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Lindley Armstrong "Spike" Jones (December 14, 1911, Long Beach, California – May 1, 1965, Beverly Hills, California) was a popular musician and comedian.

Contents 1 Biography 2 Der Fuehrer's Face 3 Radio 4 Murdering the Classics 5 Soundies 6 The 1950s 7 Radioland Murders 8 Misleading biographies 9 Influence 10 Popular recordings 11 Reference 12 Sources 13 External links

His father was a Southern Pacific railroad agent. He got his nickname by being so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike. At the age of eleven he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself. A railroad restaurant chef taught him how to use pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments. He frequently played in theater pit orchestras. In the 1930s he joined the Victor Young Band and thereby got many offers to appear on radio shows including the Al Jolson Lifebuoy Show, Burns and Allen and Bing Crosby's Kraft Music Hall. From 1937 to 1942, he was the percussionist for the John Scott Trotter Orchestra, which played on Bing Crosby's first recording of " White Christmas."^[1] In 1940, he had an uncredited bandleading part in the film Give Us Wings, appearing on camera for about four seconds. He joined up with vocalist Del Porter and performed in Los Angeles, gaining a cult following. By 1941 the band included violinist Carl Grayson. In 1942 he starred in four Soundies musical shorts seen on coin-operated projectors in arcades, malt shops and bars. His Soundies included Pass the Biscuits, Mirandy, in which he appeared as a hillbilly. Other band members added later were George Rock (voice and trumpet), Mickey Katz (clarinet and voice), Doodles Weaver (voice) and Red Ingle (voice). They became his backing band, The City Slickers. Saxophonist Ed Metcalfe performed with Spike Jones for a while. Jones's wife was the singer Helen Grayco, who performed on his radio shows. They received a recording contract with RCA Victor in 1941 and recorded extensively for the company until the mid-1950s. They also hosted a weekly television show on NBC during the 1950s. Jones had four children, Spike Jr., Linda, Leslie and Gina. Leslie today is the Director of Music and Film Scoring at George Lucas' Skywalker Ranch in Marin County.

In 1942 Walt Disney made a propaganda cartoon, originally titled Donald Duck in Nutzi Land. It contained the song "Der Fuehrer's Face," released as a single by Spike before the cartoon was released. It reached number two, and it is said that even Hitler heard it. In fact, in the satirical magazine Cracked, in an article satirizing the fascination with Nazis, Hitler was depicted swinging a sledgehammer at a jukebox, from which a voice emanates singing "I went 'F-z-z-z-t-t-t!' right in Der Fuehrer's Face!".^[2] The success of the record inspired Disney to retitle the cartoon with the song title. Spike had seven top ten hits from 1942 to 1949, even though no new recordings were made for a year during a strike by the American Federation of Musicians. His signature tune, "Cocktails for Two," was recorded in 1944.

Spike began his own radio program in 1945, and his guests during more than 60 shows included Groucho Marx, Frankie Laine and Burl Ives. Spike's parody of Vaughn Monroe's "Ghost Riders in the Sky" was quickly withdrawn because of displeasure from Monroe. The parody was performed as if being sung by a drunkard and ridiculed Monroe by name in its final stanza. The original version is a prized rarity. The track, when re-released by RCA on the album The Best of Spike Jones, Volume 2 in the 1970s, was extensively edited because Monroe (an RCA Records stockholder at the time) demanded it. ^[3] The final stanza: ^{[4] [5]}

CHORUS: Cause all we hear is Ghost Riders/Sung by Vaughn Monroe
DRUNK: I can do without his singing
FRIEND: But I wish I had his dough!

Frank Sinatra appeared on the show in October 1948, and Lassie in May 1949. Through the late 1940s and early 1950s, the band toured the USA and Canada under the title, The Musical Depreciation Revue. The band grew from seven to 16 players. Jones also appeared in a dozen films in the late 1940s and 1950s, always playing himself. In 1957, the City Slickers name was changed to "The Band That Plays For Fun."

