Jimmy Durante

More scratchy vinyl from the boot sale. I think I have featured Jimmy before but not sure what songs were on the blog post.  This LP has many of his hits and a few obscure numbers I'd not heard before like  I'll Do The Strut Away in My Cut Away.

Wikipedia says -

"Durante was born on the Lower East Side of New York City. He was the youngest of four children born to Bartolomeo and Rosa Durante, both of whom were immigrants from Salerno, Italy. Bartolomeo was a barber, and his wife Rosa was the sister of a woman who lived in the same boarding house.Jimmy Durante served as an altar boy at Saint Malachy's Roman Catholic Church, known as the Actor's Chapel.

Durante dropped out of school in eighth grade to become a full-time ragtime pianist. He first played with his cousin, whose name was also "Jimmy Durante". It was a family act, but he was too professional for his cousin. He continued working the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname "Ragtime Jimmy", before he joined one of the first recognizable jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band. Durante was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to deliver a joke, with band or orchestra chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark. In 1920, the group was renamed Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band.

Durante became a vaudeville star and radio personality by the mid-1920s, with a trio called Clayton, Jackson and Durante. Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, Durante's closest friends, often reunited professionally. Jackson and Durante appeared in the Cole Porter musical The New Yorkers, which opened on Broadway on December 8, 1930. Earlier that same year, the team had appeared in the movie Roadhouse Nights, ostensibly based on Dashiell Hammett's novel Red Harvest.

By 1934, he had a major record hit with his own novelty composition, "Inka Dinka Doo", with lyrics written by Ben Ryan to music that Durante himself composed. It became his theme song for the rest of his life. A year later, Durante starred on Broadway in the Billy Rose stage musical Jumbo, in which a police officer stopped him while leading a live elephant and asked him, "What are you doing with that elephant?" Durante's reply, "What elephant?" was a regular show-stopper. This comedy bit, also reprised in his role in Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962, based on the 1935 musical) likely contributed to the popularity of the idiom the elephant in the room. Durante also appeared on Broadway in Show Girl (1929), Strike Me Pink (1934) and Red, Hot and Blue (1936).

He began appearing in motion pictures in a comedy series pairing him with silent film legend Buster Keaton and continuing with The Wet Parade (1932), Broadway to Hollywood (1933),The Man Who Came to Dinner (1942, playing Banjo, a character based on Harpo Marx), Ziegfeld Follies (1946), Billy Rose's Jumbo (1962, based on the 1935 musical) and It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World (1963). In 1934 he starred in Hollywood Party, where he dreams he is 'Schnarzan', a character in parody of 'Tarzan', extremely popular at the time due to the Johnny Weissmuller films."

Tracks are as follows -   1. Bill Bailey  2. What You Goin' To Do When The Rent Comes 'Round?  3. A-Razz-A Ma-Tazz  4. I'm A Vulture For Horticulture  5. It's My Nose's Birthday  6. I'll Do The Strut Away In My Cut-Away


Jimmy Durante  -  Side One