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Janet
Klein brings her boys Backstage
By Steven
Harris
Correspondent
January 2006
If you prefer
your music lowdown and hotsy totsy, then performer Janet Klein
can deliver the goods---and how. Her group specializes in “Obscure,
Naughty and Lovely Songs of the 1910s, 20s and 30s”. Klein vocalizes
and plays the ukulele to these long-forgotten tunes, abetted by Ian
Whitcomb (on uke and accordion) and a host of other music-minded gents
known as the Parlor Boys. The sextet performs tonight at the “Backstage”
in Altadena. Musician, singer and comedian David Barlia opens the
show, resurrecting classic Western Swing with vaudevillian material.
(He’s joined by John Reynolds, grandson of 1930s actress Zasu
Pitts). Indeed, Klein conjures up the image of a gut bucking vamp
like no one does. Such selections as “What A Night For Spooning,”
“Good Little Bad Little You” or the “Sheik of Avenue
B” say it all. She’s like a svelte dream in a vintage
Vitaphone short, pitching woo as she transports one to a time when
novelty and a bit of sentimental swing were the thing. Klein has been
a staple at the Backstage since her first appearance in 2001, presented
by Bob Stane. Klein fondly said of the producer, “Bob is a wonderful
showman who is so supportive of the acts that he takes into his place.
So you know when you go there that you’re seeing something that’s
been handpicked by a fella who’s been presenting shows for many
years. Klein’s repertoire spans the approximate years of 1915
through 1937. The music itself offers a history lesson; it would be
hard to argue that the nostalgic verbiage itself is, at least, interesting,
if not appealing. Of her five CDs to date, Klein has retrieved and
updated 110 songs from the period. (Her debut CD of 1998, “Come
Into My Parlor”, covers 26 songs alone.)
Are there still
hundreds of vintage melodies yet to be discovered? Like an archeologist
on a sheet music hunt, Klein responded in the affirmative. “Hallelujah,
yes! I’m hoping that I never feel like I’ve heard everything.
The music is certainly out there.” An Alhambra resident, Klein
works assiduously at her craft and plays her part thoroughly. Besides
restoring a 1908 Craftsman bungalow and reviving old music for a new
audience, she dresses in actual clothes from the period. Klein tracks
down her material via 78 record collectors, correspondences, libraries,
swap meets, the internet, and antique shops. “I’m always
on the lookout for anything old and interesting that reveals some
other layer about the city,” she said. “Los Angeles is
not an obvious city, being so spread out. You really have to search
to find the gems you’re looking for.” Klein’s most
surprising find happened in front of a TV set. “I had looked
up a Bebe Daniels movie called “Dixiana.” The story took
place around the 1890s. Two old vaudevillians, Wheeler and Woolsey
come out dressed in ostrich outfits while wheeling in a giant egg.
Bebe pops out of the egg singing in a rather operatic fashion, about
a baby bird. I saw that and thought “wow, I want to be Bebe
Daniels!” I learned her song on my ukulele and made it my own.
Klein often incorporates unusual instruments in her act that relate
to the period. “We sometimes use stroh violin which has a horn
on it, musical saw, slide whistle..” Klein’s vocal mentors
cover Fred Astaire, Ruth Etting, Josephine Baker, Blanche Calloway
and other less known personalities. “Just recently I’ve
learned to appreciate Ethel Waters. She and Sophie Tucker were entertainers
I really hadn’t thought much about until I read their autobiographies.”
The rousing response from Klein’s audiences is something to
be anticipated. “I have moments,” she said, “when
I’m singing that I’ve known that I’m shocking people.
They realize that these songs are naughty and they think, gee I didn’t
know that grandma and grandpa were hearing things like that back then.
I sing them like they’re illegal. There are also other songs
that convey the sweetest notions imaginable. They actually shock people
with their sweetness because nobody sings about the anticipation of
setting up a love nest, of walking down the street in your hometown,
or especially anything that refers to your mother.
Why is it so
important to bring back this archaic music of generations past? Klein
kindly offers her two cents, with some added change to boot. She stated,”One
of my soapboxes (and I have a few) is that I think there are a lot
of stereotypes about that era that I’d like people to rethink.
For instance, I like to collect evidence that shows that woman have
always had an attitude. Because there’s a sense that women’s
liberation was just invented in the 1960s or 70s that just doesn’t
include the cultural details of what came before. There were plenty
of women who did incredible things –and it’s been going
on a long time. I’ve got so many illustrations, articles and
photographs that show plenty of wild and crazy dances, outrageous
entertainers, enterprising and inventive ladies, even in the Victorian
era.”
******************************************************************
LOS ANGELES
TIMES
Weekend Calendar Section
by Susan Carpenter
Singing Praises of the Past
Janet Klein prefers
" obscure, naughty and lovely" tunes,
pre 1938
Janet Klein probably
should have been born at the beginning of the 20th century, when the
"obscure, naughty and lovely" songs she sings were popular.