One of his earliest recordings was an adaptation of Liszt's Liebesträume, played at a jaunty pace on unusual instruments. Rossini's William Tell Overture was rendered on kitchen implements. In live shows Spike would acknowledge the applause with complete solemnity, saying "Thank you music lovers". A collection of 12 of these "homicides" was released by RCA in 1971 as Spike Jones Is Murdering The Classics. Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, provided the hiccups on Clink Clink Another Drink. The song also used drinking glasses as musical instruments. In December 1945 Spike released his version of Tschaikovsky's Nutcracker Suite, arranged by Joe "Country" Washburn with lyrics by Porter Carlino. Spike's recording, "All I Want for Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth," was a number one hit in 1948. (Dora Bryan recorded a 1963 variation, "All I want For Christmas is a Beatle.")

A series of short musical films were made by the band in 1942 for Soundies' jukebox-type projection machines. In his later theatrical movies, we see Jones dressed in a suit with an enormous check pattern, leaping around playing cowbells, a suite of klaxons, foghorns, then xylophone and shooting a pistol. One of their instruments was a "latrinophone," a toilet seat with strings. The band got their own variety shows on NBC then CBS from 1954 to 1961. In 1990 BBC2 screened six compilation shows from these broadcasts, which were subsequently aired on PBS stations as well. Songs from Spike's Standard Radio Transcriptions (1941-46) were released on a compilation called Not Your Standard Spike Jones Collection.

The WWII years were lean times for Frank Sinatra, and he was glad to get work doing a guest spot with Jones. Once his fame grew, Sinatra repaid his debt to Spike by inviting him onto his show in 1958. "The Perry Como Show" had him as a guest in 1956 and Jack Benny in the same year. Also in 1956, Jones released his first LP, Dinner Music For People Who Aren't Very Hungry. By 1959 his act seemed old-fashioned, and the work dried up. He made a few stereo comedy albums in the early 1960s, then switched to recording "straight" dance albums with a full orchestra. A lifelong smoker (he was once said to have gotten through the average workday on coffee and cigarettes), Spike Jones died from emphysema in Beverly Hills, California on May 1, 1965, at the age of 54. He is buried in Holy Cross Cemetery in Culver City, California.

In 1994 Mel Smith directed a film based on a script by George Lucas. Set in 1939, it contains fictionalized versions of Spike Jones and Frank Sinatra. Radioland Murders was poorly reviewed and compared unfavorably with Woody Allen's Radio Days. It contains the last appearance of George Burns. Two members of Spike Jones's band appear in the film: Billy Barty (1924-2000) and "Mousie" Garner (1909-2004), playing themselves.

Many compilations from the 1970s and 1980s contained spurious dates of birth and death for Spike in the liner notes. Unfortunately, this misinformation has been widely repeated on the web and in books. He was not born on May 14, 1916, nor did he die on March 29, 1966. His real name was not Harry Joseph Chick Daugherty.

There is a clear line of influence from the Hoosier Hot Shots and the Marx Brothers to Spike Jones and to Stan Freberg, Gerard Hoffnung, Peter Schickele's P.D.Q. Bach, The Goons, The Beatles, Frank Zappa, The Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, The Mystic Knights of the Oingo Boingo, The Roto Rooter Goodtime Christmas Band and "Weird Al" Yankovic (Billy Barty even appeared in Yankovic's film UHF and a video based on the movie). Jones is also mentioned in The Band's song, "Up on Cripple Creek." Novelist Thomas Pynchon is an admirer and wrote the liner notes for a 1994 reissue of some of Jones's most adventurous recordings, entitled "Spiked!" (BMG Catalyst).

Syndicated radio personality Dr. Demento regularly features Jones's music on his program of comedy and novelty tracks.

• "Cocktails for Two"
• "Hawaiian War Chant"
• "I Went to Your Wedding"
• "That Old Black Magic"
• "Yes, We Have No Bananas"
• "The Blue Danube"
• "Black Bottom"
• "The Sheik of Araby"
• "You Always Hurt the One You Love"
• "The Man on the Flying Trapeze"
• "William Tell Overture"
• Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours"
• "Powerhouse" by Raymond Scott (recognizable as the 'industrial factory' music from cartoons)
• "Never Hit Your Grandma With A Shovel"
• "Flight of the Bumblebee" (Laughing Record)"
• "Holiday For Strings"
• "Mairzy Doats"
• "The Hut Sut Song"

Notes by Peter Gamble from Clink Clink Another Drink CD by Audio Book & Music Company, ABMMCD 1158.

• Red Hot Jazz
• All Music Guide
• Phillywire article with added links
• Angel Radio: Spike Jones regularly played on John Wood's Friday morning live webcast