Another favourite from my BBC radio listening days in the late 40s/early 50s was the larger than life American singer/comedian Jimmy Durante who also had the most famous nose in the world.
The Schnoz cut a lot of well known songs but this was always my favourite.Great drive, great spirit and really clever lyrics….
Jimmy was a big star on stage,screen, radio and TV from the 1920s until he retired in 1972. What is less well known was he entered the world of music playing the piano in the Original New Orleans Jazz Band, one of the first popular jazz bands in New York, mainly made up of musicians from New Orleans. Durante was the only New Yorker in the band but had been invited to join because of his expertise at ragtime piano.
Durante’s lost chord comedy number referenced a song originally written by the British composer Sir Arthur Sullivan (of Gilbert & Sullivan fame) in 1877. Sullivan’s “The Lost Chord” became one of the best known songs throughout the western world and was sung and recorded by Caruso as a benefit for the victims of The Titanic in 1912. As a musician not only Durante but also the general public would have been quite familiar with it – otherwise there would have been little purpose to the joke.
The sadness is that today most people’s knowledge of music outside the confines of media pap is so limited that few could make much sense of a phrase like “the Lost Chord”
A pity because the original Sullivan composition is deeply moving….