It's the era to which she feels most drawn, and whose spirit and style
she so successfully recreates with her music.
The L.A.-based
singer records and performs a vast repertoire of long-forgotten material--
songs from the 1910's, 20's and '30's that few people even know exist.
Klein, who prefers
venues where she can "make a time warp", recently played
to a packed house at the Silent Movie Theatre in the Fairfax district
with her nine-piece jazz band, the Parlor Boys. Dressed in a vintage
floor-length, black and gold gown, she strummed the ukulele and smiled
her way through sweet and sexually suggestive ditties in a vocal style
that was both coy and come-hither. The Parlor Boys, only seven of
whom could fit on stage, backed her up with a lighthearted liveliness
and enthusiasm that can only come from a true love of the genre.
"People
think of music from the 20's as corny, but it's not... Alot of it
is really full of life and bawdy and shockingly "cool",
says Klein, a bobbed brunette who dresses in period even when she's
not onstage. "Some of the material is more frank than songs today."
Her hourlong
set at the Silent Movie Theatre included the songs, "Hurry on
Down To My House Honey, There Ain't Nobody Home But Me", which
was banned from radio in the 30's, and "Yiddish Hula Boy",
about a man who leaves his wife to go to Hawaii where, he says, "give
me a girl with a dress of shredded wheat...with donuts on her feet....when
they start to wiggle, you yell wow! shoot me while I'm happy now."
Most of Klein's material derives from obscure 78 rpm recordings and
sheet music she and her bandmates collect. Some of the songs are from
vaudeville acts that just happened to get recorded on film. Much of
it is incredibly rare.
"I can't
believe how much material I come across that's just astoundingly great.
The period between the turn of the century and 1938 is an amazingly
fruitful time in American music. It's shocking that it's so buried
and forgotten."
Klein herself
took a long time unearthing the treasures she now performs. Though
attracted to early 20th century aesthetics since she was a child,
it wasn't until the 1980's, when she was studying for an art degree
at UCLA, that she haunted the music library there and began learning
about songwriters and musicians such as Kurt Weill, Lotte Lenya ,
Josephine Baker, and Edith Piaf.
After placing
an ad in a publication that posts requests for information on various
topics, (pre-internet), she started receiving cassettes filled with
everything from ragtime music to tunes by, cowboy vaudevillian, Charlie
Poole, entertainers Billy Murray and Aileen Stanley and blues singers
Georgia White and Edith Wilson.
It was several
years before she worked up the nerve to sing them in public. In the
interim, Klein, who is also a poet, read her own work at poetry readings.
Eventually, she wanted to add a musical component and learned the
ukulele.
"I like
to think small," says Klein. Ukulele was just kind of a nice
simple instrument to pick up. I thought it would be a charming accompaniment,
the right size for a little poem."
That accompaniment
grew to include a pianist, bass player and percussionist, all of whom
played between poems at various poetry readings. Then Klein decided
to sing the songs she'd been collecting with fuller accompaniment,
and the group began performing as a musical act in 1996.
Today, six additional
musicians have joined the band, including two members of famed underground
cartoonist R. Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders, Tom Marion and Robert
Armstrong. Also on board is veteran musician-author-historian Ian
Whitcomb, who preceeded Klein as a champion of the period's music.
Klein's day job
is with a commercial printing company, Delta Graphics, in Santa Monica,
which is where she prints her fliers, postcards and CD jackets for
her band--all of them based on designs from the first third of the
1900's.
Klein has released
two CDs on her own Coeur De Jeanette label--"Come Into My Parlor"
(1998), a solo record on which Klein sings and plays ukulele, and
"Paradise Wobble" (2000) where Klein performs with her full
band. Her next record, "Put A Flavor To Love," will be released
at the end of August.
Klein's music goes beyond entertainment--it's also a history lesson,
a means of keeping old music alive for a new audience, which encompasses
everyone from goth girls and rock fans to people who grew up with
the music.
"This last
show, so many people were coming up to me requesting specific tunes,"
says Klein. "It gives me such a kick because they know them through
me. These are songs that have been as good as dead and buried. Suddenly,
people act like these are the latest hits. It's great."
******************************************************************
Los Angeles,
California
WHO? THE ENCHANTING UKULELE CHANTEUSE AND HER INTRIGUING GENTLEMEN
PALS: JANET KLEIN & HER PARLOR BOYS
OH MY! OBSCURE, NAUGHTY & LOVELY SONGS OF THE 1910s, 20s,
AND 30s
Called by the LA Weekly " A Betty Boop for the fin-de-siecle"
Janet Klein with her band the Parlor Boys perform forgotten gems and
naughty ditties from the 1910's, 20s and 30s with panache, style and
wit. Nominated for a 1998 Music Award by the Los Angeles New Times,
which calls Klein "Sweet and sexy like a classic showgirl...evoking
the vamps of the silent era", Janet Klein and her Parlor Boys
have been performing about town to great appreciation and soldout
houses at venues such as Luna Park, the Atlas Supper Club, Lunaria,
Cafe Largo and enthusiastic support from local legends Charlie Lustman,
proprietor of the newly restored Silent Movie Theatre and Mr. Ukulele,
"Jumping" Jim Beloff, author of the "Visual History
of the Ukulele", have not hurt a bit.
