I said, on the radio program, that it seemed like most of
the guests on Ed Sullivan's show, over the years, had either the name
"Jack," or "Jackie":
Jackie DeShannon, Jackie
Wilson, Jack E. Leonard, Jackie Vernon, Jack
Carter, Jackie "Moms" Mabley, Jackie Mason, Jack Jones--and so on.
Recently, I read a 1965 book, A Gift of Laughter (Atheneum Publishers), an autobiography
by the supremely talented song parodist/comedian Allan Sherman. I enjoyed coming upon the following, in the
book:
"Willie Weber [an agent] handled the careers of several dozen
comedians, most of whom were named Jackie. Willie, as far as I could tell, had only one
single show-business instinct: he was one hundred percent dead certain that the
only good name for a comedian is Jackie. You couldn't argue this point, because
he was making a fortune. If a Sam,
Alvin, Clyde or Montmorency walked into Willie Weber's office and signed a
contract, he walked out under the name
of Jackie, and somehow Willie kept his Jackies busy working all the
time. Willie wasn't too happy when I
insisted on remaining Allan, but he figured it would be real good if he could
have somebody like me around to supply jokes and funny songs to his stable of
Jackies, which included Jack E. Leonard, Jackie Miles, Jackie Winston and
Jackie Gleason."
While writing this post, I went online, to see if there were
other Jacks or Jackies I had forgotten--and found
an enjoyable/interesting passage from a 2015 book by Kliph
Nesteroff, The Comedians (published by Grove Press).
Mr. Nesteroff wrote about the recurring names of
comics, years ago: "There were guys
like Buddy Lester, Buddy Lewis and Buddy Hackett; Joe E. Brown, Joe E. Lewis
and Joe E. Ross; Joey Adams, Joey Bishop and Joey Forman. An inexplicable number of them were named
Jackie--Jackie Clark, Jackie Curtiss, Jackie Gayle, Jackie Gleason, Jackie
Heller, Jackie Kahane, Jackie Kannon, Jackie Mason, Jackie Miles, Jackie
Wakefield, Jackie Whalen, Jackie Winston, Jackie Vernon, Jack E.
Leonard..."
Here is a link to the book, on
amazon:
Here, too, via YouTube, are three Allan
Sherman songs.
The first is Mr. Sherman's most
famous record, 1963's "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh." Mr. Sherman (who
died in 1973, of emphysema, not long before he would have turned 49)
was perhaps not a "trained" singer, but I loved his voice; he had a very appealing and distinctive
singing style. And his lyrics (often co-written by Lou Busch, his musical arranger and conductor): they were entertaining, and very
funny--and always scanned so beautifully.
Another song--according to the YouTube video, the recording
is from a 1963 live performance, in California--was titled "Overweight People" (to the tune
of "Over the Rainbow"):
And lastly, from 1964, one of my favorites--"Shine on Harvey Bloom":
