When the crooner was King

The rise & fall of an old musical aristocracy
An essay by Grahame Ware

*

I’m not sure exactly when it happened. I do know that I was listening to Michael Bublé on CBC FM radio and I thought, “Oooh…that note didn’t sound too good.” I was left with a residue, an insipid smudge that filled the room with a kind of cloudy, muddled intention, a shade gone wrong. “What was it?” I thought.

In that moment, I formed the idea that in the crooner cosmos, Bublé was incapable of achieving nothing more than a simple knighthood in a history of crooning dukes, princes, and kings. Croonership seemed beyond his grasp. I suddenly felt like Simon Cowell and didn’t know if that pleased me or not. I quickly realized it didn’t.

This made me ask that most pressing of questions: What has happened to the level of crooning since the golden age of the ‘50’s? Aside from his youth, why is Bublé flogged as a representative of this era, like the lost love child of Robert Goulet or Mel Tormé? Was I getting into sentimental homerism of the kind that starts with, “In my days…?” Say it isn’t so Joe!

Years back, in 2008 when I saw Andy Williams on TV at the 50th Grammy awards looking just this side of a full-blown codger, leaning on Nelly Furtado as he shuffled onstage to present an award, this thought grew larger and I was perplexed as to why I was even having the thought.

I did however ask myself: Why have things degenerated so markedly from the zenith of lounge singing? We’ve learned to disdain crooners, haven’t we? Is it because Bill Murray’s Nick Winters (or ‘fill in the blank’) and others have tapped into crooning as a vein of satire, a motherlode of spoof? This comedic riffing can’t have been solely responsible for their demise, could it? Surely not. No, there had to be better reasons than that to explain this phenomena especially when viewed against the almost unimaginable backdrop of Bublé’s commercial success.

Then I had it. It’s why Canada produces so many great hockey players–because we all want to play hockey (except those of us that grew up in the Fraser Valley in BC–then we all wanted to be baseball players like Larry Walker or Justin Morneau). 

In the ‘40s and ‘50s, the Sinatras and Crosbys were “IT.” They had the life and they had the babes. What else was there? Most, if not all, singers aspired to that goal and they trained accordingly. It sure beat laying bricks or boxing for a living like many of them. The crooning repertoire then was smaller and the competition greater therefore the standards were higher. Bingo! And a larger pool competing for fewer prizes and less money sets up a lot of discipline as well. On a contextual level this seemed to explain a lot of things. 

As a result of this history, we had Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, Johnny Mathis, Steve Lawrence (Go Away Little Girl), Sammy Davis Jr., Jack Jones (Wives and Lovers), Vic Damone (for Coppertone!), Mel Tormé, Tony Martin, Al Martino (Painted Tainted Rose, Spanish Eyes but likely known more for his acting role in The Godfather as Johnny Fontane — a fading pop idol who needs mob intervention to land the film role that would resurrect his career- not unlike his but apparently based on Frank Sinatra), the aforementioned Andy Williams, the valium-like Perry Como (see Eugene Levy’s skit of him on SCTV), Jerry Vale, and so many others.

And you know what? They could all sing. They were generally tough guys that came up through hard circumstances and were driven to achieve and overcome. The music scene now is fragmented with all kinds of styles, a derivative prism that has more to do with looks than sound.

I’m not suggesting this is what has necessarily happened to Bublé. But in the retro-cising of ‘50s crooning something in Bublé is missing for me. The problem with any kind of retro music is that when it is taken out of its cultural context, it is most often robbed of its essence and inspiration whether this be strife or jubilation. The thieves of time and place are ever stealing and there is nothing we can do about the synthetic attempts to recapture and commodify something that has proven a popular model in the past. Obviously, there are traditions and torch-passings to consider when reflecting on heir apparents. But Bublé is no one’s heir apparent and being a Canadian lad from the west coast makes him a perfectly pliable musical entity. As Leonard Cohen remarked famously in his novel, Beautiful Losers:  “Everyone is a Canadian.”

But put into perspective, everyone learns from others. The detritus of mimicry are everywhere in pop music. Elvis Presley was a Dean Martin wannabe. Van Morrison started out craving the sensibilities of Chuck Berry. The Stones realized they wanted to be Chicago bluesmen. Pat Boone started out covering Fats Domino tunes that were already proven hits on the black charts. Stealing songs from blacks is a long-standing tradition of sorts and the crooner cosmos is no exception. Possibly no one did it better than “Colonel” Parker, Elvis’ manager, an illegal Dutch immigrant. 

Prior to that era, ragtime ballads and early, bluesy jazz always configured the chanteuse into the formula of crooning. Blues and jazz were not always considered separate genres. Bessie Smith and Billie Holliday would croon when they weren’t jiving as a break from and counterpoint to the frenetic music. It was only later that jazz became more head-centred and instrument-partial especially with the saxophone. In a sense it reached its coolest and most detached arc with the Modern Jazz Quartet. They seemed to have squeezed all of the life out of jazz as it stumbled to a kind of white, professorial respectability. Where was the voice in all of this and how did the female voice become marginalized in the process? 

Torch Singing and Crooning: Sexism in our Stereotypes

Certainly, Ella Fitzgerald’s success in music does put forward the case for female crooners given her heavy dependence on Gershwin in the ‘50s and ‘60s.Then, of course, there was Lena Horne, Dinah Washington, and Sarah Vaughan—all great singers in their own right. But were these fine female singers crooners? One could argue that they were not because the age and time wouldn’t allow them to have that role. The ‘50s was an age of a stilted sexism that had an added edge of male power because of the succession of world wars in the first half of the 20th century. The conformism that resulted as a result of so many people being recruited into the military only served to strengthen sexism. 

In a sexist world there can be only one crooner and he is male; he has a tuxedo and a big, funky mike; and, the spotlight is his to hold and use. And besides, these ‘50s ladies would never publicly give themselves permission to be artistically and sexually permissive. This was a problem however, that was transcended with both commercial and artistic success by dancer/entertainer Josephine Baker in Paris. According to author Bennetta Jules-Rosette in her recently published biography of the late icon, balancing the playful native girl and the Parisian sophisticate was crucial to the “image invention and racialized gender transcoding” that kept Baker in the spotlight for nearly 50 years.

Compare, if you will, Ella Fitzgerald’s performance posture to say Dee Dee Bridgewater’s stage vivacity and demeanour and it’s easy to conclude that Dee Dee couldn’t have been Dee Dee when Ella was Ella. At the very least, it would have been damned difficult. Curiously, Dee Dee Bridgewater like Baker honed many of her stage skills and persona in Paris. 

So female crooners could exist theoretically but history has labeled them as torch singers. Curiously, while both crooners and torch singers use a basic blues melody, the crooner mostly seduces but the torch singer mostly laments at being seduced and left alone. For torch singers apparently, it’s all about unrequited love as in “carrying a torch” for someone. Thus, we see another form of sexism in the different application of these terms to the different sexes of what essentially is the same thing. Men don’t “carry torches,” do they? How unmanly! And women croon? Go ’wan!

Since the ‘50s/ early ‘60s, have the roles reversed? Why not call the female torch singers from Bessie Smith to Julie London to Sade crooners? Why saddle them with an outdated, sexist term? It doesn’t help to clarify it this way, does it? The fact is, women can croon and they do it better than most men.

Traditionally, the male crooner is comfortable giving love and being in charge but not so sure when the tables are turned and he has no control. He feels good about giving love; not so sure about receiving it. Hmmmm…sounds like most men. But the established crooner didn’t have to worry too much about that sort of thing because in his world, he was almost god-like in his ability to control love from the stage with the spotlight on to the bed and the undressing of his next lover. 

The term lounge lizard likely came from this posture of wanting to be the top iguana banana basking in the tropical spotlights. But you had to be a crooner first in order to be hot enough to matter…to the other sex that is!  The term has often been misapplied to crooners but they are different. A lounge lizard originally referred to a club dancer that showed off on the floor in hopes of attracting female attention. He was definitely of a lower order than a crooner.

So, in the reality of today, Bublé seems more like a purposively sentimental notion of lost crooner machismo than the real thing, more of a gecko than an iguana crooner, a hesitant echo of the confident Brylcreemed and martinied crooner with swagger. I am plagued though by questions: Is it Buble’s virility or toughness that is lacking? Where is his charisma exactly? I also think it has something to do with some kind of core insincerity borne of this age that lacks the type of authority that was de rigeur in those days. It seems that the crooner clan back then had authenticity and a kind of show biz gravitas because their minds and their ears were aligned to a certain sensibility. They were also guys that generally had to fight and die in wars that they may not have agreed with but they fought in anyway. It is this bona fide masculine quality that seems foreign to Bublé. His crooning suffers as a result. 

To refer back to the crooners versus torch singers theme earlier, we might look at what Bublé does as neo-torch. He lacks the ‘50s generational clout of those royal crooners of the past and from the perspective of sexual politics can be seen as a more feminine crooner incarnation walking an androgynous tightrope. I’m waiting for Bublé to do a Judy Garland or Julie London tribute album when themes run thin in the Bublé marketing camp. I think it would be quite successful. But, alas toiling as a “judge” on The Voice might be as good as it gets for the celebrity neurotic brand called Michael Bublé.

He seems to lurch through his singing engagements like he hasn’t been laid in at least two days with the resultant sperm build up leading–obviously–to a certain insouciance. In an interview in Britain in the fall of 2007 he confessed that, “I only started singing to get laid.”

On CBC Radio around 2010 he also promoted his latest CD as a key piece in the foreplay/seduction arsenal and ace-up-the-sleeve of the hip, young guy. “You’ll thank me when you get laid,” he said. This must be the trickle-down effect of Las Vegas. Apparently, what happens in Vegas doesn’t stay in Vegas. It’s another marketing myth with pernicious implications.

For a start, he was a traditional crooner who learned intonation from Crosby and salesmanship from Jolson. Yet there was a hint in his gestures (eyes closed in ecstasy, arms stretched out imploringly) that he was parodying the very idea of crooner; he was a mellow modernist. You could also peg Dino as an anachronism, a Joe E. Lewis saloon-lush type, the party animal in a tux. Or maybe he was the first slacker, elevating sloth to a Zen art. To Nick Tosches, his biographer, Martin was a nihilist hero. Instead of seeing mankind surrounded by a void, Tosches argued, Dino found the void within himself, and called it home.

Could it be that Robert Goulet took his cue from Dean Martin?

But what of its origins? What exactly is a crooner? 

c.1400, originally Scottish, from Low or MiddleDutch word kreunen: “to lament, mourn,” perhaps onomatopoeic. Originally “to bellow like a bull” as well as “to utter a low, murmuring sound” (c.1460). Popularized by Robert Burns. Sense evolved to “lament,” then to “sing softly and sadly.”

-Etymology Online

The term might have been resuscitated in Berlin gay bars where it might have been applied derisively or in contrast to what passes itself off as “real” jazz singing which was fast and jivey. In the coked-up nightclubs in Berlin, crooning was a change of pace and, in some cases, the last song of the night.

Sepia Sinatras – Blacks Come To The Fore

Even black people emerging from behind the racist curtain could sing. Yah. Really! These included Nat King Cole, Louis Armstrong, Sam Cooke, and Billy Eckstine, the latter referred to as a “sepia Sinatra” by popular music historian Arnold Shaw. 

Cole was a superb jazz pianist that all but abandoned tinkling the ivories to become a pop vocalist so that he could achieve commercial success. For some fans, he is the ultimate booze and snuggle by the fire with your woman vocal stylist. Everyone it seems has a favourite Nat King Cole song. Louis Armstrong, the joyously egocentric coronet player, would make friends along the way especially Jack Teagarden, that would help pave his way into TV and other wider white venues thus earning himself significant fame. Sam Cooke had one of the best voices around but his womanizing caught up with him in 1964 when a lover’s husband shot and killed him. They were all great vocalists and jazz singers that had a crooning edge when the song and the lyrics presented the opportunity. But they were not necessarily hanging their hats on the crooner hook. Categories can be problematic in the stew that is pop music.

Lou Rawls, the Ultracrooner

Probably the best of these sepia Sinatras was Lou Rawls, Sam Cooke’s close friend. Rawls album All Things in Time proved to be the biggest success of his career, reaching the Top 10 and going platinum; likewise, “You’ll Never Find Another Love Like Mine” from that LP became his biggest hit single ever, topping the R&B charts and zooming to number two on the pop side. 

Rawls was also a good actor as witnessed by his many acting credits including a minor role in the film Leaving Las Vegas. And who could forget the song, “Here Comes Garfield” in the Garfield cartoon series? That was Lou. In 1971, he won the Downbeat magazine poll for favorite male vocalist, besting perennial champ Frank Sinatra, who has praised Rawls for having “the classiest and silkiest chops in the singing game.”

For me he was the best of all the real crooners of this period and this because he could do a lot more than just croon with his four-octave range and his soul. His rendition of “Willow Weep For Me” is astonishing and can be found on his 1992 release The Legendary Lou Rawls which is a compilation from many years. He did so much singing and recording over 40 years that he might be easily dismissed in anyone’s inclusion in firmament of croonerdom. Considering that much of his prime performing and singing came after the prescribed era of the ‘50s, this might be especially critical. Anachronism or not, Rawls was still as genuine as it gets. In that sense then, he was an evolution to uber krooner or, in the same linguistic vein, quite possibly he really was the ultracrooner. Of course, like many stars orbiting round the Hollywood and Las Vegas suns, he lived in the House of Ice (cocaine) and took pleasure in pleasure…constantly. A man can get lonely on the road…

The last time many of us saw Rawls singing was in Chicago for Game 2 of the 2005 World Series. Unadorned on a cool October night, he sang the US national anthem acapella and sang it better than anyone that I’ve ever heard. Not bad for a guy that was 72 and had brain and lung cancer and, almost unbelievably, would be dead within months.

The Essence of Crooning

It is so hard to draw a line through the pop sand and expect it to obey boundaries as far as the tides of commercial, give-‘em-what-they-want are concerned. Indeed, the full moon of evolving style has a lunar pull that makes it impossible at times to know what pop music is. It all spins out of a neatly defined orbit. It did so then as it continues to do so now. It is then with some trepidation that I declare that along with Rawls that one of the best crooners of the ‘60s was folkie, Fred Neil. Long considered a bluesy folksinger, Neil had a great crooning voice that was heard to great advantage on his Everybody’s Talkin’ album and even more so on his Sessions LP. His song “Dolphins” seems just as apropos, bittersweet, and wise today as it was then. Sure, it is crooning but it is also fused with a social and, moreover, universal conscience. It is still wildly effective and mesmerizing. For me this apparent anomaly proves a point.

It is so hard to draw a line through the pop sand and expect it to obey boundaries as far as the tides of commercial, give-‘em-what-they-want are concerned. Indeed, the full moon of evolving style has a lunar pull that makes it impossible at times to know what pop music is. It all spins out of a neatly defined orbit. It did so then as it continues to do so now. It is then with some trepidation that I declare that along with Rawls that one of the best crooners of the ‘60s was folkie, Fred Neil. Long considered a bluesy folksinger, Neil had a great crooning voice that was heard to great advantage on his Everybody’s Talkin’ album and even more so on his Sessions LP. His song “Dolphins” seems just as apropos, bittersweet, and wise today as it was then. Sure, it is crooning but it is also fused with a social and, moreover, universal conscience. It is still wildly effective and mesmerizing. For me this apparent anomaly proves a point.

Meanwhile In Jolly Old…

Britain’s prototypical crooner was the venerable Matt Monro. He was an enormous success in the old country for many years but died prematurely at 54. I can personally attest to the devotion of his fans and the value that was placed on his artistry. His songs were the main music at the Anglican funeral of my mother-in-law that took place in Hull, England a few years ago. His “You’ll Never Walk Alone” had a tear-jerking punch from which there was no escape. 

Eventually Englebert Humperdink and, of course, Tom Jones, would follow in his footsteps. For some reason, Britain with its rather more conservative musical social fabric would always be a place that the Yankee crooners could go to revive their careers or pay off a whack of debts incurred living beyond their means in Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or New York.

Real Canadian Crooners

As if we needed more proof that country music is evil, we now know that country music was the inspiration for–if not the precursor of–RAP! Stay with me here. And, indeed, it looks like a Canadian actor, Lorne Greene–Ben Cartwright of Bonanza (quite possibly the first really HUGE TV show that help make NBC a network TV force)–was the man responsible. I know, I know…it’s hard to believe, but with the 1964 album, Welcome to the Ponderosa Greene speaks in rap-like tones with his distinctive basso profundo (that earned him the nickname, “The Voice of Doom” from his years at the CBC newsdesk) on a song called “Ringo.” On December 5, 1964, it became the #1 song on the charts in the North America for Greene and knocked the Shangri-Las’ “Leader of the Pack” out of top spot. For one glorious week, Greene held sway at the top of the charts only to be knocked out of his throne a week later by Bobby Vinton’s “Mr. Lonely.” 

But for a brief moment, the cultural imagination of America was gripped (as only it can be in  American–by the cash register testicles) in Greene rap mania. How is this possible? For a big clue let us look at the lyrics and we’ll know why.

He lay face down in the desert sand
Clutching his six-gun in his hand
Shot from behind, I thought he was dead
But under his heart was an ounce of lead
But a spark still burned so I used my knife
And late that night I saved the life of Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo . . . (echo sound))

I nursed him till the danger passed
The days went by, he mended fast
Then from dawn till setting sun
He practiced with that deadly gun
And hour on hour I watched in awe
No human being could match the draw of Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo… )

One day we rode the mountain crest
And I went east and he went west
I took to law and wore a star
While he spread terror near and far
With lead and blood he gained such fame
All throughout the West they feared the name of Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo… )

I knew someday I’d face the test
Which one of us would be the best
And sure enough the word came down
That he was holed up in the town
I left the posse out in the street
And I went in alone to meet Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo… )

They said my speed was next to none
But my lightning draw had just begun
When I heard a blast that stung my wrist
The gun went flying from my fist
And I was looking down the bore
Of the deadly .44 of Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo… )

They say that was the only time
That anyone had seen him smile
He slowly lowered his gun and then
He said to me “We’re even, friend”
And so at last I understood
That there was still a spark of good in Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo… )

I blocked the path of his retreat
He turned and stepped into the street
A dozen guns spit fire and lead
A moment later, he lay dead
The town began to shout and cheer
Nowhere was there shed a tear for Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo… )

The story spread throughout the land
That I had beaten Ringo’s hand
And it was just the years, they say
That made me put my guns away
But on his grave they can’t explain
The tarnished star above the name of Ringo

(Ringo… Ringo… )

(Ringo… Ringo… )

And while rap might have coke, ass, and guns as themes du jour et nuit, the Ringo story doesn’t get any better with its Doppelgangers, killing, and pathos all wrapped (rapped?) up in a nice little rhyming tale. Ah, the good old days! 

Other Canadians That Really Crooned…Like Robert Goulet

But it was the late Robert Goulet who was Canada’s crooner of note during this phase of history. Knowlton Nash’s book Cue The Elephant has some good stuff on Goulet and his evolution (devolution?) from a shy, young guy to a drinking, tail hound that just could not get enough of women nor could they of him! Still, he had an excellent voice that was perhaps just a little training away from being superb. His dark, good looks coupled with those sparkling blue eyes, lit up TV sets across Canada with his crooning especially his hit, “If Ever I Would Leave You” which he sang on Broadway to much acclaim as Lancelot in Lerner and Loewe’s production of Camelot which starred Julie Andrews and Richard Burton.

Some of us will remember him- ever so faintly- from our earliest days of after school TV. Goulet was a regular on the Canadian version of Howdy Doody, appearing as Trapper Pierre (for a time alongside William Shatner as Ranger Bob). And from 1955 to 1959, he was one of the co-hosts on the Canadian series, The Leslie Bell Singers. He did many other things as well. Things like opera and pop-meets-classical matinees to draw the executives out of their lairs in Bridle Path for an afternoon with the missus.

Later, he became infamous for his mangling the lyrics to the US national anthem at the Cassius Clay / Sonny Liston world heavyweight boxing rematch. Goulet’s May 25, 1965, performance at the Central Maine Youth Center in Lewiston, Maine in front of an all-time record-low attendance (for a world heavyweight championship) of some 2400 fans (Whoops! The promoters did not have a license in Massachusetts so couldn’t hold it in Boston). He was described as being off-key and out of sync with the organ accompaniment. Newspaper stories at the time said he sang “dawn’s early night” and “gave proof through the fight.” The fans booed the Canadian while broadcaster Howard Cosell chortled thinking it good fun and all part of the spectacle.  Now there was something to talk about besides the strange fight that ended in the first round with what has become known in the history books as the “phantom punch.” Now the fans booed even more lustily at the brevity of the fight and Liston’s “dive.” Goulet’s mistakes were, by comparison, wonderfully and whimsically Freudian. It was all part of the cosmic schmozzle of this strange “heavyweight championship.” Adding to the insignificance was the fact that it was Cassius Clay’s last fight as Clay before he morphed into Muhammed Ali. Meanwhile, his opponent, Sonny Liston (”the ugly bear” as Clay called him), faded to obscurity.

Through the last half of the ‘60s, Goulet stopped performing in his bread-and-butter Broadway musicals and started doing more TV. He eventually settled in Las Vegas in the ‘70s where his spectrum of talents and performance proficiencies were well suited. He was also just a hop, skip, and jump from LA where TV gigs came with the cosmic efficiency of full moons. The Los Angeles Times wrote during this time that Goulet “is popping up in specials so often these days that you almost feel he has a weekly show. The handsome lad is about the hottest item in show business since his Broadway debut.” However, Goulet did win a Grammy Award in 1962 as best new artist and made the singles chart in 1964 with “My Love Forgive Me.”

In a sense he disdained being just a crooner or lounge singer but had no trouble with that tag at all. He played a lounge singer as “Himself” in Louis Malle’s acclaimed 1980 film, Atlantic City, the cameo both funny and ironic. The terrific script of John Guare along with the direction of Malle, created some deliciously irreverent and intelligent moments. For example, in the Frank Sinatra Wing of the local hospital, Goulet sings “Atlantic City my friend I’m glad to see you’re born again…” not just to the pregnant hippie mother that has just delivered a baby but to the decaying and rebuilding Atlantic City itself. Mob and Donald Trump dollars were being newly injected into the place in an attempt to create Las Vegas East. And, with so many Canadian actors in the film (Kate Reid, Al Waxman, Harvey Atkin, Cec Linder, Moses Znaimer, Louis Del Grande), it must have seemed like old home week for Goulet as he played “himself” with a certain ferocious zest. Goulet was clearly not above lampooning himself and, by extension, the lounge singer. Thus, Goulet wasn’t about to get too precious with the crown of King Krooner sitting awkwardly on his head with scat singer Prince Tormé (the “Velvet Fog”) reinventing himself and staring down Goulet.

The Lounge Singer Syndrome–Tony Clifton, The “Real” Deal

So, where were things at in crooner marketing and role playing at this point in time—the ’70s? Who wanted to step up and have a rip? Not many. The crooner was becoming the butt of jokes and agents disdained that arc for their clients. Besides Beatlemania had hit, psychedlia had arrived and stodgy types of acts were in descent. The glam and wham of disco were now knocking at the door as R & B acts became mainstream nightclub acts. But what was left in abundance was the comic possibilities as well as a new found snark about Hollywood-centric music acts from the past. In a word they were uncool.

An outstanding and memorable lounge singer creation was made by Andy Kaufman and Bob Zmuda. His name was Tony Clifton. He was usually played by Zmuda and he represented the lounge singer/entertainer in all of his pathological glory—untalented, obnoxious, and, as if we needed any more virtues, unlovable as crabs or STDs. Clifton bore a striking resemblance to Robert Goulet (especially the sideburns and moustache) but with a Philly accent and manner about him. With Clifton, we have none of the lame attempts at lounge singer mockery as put forward by Bill Murray or Will Farrell. Nosiree!

This was Kaufman and Zmuda’s lambasting and grilling these kinds of entertainment cheap cuts to a burnt crisp, take-no-prisoners state but wrapped up in cellophane for all to see. Essentially, Kaufman and Zmuda saw Tony Clifton as personifying the somewhat evil and deluded ego that this type of act stands for. At the grassroots level it has been unloosed on the unsuspecting public in the Holiday Inns and Best Westerns of North America’s cultural landscape for decades and decades. Reports have it that it’s the same in the UK and one needs look no further than the play cum film, Little Voice, for that flavour.

Here is an exchange from a script, “The Tony Clifton Story” (Kaufman & Zmuda, 1980) in which Clifton has a gig at the Comedy Store opening for Andy Kaufman. He has just abused a fat, bald guy that is on Workman’s Comp. The crowd is not taking kindly to his abuse of the guy who volunteered to come up on stage. The guy has left the stage and Tony is mocking him.

WOMAN: I think you’re disgusting!

 TONY: Why don’t ya just sit back and relax.  You do your thing and I’ll do my thing.  Your thing is ta sit back and enjoy the show. My thing is ta entertain ya.

 WOMAN: Entertain me!  How could anyone find anything entertaining about this?

 TONY: Then why don’t ya go home to the kitchen where ya belong?  Go back home and wash your dishes and your pots and pans … scrub your floor and raise your babies.

 WOMAN: You chauvinist pig!

 TONY: What are you?  Women’s lib?  Hey listen, guys, I should call it women’s lip … that’s all it is, is a lot of lip service.  Hey listen, lady, you want my respect?  You’re gonna have ta earn it.  The day you could come here and knock me down, that’s the day you’ll get my respect. Until then … stay in the kitchen where ya belong.

Okay, for my next song …

 The Woman furiously gets out of her seat and starts walking onto the stage.  The audience has gone wild.

 TONY: Lady, what are you doin’? Would ya please get off the stage?

 WOMAN: No!  You said if I could come up here and …

 TONY: Lady, I was only kiddin’ around … it was a joke!

 WOMAN: I want an apology!

 TONY: You’re not gettin’ any apology. Get off the stage.

 He shoves her.

 WOMAN: Oh!  I’m warning you, don’t try that again.

 TONY: Get off the stage.

 He goes to shove her again but this time she grabs his arm and gives him a judo flip.  The

audience jumps to its feet and cheers.  Tony is crawling around the floor.  The Woman

kicks him in the rump and he falls flat.

TONY: (begging; aside to Woman) Please … please, lady, lemme get up. Give me a little bit of dignity here.

 He starts to crawl away only to be kicked once more.  She bows and leaves.  Tony gets up —

rubs hands together as if to say, “I showed her!”

 BACKSTAGE – Kaufman’s agent and club owner GEORGE SHAPIRO 

 GEORGE: I’m stopping this!

Zmuda and Kaufman are laughing.  George signals to close the curtain.

 TONY: For my next number …

Curtains close, knocking Tony down.

 TONY: What’s goin’ on here? What about my big close?

A security guard runs out and tries to get Tony off.

 TONY: Getcha hands off me. Getcha hands off me. People wanna see my next number.

Tony starts to sing, only to be drowned out by the sound of sirens.  We see police

running into the theatre as the reporters are running out.

 TONY:You people shut up!  You get me sick! And someday when I’m playin’ Vegas, I’m gonna remember each and every one a your faces and you’re not gettin’ in.

 He leaves … he returns.

 TONY: I just wanna say one thing … if I made just one person happy, it’s all been worth it. Thank you and good night.

Later in the script, Tony Clifton’s act is raked over the coals by the press and referred to in the anonymously generic The Times: “Last night the most obnoxious act in show biz history opened for Andy Kaufman.” Andy Kaufman as Andy Kaufman in the script seems nonplussed by the virulent response in the papers. He muses: “That’s right, and they’re going to hate him more and more.  They’re going to love to hate him.  And more important, they’re going to pay to hate him. I got myself the next … hoola-hoop.”

Of course they do. They love to hate him and they do pay. He pours water over the heads of on-stage volunteers and they lap it up. It becomes a signature schtick. He and Andy Kaufman make the cover of Time magazine. Cosmopolitan has a lovely lady in a peach tux (another trademark of Tony) with a moustache. The Tony Clifton phenomena is in full swing. CBS’ Mike Wallace does a live feed for CBS and the camera pulls back to see Wallace also in a peach tux. Kaufman’s prediction has come true. Audiences really do want abuse from obnoxious, untalented guys that can’t do anything else and whom appear to have no redeeming qualities. Later in the script, cannibals that worship a cardboard cutout of Frank Sinatra actually save the life of Clifton after Kaufman has disposed of him when Clifton gets wise to his manipulation of him for his (Kaufman’s) own greed. It is an uproarious satire that pulls no punches at anything or anyone, including his creators Kaufman and Zmuda.

It is a brilliant shish kebab of a script unflinching in its skewering of all things to do with entertainment’s cheap cuts that need to be grilled quickly and eaten—no swallowed—the same way—fast, especially those of the lounge singer. And it is BBQ’d to perfection with the homemade glaze of irreverent disdain for the Broadway/Hollywood lounge singer that feigns talent and specialness. The brilliant lack of pretense in this script and the main character of Tony Clifton created some 40 years ago underlines the loathing that many had for this particular element of entertainment. The loathing here is beyond mere detached skepticism: it is directed towards American or western audiences’ almost masochistic tastes in entertainment. A climax of sorts sprung from Hades was achieved with Kaufman and Zmuda’s Tony Clifton Story.

Robert Goulet certainly was not above pillorying himself either and, by extension, the whole lounge singer/ crooner profession. Nearly 20 years after Atlantic City, Goulet did the same on an episode of the Simpsons TV show. In it, Phil Hartman as Frank Sinatra reacts to the suggestion of 2 Live Crew’s Luther Campbell not being talented.

“No,” he demurs, “Bob Goulet… now that’s not talented!”

Thus, even the raunchy rapper is seen as having more talent than Goulet! Rapper over crooner…even in Sinatra’s blue eyes. Oooh, what a blow.

For Robert Goulet, life was one big send up and all the pretensions in hell couldn’t hold back the ravages of time and opinion. His eagerness to embrace the absurdity of his matinee idol/crooner image was so much crap to him. As more than one wag has said, Goulet had a sincere insincerity about him. To this end, he was perfect for the small screen and the general mindlessness that is TV. He knew he was incapable of art as an actor so that only left one option—being campy or hamming it up.

So, starting some 30 years ago, in a strange kind of way, Goulet help to intensify the dénouement of the crooner more so than, later, either pop lightweights Barry Manilow or Neil Diamond combined ever could have…or Bill Murray or Will Ferrell for that matter.

Our collective unconsciousness was now finally and firmly of the belief that crooning was truly tacky. Gone was the mystique of the crooner as a conveyer of sexual power. The crooner had hit a sour note. In addition, he had become impotent and flabby and had no coin in the realm of the nightclub. Thanks Robert!

The tuxedoed and side-burned macho sex bulls with the old phallic mikes securely in their right hand were now seen in their most caricatured sunset phase. His was a dated image that stood for what was musically in bad taste. All that was left was self-parody and a belligerence about it predicated on denial and stubbornness. Mmmm…just like Tony Clifton’s character!

But uncool or not, in his last public performance on Sept. 20, 2007, in Syracuse, New York, Robert Goulet was the crooner and he was backed by a 15-piece orchestra performing the one-man show, “A Man & His Music.” The romantic standards that he had covered or set were still drawing people to see him at 73. Despite his best attempts at self-subterfuge and irreverence, there was still an audience predicated on his multi-faceted career with its crooning core. Despite his best efforts to self-sabotage his own marketable identity, Goulet could do no wrong. In fact, as soon as he struck up his still powerful baritone, women of all ages were transfixed thinking to themselves, somewhat satisfied at their decision to plunk down their dough and attend: “Now there’s a crooner! That’s what a singer should sing like and what a man should look like when singing.” As a singer, Goulet still had that old black magic ‘til the end of his life which would come just two months later.

The people that knew Goulet and show business knew too that Goulet was special. On Friday November 9, 2007, the day of his funeral, Las Vegas honored the late singer, actor, and entertainer by doing something they’d never done before—pay a resounding tribute to him by closing the Las Vegas Strip for his funeral procession. This had never been done before.

Now, post Goulet, there are crooning acts that are pure art. Primary among these lounge singer-as-artform groups is Richard Cheese and his band Lounge Against The Machine. As his website declares:

America’s loudest lounge singer Richard Cheese and his Lounge Against The Machine swing band present the perfect mix of music, martini, and madcap. With his swanky jazz trio, his tiger-striped tuxedo, and his enormous microphone, Cheese sings lounge-style covers of rock/rap hits, turning everyone’s favorite songs into traditional pop vocal standards.  Just imagine Sinatra singing a Radiohead song, and you’ve got Dick.

It seems that his cheesy act with his band Bobby Ricotta (piano), Chazz American (bass), and Frank Feta (drums) are very popular. Cheese has sold more than 130,000 CDs; his albums  include Lounge Against The Machine, Tuxicity, I’d Like a Virgin, Aperitif For Destruction, The Sunny Side Of The Moon, his Christmas album Silent Nightclub, and his all-new TV Themes album, Dick at Nite.

This really is a type of the British Bonzo Dog Doo Dah band but some twenty years after they emerged with their LP, Gorilla. It seems that crooning-as-satire is now just one shade in the entertainment options with it now being an SNL or Vegas comedy schtick.

A Nostalgic Tar Pit of Old Vinyl Records

Alright then, how do we explain what is going on with Bublé? It is hard to imagine how a 24-year-old Goulet would do in the hands of the musical and entertainment marketing mavens of today. He was a baritone of significant talent that really knew how to ‘milk it’ as they say. Ultimately, Goulet was both the bull and the cow when it came to crooning or whatever it took to stay ahead in showbiz. In that sense, back then he was a litmus of popular music, and the part that crooning played in it, for the last 50 years or so. The pH test seems to have declared that it’s all blue these days and very few are in the pink unless…unless you’re Bublé.

Well, I’m really not sure what to call Bublé’s watery singing but crooning it isn’t. Still, in the always subjective world of music and the arts, Bublé is bound to have followers and extollers. However, don’t expect me (or many others) to be downloading any of his material. It’s not adultism; it’s not elitism; it’s not any -ism. Bublé just doesn’t have IT. 

Still Bublé—washy tenor and all—might be just what Tony Clifton was trying to (and in myth did) achieve—namely, to allow his mediocrity to rise to the level of an imagined “real” talent. This was accomplished through sheer marketing and an apparent need by an audience acting out of despair (apparently), to consume something…anything that resembles “class” (or a class product) of the kind that is concocted from a nostalgic tar pit of old vinyl records.

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Grahame Ware has been a regular contributor to The British Columbia Review since its inception as The Ormsby Review. As well as book reviews, he has contributed four memoirs, The Sonics at the Grooveyard, On the road with Sir Kenneth, My Private Italy, and My Private Chinatown. He is a member of the SFU-based Canadian Association of Independent Scholars. Grahame lives on Gabriola Island and makes wooden sculpture from forest refugees and driftwood detritus. [Editor’s note: Grahame Ware has also reviewed books by Norman Nawrocki, Aaron Chapman, Ira Nadel, John Moore, Ken Smedley, and Mike Lascelle for The British Columbia Review.]

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The British Columbia Review

Interim Editors, 2023-26: Trevor Marc Hughes (non-fiction), Brett Josef Grubisic (fiction)
Publisher: Richard Mackie

Formerly The Ormsby Review, The British Columbia Review is an on-line book review and journal service for BC writers and readers. The Advisory Board now consists of Jean Barman, Wade Davis, Robin Fisher, Barry Gough, Hugh Johnston, Kathy Mezei, Patricia Roy, and Graeme Wynn. Provincial Government Patron (since September 2018): Creative BC. Honorary Patron: Yosef Wosk. Scholarly Patron: SFU Graduate Liberal Studies. The British Columbia Review was founded in 2016 by Richard Mackie and Alan Twigg.

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