Crooner Culture

As part of b5media’s music channel list project, our theme this time around is “Top 10 artists/bands to invite to the holiday office party” and of course, I’m going to list crooners! This has to be one of those “alive or dead” things for this category, but here we go:
10. Marilyn Monroe – Yes, she’s a female crooner, and oh man, you can’t help but imagine she’d be a blast at a holiday party, maybe even drinking a Royal Stretch. I have a feeling she’d likely be the one making photocopies of her butt on the xerox machine, but what …read more

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I just love how back in the day, during live television, the stars of the show did the commercials. It made for kind of “uninterrupted television” and always was sort of unpredictable for the viewer. This clip’s a commercial that Joey Bishop and Regis Philbin did for Hai Karate Cologne. (Yes, many jokes have been made about that stuff over the years, but this is a great clip!)

I love how the woman at the end, with her big ol’ teeth, says, “Delicious.” She looks like she’s about to attack Joey, and he gives her the “Hai!” karate chop!
This post is …read more

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I’ve been hunting and picking through Joey Bishop videos on YouTube for a couple hours now, wanting to do a tribute of sorts, since Joey just recently passed, and found this one from his birthday in the late 60’s.
I laughed myself silly with this – but maybe it’s just because of the high appreciation I have for Sammy Davis, Jr. and Joey. Yep, Regis Philbin’s in here too, and he’s funny, but it’s kind of obvious the bond between Joey and Sammy is so much stronger.

Note, that Joey goes almost unscathed in the end. But I loved the …read more

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Two items this morning, one that floored me…
First, the last surviving member of the Rat Pack, Joey Bishop, has passed away at 89.
An adept ad-libber with a dry, underplayed sense of humor, Bishop achieved his greatest fame in the ’60s. He was master of ceremonies for President Kennedy’s inaugural gala and joined Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr. and Peter Lawford for the Rat Pack’s historic “Summit” meetings on stage at the Sands Hotel in Las Vegas. – LA Times

This brings me to the story of the Sands in Atlantic City. Sinatra and the Rat Pack frequented the East …read more

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