Lindley Armstrong Jones was an American drummer, bandleader, composer, and comedian. As the bandleader of His City Slickers, he sucesssfully toured the United States and Canada.
Background
Lindley Armstrong was born on December 14, 1911 in Long Beach, California, United States, the son of Lindley M. Jones, a station agent and telegrapher for the Southern Pacific Railroad, and of Ada Armstrong.
At eleven, when the family lived in Calexico, California, Spike, as he was called, was given his first set of drums. Soon he was the drummer and leader of a four-piece band. When the family returned to Long Beach, he became drum major of the ninety-piece high school band. Once again he organized his own group, Spike Jones and His Five Tacks.
Education
At Chaffee Junior College in Long Beach he improved his drumming skills through two years of music study.
Career
Jones's ambition was to be a timpani player in a symphony orchestra. But at hand were drumming jobs at clubs and night spots. From these he moved into the popular dance bands of Everett Hoagland and Earl Burtnett.
By 1937, Jones was a staff drummer at Hollywood radio and recording studios. He held the drum spot in John Scott Trotter's orchestra on the radio show "Kraft Music Hall, " starring Bing Crosby. To make the most of a union rule that barred musicians from working on radio for more than two hours a week unless producers asked for them specifically, he generated a demand for his talents by offering unusual extras: tuned cowbells, doorbells, and auto horns; washboards; pistols; and an anvil and iron mallets.
He worked on a number of important radio shows: Al Jolson, Burns and Allen, Fibber McGee and Molly, Bob Burns, the "Chase and Sanborn Hour. " Radio-show bands played music restricted by time and commercial limitations. With equally bored fellow musicians Jones began holding weekly play-the-way-you-feel sessions, from which emerged raucous spoofs of the tunes they played for a living. Victor Records signed the men to a contract, but nothing much happened until July 1942, when they recorded a number that Jones had written for a Donald Duck cartoon, "Der Fuehrer's Face. " Its explosive insults and ripe "Bronx cheers" (from a rubber razzer), aimed at Adolf Hitler, spoke for the whole country during World War II. It sold 1. 5 million copies and set Spike Jones and His City Slickers on a course of musical satire and slapstick that made him a millionaire and made millions of Americans and fans overseas laugh at a time when laughs were hard to come by.
Between radio commitments, the City Slickers toured and turned out a succession of recordings that have become satiric classics, such as "Chloe, " "Liebestraum, " and "William Tell Overture. " "Cocktails for Two, " which featured an entire chorus of hiccups, became such a big jukebox hit that Victor reportedly made 150, 000 pressings with the song on both sides, so that when one side wore out, the record could be flipped over to the fresh side. In December 1942, Jones was voted King of Corn in Down Beat's annual band poll. He snatched the crown from its long-time wearer, Guy Lombardo, and held it through the decade.
Beginning with Thank Your Lucky Stars (1943), Spike Jones and His City Slickers made a movie each year for the next four years: Meet the People (1944), Bring on the Girls (1945), Breakfast in Hollywood (1946), and Variety Girl (1947). When they were cast as shipyard workers in Meet the People, Jones quipped, "A natural. My boys are riveters and blacksmiths at heart!"
After the addition of saws, auto pumps, toy whistles, sirens, fire bells, kitchen utensils, small cannon, and a "birdophone" to his arsenal, Jones set off on tour in July 1946 with a two-hour extravaganza, Musical Depreciation Revue. He prophesied that it would set music back 1, 000 years. Tours expanded, props proliferated: an octave of Flit guns tuned to E-flat, a "crashophone" for breaking glass, a goat that allegedly bleated in the key of C, and a skunk (well trained). The revue's harpist calmly knitted while the mayhem raged around her.
In the 1950's Jones and the band appeared in only one movie, Fireman, Save My Child (1954), but found another made-to-order medium: television. "The Spike Jones Show" was first televised in 1951, with subsequent telecasts in 1954, 1957, 1958 (as the "Club Oasis" show), 1960, and 1961. But with the 1960's came radical changes in musical styles and tastes. Jones found the current songs impossible to satirize: "In their original form they are already the funniest renditions ever heard, " he said. He abandoned comedy and turned to making records in a fairly straight Dixieland style. But with his cowbells, crashophone, Flit guns, and birdophone silenced, life in music was not the same.
He died of emphysema in Los Angeles.
Achievements
Lindley Armstrong Jones was the popular musician, whose band recorded under the title Spike Jones and his City Slickers. The band starred in variety television shows, such as The Colgate Comedy Hour (1951, 1955) and their All Star Revue (1952). They also starred in various radio programs (1945–1949) and in their own NBC and CBS television shows from 1954 to 1961.
According to David Wild's review in Rolling Stone Magazine, Elvis Costello's 1989 Album "Spike" was named partly in tribute to Jones.
(Spike Jones Spike Jones No. 1 - 1.65 UK 7" vinyl)
Personality
Jones was a lifelong heavy smoker and he eventually developed emphysema.
Connections
On July 18, 1948, Jones married Helen Greco, a singer with his band who was known professionally as Helen Grayco. They had three children. He had a daughter by his previous marriage to Patricia Ann Middleton, who was also a singer.
