"Born: Bulee Gaillard, January 4, 1916, Detroit, Michigan - Died February 26, 1991 - England
Other sources including Gaillard himself have claimed he was born on 1 January 1916 in Santa Clara, Cuba. Gaillard led an adventurous childhood. On one occasion, while traveling on board a ship on which his father was steward, he was left behind in Crete when the ship sailed. His adventures became more exciting every time he recounted his tales and include activities such as professional boxer, mortician and truck driver for bootleggers. Originally based in Detroit, Gaillard entered vaudeville in the early 30s with an act during which he played the guitar while tap-dancing. Later in the decade he moved to New York and formed a duo with bassist Slam Stewart in which Gaillard mostly played guitar and sang. Much of their repertoire was original material with lyrics conceived in Gaillard's personal version of the currently popular 'jive talk', which on his lips developed extraordinary surrealist overtones. Gaillard's language, which he named 'Vout' or 'Vout Oreenie', helped the duo achieve a number of hit records, including 'Flat Foot Floogie'. Their success led to a long running radio series and an appearance in the film Hellzapoppin."
Find out more about Slim HERE
I think Slim is on the left in the photo.
Slim Gaillard - Poppity Pop
Slim Gaillard - Sploghm
These Rapid Share files should last FOREVER.If not please let me know! Scroll down page and click on FREE and then wait at bottom of page for your file. (About 20 seconds)
Poppittttty pop pop oh roony!
ReplyDeleteAnother little gem and quite unknown to me. Always think of black people being involved in creating Jazz and the Blues but never being a part of Vaudeville. I read a book a couple of years back about how black acts would put on make up to 'black' their faces so that they could take part in that era's vaudeville. Bizarre.
ReplyDeleteSplog 'em! Wow what a find! exactly what splog means ;-)
ReplyDeleteJan
The worlds of Comedy and Jazz rarely come together- Fats Waller and Harry "The Hipster" Gibson are two names that spring to mind, but Slim certainly carved out a little niche for himself here with the jive talk. He was also a great piano player.
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