, control-wise speaking, but I have to admit that I do care what my wife looks like, to a sometimes surprising and even perhaps embarrassing degree. Now, of course, one of the standard explanations of this phenomenon is that the husband regards the wife as his property, and he wants everybody to see what good property he owns.
Well, okay, I'm not saying that there's no element of that involved whatsoever, but it really doesn't feel right as the major factor in my own attitude. As I said before, most men are very affected by a woman's appearance, and although I hope I'm cool and hope I don't disrespect women's privacy, I can't pretend that I don't do a certain amount of glancing around. There's an old saying, when you're through looking, you're through.
And that may be true for women as well as men, but men do seem to be especially enthralled by appearances. And, speaking as a man who has been sharing a spirited marriage with the same woman for several decades, it's really nice to look at your wife and be attracted all over again. And I do mean all over. Now I'm not going to get into the old nature-nurture thing here. I don't pretend to know what is due to upbringing.
I remember my father once telling me that when he passed a woman on the street, he inhaled. That was when women wore perfume more than they do now. And what is due to the DNA each of us came into this world with. Better men than I have been arguing strenuously about that for centuries. And recently, it has even occurred to them to listen to what women might have to say about it. I also don't mean to imply that women don't care about how men dress.
[music: Carr/Cordey, "Your Socks Don’t Match" (Bing Crosby and Some Jazz Friends); Bing Crosby & Louis Jordan]
Bing Crosby and Louis Jordan singing Your Socks Don't Match. The band was Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, with Jordan himself doing the sax solo. That had a word in there that is new to me: quonking. She was quonking. I guess it's complaining, or what? Razzing?
I'm the kind of guy who can buy a sport coat in a store and not notice till I get home that the outside pockets are fake, there are no inside pockets, and two of the buttons are already beginning to come off. But a lot of guys do care, care a lot, about their clothes, even if it sometimes wouldn't be obvious to a Brooks Brothers salesman. Just as my daughter inadvertently saved our family a lot of money by being into second-hand clothing as a teenager, there are some very hip second-hand stores in New York that are almost like costume shops.
Anyway, a lot of urban guys affect a look which, were one to label it casual, would leave one open to being charged with indulging in a considerable degree of understatement. But which, nevertheless, is arranged with just as much care by its wearers as is the Brooks Brothers look by its wearers. They say that clothes make the man, which happens to be the name of our second suite. It's got four songs in it and I'll be back in less than eleven minutes.
[music: Perkins, "Blue Suede Shoes" (Rocker); Elvis Presley]
[music: Infantino (Not Funny Music), "Big Chinos" (Selections from the Greenwich Village Folk Festival Big Chinos); Jim Infantino]
[music: Lieber/Stoller, "Shoppin’ for Clothes" (50 Coastin’ Classics); The Coasters]
[music: House/Anderson, "My Jeans Are Too Tight" (Dr. Demento’s Country Corn); Gerry House]
"Like Mammy Yokum said to Dwight." Good line. That suite was Clothes Make the Man. We started out with Elvis. Elvis Presley singing Blue Suede Shoes. And then from a CD called Greenwich Village Folk Festival, we heard Jim Infantino singing Big Chinos.
I guess we're talking about Infantino's chinos here. And then that very poignant song called Shoppin' for Clothes was The Coasters. It was written by the team that wrote most of their hits, Leiber and Stoller. Maybe all their hits, what do I know? Most of their hits. And then finally we ended up with My Jeans Are Too Tight by Gerry House. Well, you know, when you look at pictures of Elvis from the 50s, you realize that men's appearances are often just as highly stylized as women's.
It's like a badge or an I.D. tag. Take me, for instance. When I look in the mirror and I see those faded jeans with the 15-year-old belt and that corduroy jacket without any lining and that pretty nice shirt whose pocket, however, has worn through where the points of the Scripto pencil and the Pilot pen rub against it, I think to myself, hey, that must be Peter Schickele, the host of Schickele Mix from PRI, Public Radio International.
If you've ever seen Carousel, you'll remember this song.
[music excerpt: Rodgers/Hammerstein, "June Is Bustin’ Out All Over" (The Best of Broadway); Christine Johnson & Jean Darling]
Carousel opened in 1945, and a few years after that, we had an assembly in my junior high school that featured a comedian.
And he had a routine about his girlfriend, June, who bought a dress that was two sizes too small. And when she put it on, he said, June is bustin' out all over. And there was this intern teacher. You know, he was a grown-up to me, but I suppose he was in his early twenties. And that joke hit his funny bone like a ten-ton truck. And he could not stop laughing. I mean, everyone else finished laughing and then turned around and looked at him at the back of the auditorium, his face red, gasping for breath, very embarrassed but unable to stop. Now remember, this was the late 40s.
