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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Renowned sculptor, Tina Allen is currently in the process of creating a 15ft statue of Sammy Davis, Jr. in bronze. I’ve taken a look at her other work, and frankly, I’m not all that impressed. I mean yes, it’s impressive to be creating a 15 foot statue of anything, especially using the process of bronze (creating it in clay, making a mold, then the bronze casting) but even though the statue of Sammy is unfinished, looking at some of her other pieces, like that of Tupac Shakur looking gaunt and not at all like himself, leaves me feeling like I …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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Rare footage of Sammy Davis, Jr. doing celebrity impressions for a March of Dimes benefit… this is pretty damn good!

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For some reason, “Mr. Bojangles” always makes me a little “mushy” when I hear it. But only the version of the beloved Sammy Davis, Jr.
This video shows Sammy in the 1980’s doing a version for television’s “Night of 100 Stars”.

It’s funny, we actually have a sort of celebrity from my hometown by the name of Louis Velez who has done one of the absolute best Sammy Davis, Jr. impressions on the planet for a great many years now. (It was one of my birthday presents this past year, to see “The Rat Pack” show a local theater when they came …read more

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Fellow b5media blogger Dexie Wharton put in a song request yesterday – She said this song is for her mom, and that it’s quite special to her. Personally, I get a little mushy and sentimental whenever I hear this song myself.
I present the music and lyrics to Gershwin’s “Someone To Watch Over Me”… this version is performed by Frank Sinatra.

Someone To Watch Over Me
Gershwin/Gershwin

(There’s a saying old says that love is blind
Still were often told, seek and ye shall find
So I’m going to seek a certain gal I’ve had in mind)
(Looking everywhere, haven’t found her yet
She’s the big affair …read more

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