Kaplan's Sinatra bio

[Larry Kart]

3 hours ago, paul secor said:

Rickles got away with a lot of stuff that no one else could get away with. I saw him take some nasty shots at people in the audience and everyone laughed, including the targets. I always thought that it was because he looked like a sort of ugly looking gnome that people cut him so much slack, but there was more to it than that. Perhaps he said things that other people wanted to say but wouldn't dare say.

I found Rickles' act in person to be pretty ugly. Believe me, not all of the people in the audience whom he ridiculed found it amusing.

[Larry Kart]

Speaking of Mel Torme -- as I/we were at one point above -- I just ran across "Spotlight on Mel Torme," a compilation of his early Capitol singles, and was struck by how when Mel was just on the other side of literal adolescence (ages 24-25) his arguably never to be left behind emotional adolescence pretty much comes across as a virtue, as it mates with his remarkable vocal resources and ear. Yes, at some points he sounds a bit too fond of himself, but that's how a lot of talented young people are; here it sounds and feels genuine.

http://www.amazon.com/Spotlight-Mel-Torme/dp/B00000DR7W/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1463849464&sr=1-1&keywords=spotlight+on+mel+torme

[fasstrack]

23 hours ago, gmonahan said:

And still is.  Rickles is still with us at 90 and apparently still performing. 

 

gregmo

Same age as Shecky Greene. To quote Billy Crystal (a lesser comedian IMO) these guys are 'machines'...

[JSngry]

The talk about Rickles and offensive...I saw a Frank Fay film for the first time recently, had heard the name, but that's all. It was interesting work, so I looked him up, and good lord, talk about a mess...

And then just this weekend, was watching Ed Wood's Jail Bait, and out of nowhere comes a clip (probably stolen from an earlier film called "Yes Sir, Mister Bones" that seems to have been removed from the above-ground market place that features a blackface act by one Cotton Watts, who appears to have had a successful club act doing blackface in the southeast up until, like, 1967 or so. Cotton Watts' act was one of those things that might well be amazing if you could see it in a cultural vacuum, I mean, the guys has serious chops as far as timing and pitch manipulation and facial gestures and dancing, but...it's still a white guy doing blackface and no matter how many good jokes are in there, no matter how virtuosic the various comedic gambits are , there's still monkey references and other stereotypes that are not aimed at the enlightened audiences who could appreciate the bigger cultural landscape to parse it all out, because...there really weren't any at the time, at least not in the seats at those shows, not an audience of the cognoscenti, if you know what I mean.

So...Don Rickles in a post-WWII environment onwards to today, he's obviously not unaware of Frank Fay, and probably knows the impact of minstrelsy and how it impacted itself out of existence...was Don Rickles one of our first Post-Modern comedians? Or was he just an edgy motherfucker who knew exactly where the line was to not get the shit knocked out of him, figuratively or literally?

[fasstrack]

On 5/20/2016 at 6:43 PM, Larry Kart said:

I found Rickles' act in person to be pretty ugly. Believe me, not all of the people in the audience whom he ridiculed found it amusing.

According to (yes, again) Shecky Greene, Jack E. Leonard grew very bitter and jealous of Rickles, accusing him of 'doing me'. I think he said it in this interview:  http://classicshowbiz.blogspot.com/2011/06/interview-with-shecky-greene-part-one.html

Edited May 23, 2016 by fasstrack

[gmonahan]

Sinatra liked Leonard, interestingly enough.

 

gregmo