That joke was considered a bit on the edge for a junior high school anyway, so his paroxysms of laughter were particularly inappropriate for a teacher. I've always wondered what became of him. Did he go ahead and make teaching his career, or did he opt for a more solitary profession, like, like gem cutting, or a more convivial profession, like bartending?
But if you're not going to get into trouble with your potential employers, it's wonderful, isn't it? To laugh so hard you have trouble catching your breath. How often does that happen? Not often enough, as far as I'm concerned. Today's program is called Clothes Encounters. Get it? And when I started putting the show together, I was thinking about all different kinds of clothing, and we deal with hats on another program.
But it didn't occur to me that I'd run across a song that refers, however tangentially, to the only article of clothing that we in this culture wear almost continuously, around the clock, when we wear it at all. Hey, it's Tidbit Time, folks, and today's tidbit is called, Diaper Pin.
[music: Getz/Pleasure, "Diaper Pin" (Moody’s Mood for Love); King Pleasure]
That was King Pleasure singing Diaper Pin, which consists of King Pleasure's lyrics to Stan Getz's improvisation on the chord changes of Harold Arlen's That Old Black Magic. Although actually Getz himself came up with the title, since his first son had just been born when he recorded his instrumental version of Old Black Magic.
You know, that whole art form of putting words to improvised solos, I was just thinking about it as I was listening to that thing, that that whole art form is based on the availability of recordings. Before recordings, nobody would ever remember that carefully, what the improvisation was like. Well, now we come to clothes encounters of the third kind. In our next and last suite, clothing is used metaphorically.
Now, of course, just because metaphor is a college-type word, doesn't mean that metaphors are only used in college-type writing. I remember hearing a nice country song once, in which a guy is worried that his girl's falling out of love with him. And the refrain went something like, Well, I ain't heard no thunder, but it feels like it's gonna rain. Metaphorical Clothes has three numbers and lasts about nine minutes. I'll see you then.
[music: Schickele/Treece, "Who Murdered the Minutes" (Baptism); Joan Baez]
[music: Parton, "Coat of Many Colors" (Classic Country Music, A Smithsonian Collection, Vol. III); Dolly Parton]
Metaphorical Clothes. I don't mean that the clothes in these songs aren't real, but in all three of the numbers, they obviously stand for more than just clothes. We started out with a song from the Joan Baez album called Baptism. It's Who Murdered the Minutes? The lyric is from a poem by Henry Treece, and the composer is the no longer young American composer, Peter Schickele, who was also conducting the ensemble.
Then we had what somebody told me recently was Dolly Parton's first hit, Coat of Many Colors. And she wrote that song as well as was singing it there. Of course, that was another version of Joseph in his Technicolor Mind Coat or whatever that is. Then we had, finally, Laurie Anderson doing Sweaters. Now, most of, not all, but most of the numbers we've been dealing with on this show have been about a specific article of clothing.
A coat, or some underwear, or a nightie, or some blue suede shoes, or some big chinos, or a suit, or jeans. I think it's time now to go out with the whole outfit. You know, let's put on the whole dog there, as it were. Here's Ella Fitzgerald, and this is an interesting rendition of this song, because there's no doubt that we're talking about what is usually considered men's clothing here.
But it sounds just fine with Ella singing it. Top hat, white tie, and tails.
[music: Berlin, "Top Hat, White Tie & Tails" (The Irving Berlin Songbook); Ella Fitzgerald]
Ella Fitzgerald singing Top Hat, White Tie, and Tails by Irving Berlin with Paul Weston and his orchestra. You know, this has been sort of a confessional show here. And just listening to that last number, I had a memory I hadn't thought about for a while. And that is that when I was in high school, my mother made me a shirt once. And it was a little bit like a Dolly Parton situation there.
I was just thinking because she made me this shirt from scratch, no pattern or anything. And I got to school and all the kids started razzing me. They said, hey, Peter, why did you... They probably said Pete. They said, Hey Pete, why did you wear your pajamas to school? Now that's probably enough to turn any guy into an anti-clothes horse. But clothes definitely make a statement. We all have friends who really don't seem to care what they wear, but that's a statement too.
My specialty is buying jackets and pants separately, and then nothing goes together with anything else in the closet, except that just about everything goes with jeans, which I'd be happy wearing just about every day for the rest of my life. I wore a necktie once in 1965. No, seriously folks, I've probably worn a tie at least a dozen times since then. By the way, you know who was quite the clothes horse? Apparently spent a lot of money on clothes? A short little guy named Mozart!
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
And that's Schickele Mix for this week. Our program is made possible with funds provided by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and by the National Endowment for the Arts, with additional support from the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences and from 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 135. 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.
[theme: Mozart, Symphony No. 24]
[music excerpt: Berlin, "Top Hat, White Tie & Tails" (The Irving Berlin Songbook); Ella Fitzgerald (again, ending, under the closing credits)]
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, Minnesota, 55403.