Pity the angry prop comic...

I am of two minds about the weird little sub-genre of standup known as “prop comedy.” I grew up loving the stage shtick of Rip Taylor and the intentionally awful comic magicians Carl Ballantine and (cue “Fine and Dandy,” will ya?) Art Metrano. I also enjoyed as a kid the ultra-frantic Lenny Schultz who, while not a prop comic exactly, worked in same busy-ass mode. I never was a fan of what Rip Taylor hath inadvertently wrought, though — you know I’m talking about Gallagher and Carrot Top (whom Bill Hicks referred to as the comedian “for those who find Gallagher too cerebral”).

Thus, when I found out this week that Gallagher is now a pissed-off, bitter old dude, I was conflicted: I’m naturally prone to feeling sympathetic towards older performers who feel left out in today’s show-biz world. But, since I could never take large doses (or small doses) of Gallagher when he was at his peak of popularity (and for those who weren’t around, or who don’t remember, he was HUGELY popular at one point), I guess I’m slightly happy that he’s now a really fuckin’ angry prop comic who spews racist, sexist, homophobic jokes before he gets around to the Sledge-o-matic bit that seemed moronic when he started doing it more than thirty years ago.

This week an article appeared on a Seattle alternative website by Lindy West that chronicled a Gallagher show she recently attended in Bremerton, Washington. It’s a pretty nice American Gothic portrait of a comedian who never was a curmudgeon to start out with — he was a sprightly crazy guy who came out on rollerskates, told jokes about how he was “stuck in the Sixties,” and then walloped the shit out of some produce with a goddamned big mallet. Comedy gold, you say? Well, millions of people liked it during that period of cultural blight we now quaintly refer to as the Eighties. In her article West recounts Gallagher’s latest jibes against pretty much everybody who ain’t a white middle-class person (he claims that “we” are descended from Viking stock — isn’t the name Gallagher Irish? ’Twas the last time I checked…). It’s pretty eye-opening, and opens the way for the next descent into prop-comic madness (and I do mean *mad*-ness) that I found after reading West’s piece.

In December 2009 David Wolinsky of the Onion AV Club interviewed Gallagher, who spoke out against the “mediocrity” infesting American comedy today. I mean, he’s actually got me there — just visit any multiplex and see what is labeled “comedy,” and try to contradict the fact that the Golden Age of American Comedy is long, long behind us. But, then again, this isn’t coming from a still-with-us comedy god like Jonathan Winters. This isn’t coming from Woody Allen or Mel Brooks or Sid Caesar — this is coming from the guy with the “skullet” (oh my god, those Eighties terms) who still to this day closes his act by smashing a watermelon with an oversized mallet. For that reason alone, you gotta be fascinated by the guy’s anger.

And then, if you’re as much of a fan of descending down the rabbit hole as I am, I urge you to check out the story of “Gallagher Too”. The fact that Gallagher was so monstrously popular his sorta-lookalike brother could tour doing the same act and have a steady career is mind-boggling (further proof the Eighties wrecked the fuckin’ culture). The sad fact that the brothers never speak any more because they had a sort of metaphorical Mexican standoff with their really funny oversized mallets is even more deliciously, pathetically, compulsively readable. I walked past the lookalike brother many, many years ago in the area near Madison Square Garden, before I knew that there was a “Gallagher Too,” and kept wondering why anyone in his right mind would dress like the Sledge-o-matic guy. A paycheck will do strange things to a person.

The only thing these articles do, of course, is make you speculate as to when/where/how Carrot Top will crack. The fact that he metamorphosed somewhere in the Nineties into a bodybuilder who sported arms that looked like they’d been borrowed off of Popeye seemed like a small indication he might change his act. But he remains in the business and continues to be pretty much the leading prop comic in the nation. As for me, if I want to see a specialty act, I would far prefer a guy (or gal) who makes mouth noises for a living. Anyone got a line on Michael Winslow?

P.S. I thank Tim Carvell for turning me on to the original Stranger article. Also, as I looked for pics to go with this post, I found yet another rant-y kinda interview with Gallagher that includes the amazing sentence “There’s a lot of money in hatred.” Whoa baby!

Jumpin' with Joya: Deceased Artiste Joya Sherrill

Last week singer/TV host Joya Sherrill died at the age of 82. Sherrill had a long career in show business, distinguished by her work as a vocalist for Duke Ellington and as an NYC local kiddie show hostess. She was 17 years old when the Duke hired her to sing with his band. She worked with him on and off for the next few decades, and had hits with the group, including “I’m Beginning to See The Light”:



As I was reading Ms. Sherrill’s obits, I realized that I have her duet album with Sammy Davis Jr., Sammy Jumps With Joya. In the more thorough onine biographies like this one, it is revealed that a turning point in her career as a singer came when she toured the U.S.S.R. in 1962 with the Benny Goodman orchestra (purportedly making her the first American jazz singer “to appear behind the Iron Curtain”). She scored a hit with her Russian audience, but Benny Goodman made sure not to include her on the live album he released from the tour.

The part of her career that resounds with people my age was her eventual transformation into a local NYC kiddie-show host — she is celebrated as being the first-ever African-American woman to play that role. She starred in the low, low-budget show Time for Joya on WPIX-TV from 1970 to 1972, and the show’s later incarnation, Joya’s Fun School, was new only from January to March 1972, but this thorough article reveals that the ever-thrifty PIX (which I wrote about here) ran those three months’ worth of shows for the next ten years, until 1982!

In any case, Ms. Sherrill had a pretty interesting show business career. Since none of her shows exist on tape (not saying much for WPIX’s archive in this case), I will close out this little remembrance with another link to the TV Party article that has the full audio of the August 30, 1970 episode of Time for Joya, which featured as a guest her former employer, the one and only Duke. The show is very laidback as Joya sings the Ellington composition “Heritage” from the show “My People.” Duke also tells the story of the Three Little Bears to the kids, and you can hear what a local low-budget Seventies kids’ show sounded like (it’s a shame there’s no video, but we can be grateful to the gent who supplied TVP with the audio).

And, as two final goodbyes, here’s a perky little ditty that Ms. Sherrill did as a jazz singer that could’ve easily become part of her kids’ show:



And a later upbeat tune, with the wonderfully provocative title “Do Me Good, Baby!”: