Karaoke World Championships!!

Here's where it starts...

Go to Badgerland SportZone (West Bend) on a Thursday night, or Noey's Pub and Grill (St. Lawrence, near Hartford) on a Friday night to qualify for the state karaoke competition. (Need addresses? Check my karaoke venues website.)

If you qualify, you will be invited to compete at the Washington County Fair in West Bend, July 24, 3:00 - 7:30.

The top male and the top female singers will be sent to the regional competition in Texas the weekend of August 24.

The next step is the national contest, and then the 2010 Karaoke World Championships in Moscow, Russia on September 22nd through 25th.


Check out the Edge Entertainment website for more information about the local competition. Jim Edgeworth is the KJ for the local competitions.

Sing Doo Wah Diddy / Mr Mojo Risin

Tonight, I watched "LA Story", a silly little Steve Martin movie. Actually it was funny. A lot of slapstick sight gags like you find in Airplane, layered into a romantic comedy.

In the movie, there is a light up billboard that talks to Steve Martin's character, nudging him toward finding true love. In one scene, the billboard poses a riddle for Martin: "How is Daddy doing?"

The answer is finally given near the end of the film. Amid phrases of Manfred Mann's version of Doo Wah Diddy, the heroine of the story shuffles the letters in "How is Daddy doing" to get "Sing doo wah diddy". Clever. Meaningless, as the billboard is quick to concede. But still clever.

That reminded me of another rock anagram. In the song "LA Woman" by the Doors, there is an enigmatic line repeated again and again:

Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'
Got to keep on risin'
Mr. Mojo Risin', Mr. Mojo Risin'

What does this mean?  Well... "mojo" of course means sexual power. Right?  Well, I read an interesting article that gave various other definitions of this slang term.

But, assuming that mojo means virility, then Mr. Mojo must be a euphemism for "little willy", and him rising, is, well, you know, little willy standing up.

But really, it's just another anagram. Re-arrange the letters of "Mr mojo risin", and you will find "Jim Morrison". I'm sure Morrison thought the use of the word "mojo" in his pseudonym was pretty cool. It is. I wish I could find mojo in my name.

Wait... I can. John Seymour is an anagram for "Yes, U R mojo, nh"   Ok... dunno what to do with the leftover "nh". So, I'm not as cool as Jim Morrison.

But... here is something you won't find anywhere else on the internet. "LA Story" and "LA Woman" both contain anagrams having to do with rock music. That's cool. I wonder if Steve Martin knew that?

Kelly Clarkson sings karaoke

Kelly Clarkson took the stage at a karaoke bar in Nashville and (understandably) she thrilled the crowd.

This got me thinking. If Kelly Clarkson showed up at one of my gigs, would I get her up on stage more than the other patrons? First off, I am not sure if I would recognize her, but let's just say that I did. Would she deserve special status and get moved up to the head of the rotation?'

I should explain something before I go on. The gig I run at Bootleggers on Monday nights is very busy. Last Monday night, at 11:00 we realized that we had more than enough song requests in to take us until 2:30 AM. And we stop at 1:00 AM.

Would I let Kelly butt in line? I think I probably would. I mean, wouldn't the folks in the crowd love to go to a free Kelly Clarkson mini-concert? Well. Maybe not. The crowd at Bootleggers is not primarily country. I probably won't have to make this decision, though. I don't expect to see her at one of my gigs.

What if I had a minor celebrity popped in? Like someone who made it to American Idol but didn't win? That actually could happen some day. Danny Gokey is a Milwaukee boy. He placed third in the 2008 - 2009 season. I'm not sure what I would do if he turned in four slips at once.

Danny, if you do stop in to Bootleggers some Monday night, please introduce yourself when you hand me the request slips. I may not recognize you... unless I notice the glasses. Where do you get those glasses, anyway?

Ok, so what if somebody just comes in off the street, and he is fabulous but not at all famous? The crowd stops talking when he starts. At the end of the song, the crowd gives an extended cheer. Do I give this person privileged status? This actually does happen to me. I mean, I'm not the guy that gets the extended cheer. I mean pretty much every night there is at least one singer or two who could make it to the big time.

When I get a great singer like that, I would like to get them on stage more often, but I generally don't. Lemme 'splain...

Here is something that I get pretty much every night. It's 11:30, busiest time of the night. The place is packed, and even if I only brought up singers who were waiting to sing for the first time, it would take 45 minutes to get someone in. Inevitably, there will be a small group of folks who walk in, hand me a slip and say "Am I next?"

I'm sorry. I don't like to be negative. And I don't like to put folks down. But that's a dumb question. You are in a karaoke bar with 150 people. In the ten minutes that you have been here, there were three groups of people that sung. You had to wade through a bunch of people to get to me. Ummm... is there some reason for you to believe that there is nobody else ahead of you?

I will politely explain that I have a lot of people in line that have been waiting a while to sing. And here comes the response that I love. "But I am a great singer!"

Truth be told, only one in five people of the people who tell me they are great singers really are great singers. Generally speaking, the great singers are pretty quiet about their talent.

But aside from that, the comment misses the whole point of karaoke. People don't come out for karaoke on the off chance that they will get to hear a duet with Kelly Clarkson and Danny Gokey. Let's face it. They come to hear themselves sing. They sit and listen patiently while other people sing, but in the end, they just wanna hear themselves.

But Danny or Kelly... just in case you do show up... I'll let you cut to the front of the line. Arrangements for other celebrities will be considered as needed.

Melodies that Elvis stole

In high school, I sang bass in a barbershop quartet. We were called the Thundertones. I am the one second from the left. The guy with real facial hair. I had a fu man chu. I was cool.

 

Our name was derived from the school mascot, the Thunderbird. That and the fact that our bass had a thunderous deep voice made the name a natural. I sang bass, by the way. I was so cool. There were some immature and jealous people in our school who called us Kenny, Denny, Johnny, and Chip. Just for the record, they weren't cool.

Just in case you were wondering, there is no connection between us and the Thundertones rock group that you can find at http://www.thundertones.info/. I notice their website (as of this writing) has had 58 visits, so you know that these guys are very big. And we were big, too. You can tell by the classy uniforms.

I also sang in a barbershop chorus where I learned the old standard "Aura Lee". Here is Jim Reeves giving the standard version. Just to give you a little flavor of it, here is a quartet singing the tag for Aura Lee. These guys are cool, by the way. They sing barbershop.

I wrote a little parody of this song when I was in high school. My lyrics were:

Whenever you take medicine,

Take it orally,

Not by needle, not by pin,

And not ... (John bends over and points to his tush)

Not only was I cool in high school, but I was a riot. I also wrote a smutty parody of Carolina in the Morning. Those lyrics will not be appearing in this blog.

I noticed something interesting about that song. Elvis stole it. The melody of Love Me Tender was stolen from Aura Lee. So, Love Me Tender became one of our songs.

This morning, my lovely wife informed me of another song that Elvis stole. She sang the opening to "It's Now or Never". I love it when she sings to me. Then she asked me what the original song was. I couldn't think of it. Then she sang to me "O Sole Mio", which I guessed to be from an opera. Although it was recorded by many opera singers including Enrico Caruso, Mario Lanza, the Three Tenors, Luciano Pavarotti, and SpongeBob SquarePants, my wife told me that it was not from an opera.

I did a little digging and found a third song where Elvis stole the melody. It turns out that the melody for "Can't Help Falling in Love" was taken from a French love song called Plaisir d'Amour. Here is Joan Baez singing the original song.

Did Elvis steal any other songs? He has been accused of stealing "Hound Dog" from Big Mama Thornton, but in reality, the song was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Urban legends about singers and their songs

Was Nat King Cole's wonderful singing voice first heard when a belligerent drunk demanded he sang Sweet Lorraine?
Nat King Cole was a jazz pianist before he hit stardom as a pianist. Urban legend has it that a drunk customer demanded that he sing Sweet Lorraine. When he finally relented, his singing career took off.

This is a good story, but it is not true. Nat King Cole regularly sang with his combos before he gained acclaim as a singer. In Cole's own words, "[It] sounded good, so I just let it ride".

Did Louie Armstrong invent scat singing because he couldn't remember the words?
According to the legend, Louie Armstrong was performing and lost track of the words of the song. He improvised some nonsense syllables and so, invented scat singing.

Armstrong was one of the first artists to record scat singing with his 1926 recording of Heebie Jeebies. According to his memoirs, his sheet music fell on the floor during the recording so he picked up some scat. In another recording, of "I'm a Ding-Dong Daddy from Dumas", he improvised with the line "I done forgot the words".

Scat singing was certainly popularized by Satchmo, but Wiki reports eight singers (including Al Jolson and Jelly Roll Morton) who had recorded scat music as early as 1911. Jelly Roll said that the inventor of scat music was a comedian by the name of Joe Sims.

Is Billie Holiday's song "God Bless the Child" a religious song?
The word "God" appears all over this song. The first verse mentions the bible:

Them that's got shall get
Them that's not shall lose
So the Bible said and it still is news

This is a reference to Matthew 25:29 - "For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath." (King James Version)

This sure sounds like a religious song.

"God Bless the Child" is a song that Billie Holliday wrote following an argument with her mother. Her mother was always asking Billie for money. One night Billie asked her mom for money and "Mom turned me down flat. She wouldn't give me a cent.... Then I said 'God bless the child that's got his own' and walked out." (From her autobiography Lady Sings the Blues.) She stayed mad at her mom for weeks, and eventually took her anger out in this song. In her autobiography she wrote "This one will gas the Duchess, I thought. And it did."

Mama may have, and Papa may have, But God bless the child that's got his own.

Did Mel Torme love his song about chestnuts roasting on an open fire?
Mel Torme wrote over 250 songs. His best known song was "The Christmas Song". According to BMI, this is the most performed Christmas song. Surely he is proud of it?

In Torme's own recounting, the song was written during a very hot summer. Bob Wells (who he often collaborated with) was writing some lines down on paper to take his mind off the heat. The lines he wrote down became the opening of the song. It was written in 40 minutes.

But, according to Wiki,  "Tormé said that he wrote the music to the song in only 40 minutes, and that it was not one of his personal favorites." I would like to get a little context around this. Why was it not one of his favorites?
It is hard to say just where this phrase was first written down. I tried to find it, just to get some context. It you Google "not one of his personal favorites" - including the quotes - I get 14 results

Why wasn't he fond of the song?  This is speculation on my part, but perhaps it's because (as I have said in a previous post) Mel Torme is Jewish. I dunno. Maybe he is not all that nostalgic about Christmas.

That said, I found a wonderful little story about a group of carolers singing the song to the man himself. 

Did Barry Manilow write the song that made the whole world sing?
Barry Manilow started out as a jingle writer and is responsible for "I am stuck on Band-Aid, cuz Band-Aid's stuck on me", and "And like a good neighbor, State Farm is there". Needless to say, Manilow is Jewish.

"I Write the Songs" is one of Manilow's biggest hits. (From my own experience, it's not a big karaoke hit today, but yesterday I was requested to sing his song Copacabana.) When I first heard this song, it sounded more than a bit arrogant. Barry Manilow is saying that he wrote the songs that made the whole world sing? Ok, you did a few commercial jingles. And the Copa is a fun song, but did these songs make the whole world sing??!?!

But it turns out that this was one of the songs that Barry Manilow did not write. Bruce Johnston, who is with the Beach Boys has that honor. Actually, Manilow's big hits were generally written by someone else.

So, does the song say the Johnston is the one who writes the songs that make the young girls cry? Nope. According the to lyrics of the song "I am music, and I write the songs". I am not sure what this means, but the entity that writes the songs is Music.

MathewPng has a little different idea of what the song means. According to him, the devil is the one who wrote the songs. He urges everyone to be careful.