Lindley Armstrong "Spike" Jones was an American musician and bandleader specializing in spoof arrangements of popular songs and classical music.
26 Facts About Spike Jones
2.
Ballads receiving the Jones treatment were punctuated with gunshots, whistles, cowbells, hiccups, burps, and outlandish and comedic vocals.
3.
Lindley Armstrong Spike Jones was born in Long Beach, California, the son of Ada and Lindley Murray Spike Jones, a Southern Pacific railroad agent.
4.
Young Lindley Jones was given the nickname 'Spike' for being so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike.
5.
Spike Jones became bored playing the same music each night with the orchestras.
6.
Spike Jones found other like-minded musicians and they began playing parodies of standard songs for their own entertainment.
7.
The record's success inspired Spike Jones to become the band's leader.
8.
Spike Jones initially thought the popularity the record brought them would fade.
9.
However, audiences kept asking for more, so Spike Jones started working on more comic arrangements.
10.
From 1937 to 1942, Spike Jones was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby's first recording of "White Christmas".
11.
Spike Jones was part of a backing band for songwriter Cindy Walker during her early recording career with Decca Records and Standard Transcriptions.
12.
Spike Jones's song "We're Gonna Stomp Them City Slickers Down" provided the inspiration for the name of Jones's future band.
13.
Spike Jones's recording, "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth", with a piping vocal by George Rock, was a number-one hit in 1948.
14.
In 1940, Spike Jones had an uncredited bandleading part in the Dead End Kids film Give Us Wings, appearing on camera for about four seconds.
15.
Spike Jones was set to team with Abbott and Costello for a 1954 Universal Pictures comedy, but when Lou Costello withdrew for medical reasons, Universal replaced the comedy team with look-alikes Hugh O'Brian and Buddy Hackett, and promoted Spike Jones to the leading role.
16.
The finished film, Fireman Save My Child, turned out to be Spike Jones's only top-billed theatrical movie.
17.
In 1942, the Spike Jones gang worked on numerous Soundies, musical shorts similar to later music videos which were shown on coin-operated projectors in small nightclubs, arcades, malt shops, and taverns.
18.
Spike Jones saw the potential of television and filmed two half-hour pilot films, Foreign Legion and Wild Bill Hiccup, in the summer of 1950.
19.
Spike Jones usually dressed in a suit with an enormous check pattern and was seen leaping around playing a washboard, cowbells, a suite of klaxons and foghorns, then xylophone, then shooting a pistol.
20.
The band starred in variety shows, such as The Colgate Comedy Hour and their All Star Revue before being given his own slot by NBC, The Spike Jones Show, which aired early in 1954, and Club Oasis on NBC, in the summer of 1958; and by CBS, as The Spike Jones Show, in the summers of 1957,1960, and 1961.
21.
In 1950, when America was nostalgically looking back at the 1920s, Spike Jones recorded a straight album of Charleston arrangements.
22.
In 1956, Spike Jones supervised an album of Christmas songs, many of which were performed seriously.
23.
Spike Jones adapted to this, too; most of his later albums are spoken-word comedy, including the horror-genre sendup Spike Jones in Stereo and the send-up of television programs of the period in Omnibust.
24.
Spike Jones is interred in Holy Cross Cemetery, Culver City, California.
25.
Spike Jones is mentioned in The Band's song, "Up on Cripple Creek".
26.
Merrie Melodies animated short Back Alley Oproar, a caterwauling Sylvester the Cat does a Spike Jones-inspired solo finale cover of "Angel in Disguise" by opening with a brief, serious-sounding introduction before immediately breaking into a jazzy rendition featuring a collection of crazy sound effects produced by firing guns, breaking bottles and exploding firecrackers among other sounds, much to Elmer Fudd's annoyance.