And now, for a change of pace.
However the debate went, simply be glad you were not in this picture.
Billy May and his orchestra. No, not Billy Mays. Sent me by my dear old friend and confidant Mlle Jenny.
Billy May is responsible for a good deal of music you know and probably don’t realize. The theme from the Green Hornet, Batman, many others were arranged or written or re-arranged by him, and he was involved with Nelson Riddle and a lot of the other big names in the business.
The picture of Billy dressed like a rhumba dancer flinging confetti on a woman who is apparently trying to run away is very possibly, as Jenny says, the most surreal album cover of all time. Possibly more so than “Pardon me, I didn’t knit that for you”
What’s with the dog, anyway? and why, oh why, is he barefoot? and didn’t they have hairpieces then? Billy should have stuck to the business of music, and stayed away from cameras.
The woman isn’t running away. Shes doing the Cha-cha. And she is fabulous.
Billy is doing the same, but not as well. The dog isn’t helping.
She should be running.
I’m still cryin over that durn sweater song.
Billy is holding the dog in homage to Xavier Cugat, Latin bandleader of the time, who often conducted on the bandstand holding a chi-hua-hua.
The dog was named Pepito and was also the subject of a book. http://books.google.com/books/about/Pepito_the_Little_Dancing_Dog.html?id=UIxOAAAACAAJ
Cugat had a long career and was featured in movies and nightclubs and etc. He’s probably better known nowadays as Charo’s first husband.
Here’s Xavier and the gang from “Stage Door Canteen.”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haaO8Xxa6n0
Billy was riffing on the whole Latin craze of the 50s-60s in his album. What he did was to take songs from other genres and make them Latin crazy. Like so:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyphRZs9P98
In a similar note a few years later, here’s Henry Mancini. (I so wish I had a copy of this album!)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nY1Sz6PU18
Heck, while I’m at it I also recently heard this bit of cheese by Quincy Jones, I’d love to have this too.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zl6uMU6v3UQ
When humorist Tom Lehrer spoke sarcastically of the “Ten Commandments Mambo,” he was not kidding.
(Sadly, all this is my idea of great fun.)
Jenny
For true completeness that picture REALLY ought to have a midget in it.
I’d wear that outfit and hold the dog if I could pop her in the keister. But that’s just my opinion.
It was a different time, indeed, Vman. A time when women wore girdles that made them look like they had one ass cheek that went all the way across.I don’t understand that time. But I might want to live there.
Is it just me, or is the dog wearing a mask?
Would you want to be seen with that guy?