The Gallery of
Indispensible Pop Music has written of Ms. Klein's 1998 debut CD "Come
Into My Parlor", "Her knowing, kittenish vocal delivery,
the equivalent of a wink and a smile is perfectly matched with the
material...chock full of clever wordplay and double entendre...and
the delicate instrumentation lends an authentically old-fashioned
sweetness to songs that, in the hands of a less finely attuned interpretter,
might well end up as overblown camp." Amplifier Magazine extolls
"A perfect record...completely free of smarmy hipsterism."
Inspired by Vitaphone
musicals from the 1920s, years of scouring 78 record collections,
poetry and performance art, Klein delights in presenting her latest
CD release entitled "Paradise Wobble", featuring late ragtime
and early jazz era tunes, including gloriously sweet numbers such
as "You're A Heavenly Thing", "Cooking Breakfast for
the One I Love" as well as naughty numbers such as "The
Physician", "I'm No Angel", "Nasty Man",
and "Real Estate Papa You Ain't Gonna Subdivide Me", plus
many, many more made obscure by the likes of Lil Armstrong (wife of
Louis), Ruth Etting, Blanche Calloway (sister of Cab), Annette Hanshaw,
Jane Green, Fannie Brice and Baby Rosemarie.
Klein's musicological
treasure hunting has led her to cultivate more than just a few old
timers, scholars and fellow tunesters. With her own fascinating family
history including vaudevillian magicians, filmmakers, artists, early
synthesizer experimentors, and more, stories abound, while Klein's
own eclectic and adventurous life make for an interesting connection.
Having assembled
a cast of fascinating players, Janet Klein has managed to charm several
band leaders, music historians and time-warped musicians into her
parlor and has allowed them to collaborate as happy-go-lucky sidemen
to bring about soulful, slightly rustic, authentically inspired interpretations
of music originally performed by the likes of Django Reinhardt, Charlie
Johnson, Cab Calloway, as well as rare Italian mazurkas, 1920s jazz-styled
Hawaiian numbers and 1920s & 30s French and Russian songs. Among
the Parlor Boys are two alumni of R.Crumb's band "The Cheap Suit
Serenaders", Tom Marion, on guitar, mandolin & banjo, and
Robert Armstrong, on Hawaiian steel guitar, accordion & saw, as
well as recording and radio personality Ian Whitcomb, on ukulele &
accordion, composer/band-leader and music historian Brad Kay, on ragtime
style piano & cornet, and John reynolds, on guitar & whistling
(grandson of the late Zasou Pitts).
A lively feature
of the band's performances are the spontaneous mixture of visitng
guest performers, such as ingenius ragtime guitarist, Craig Ventresco,
of Bo Grumpus, and mesmirizing horn player, Jeff Healy. Always a buzz
at shows, 20th century popular culture scholars such as Kenneth Anger,
author of "Hollywood Babylon", Miles Kreuger, director of
the Institute of the American Musical, are often on hand to chime
in with tidbits of information about this and that song and to chat
with wide-eyed music lovers, freshly "jazzed' by music rarely
experienced live today.
All in all Janet
Klein & Her Parlor Boys share the riches of the rarest tidbits
of American culture, music written by our own under-recognized early
20th century composers and in effect help to unearth our own best
kept secrets.
More
Press
OFFBEAT New
Orleans' & Louisiana's Music Magazine
If you have followed this column over the last score or so of
months it seems to me it should be quite apparent that if I'm about
anything it would be "keeping it real, 16/7." But when I'm
keeping it unreal, well, that's the time when I dream. These days
I dream about the Second Annual Sugarshack Festival of Hot Music.
For those of you not with us last year, the SSFHM is the two weekends
out of the year when I give up my patch of grass to make room for
someone from out-of-town so they can enjoy the spoils of our New Orleans
music, which to me is available 52 weeks out of the year. Instead
of the heat and the crowds, I opt to while away my festival weekends
alone and revel in my favorite recordings being made today. This year
the 8/7 portion of my day is filled with the sights and sounds of
Janet Klein.
Janet Klein?
In a previous column I revealed my discovery of this ukulele-playing
vocalist (and musical archeologist) in the subterranean depths of
San Francisco's Cafe Du Nord. I was smitten. Soon after meeting her,
she sent me her initial recording Come Into My Parlor. Within a few
moments of hearing her sing the opening song's verse, which begins
"There's no accounting for taste I'm sure, and that's why I picked
you. It seems a terrible waste/ but you're the best that I could do,"
well, the invitation was nice and all, but the combination of her
delicate voice and sweet strumming made me want to knock down the
parlor door.
That parlor door
is located in Los Angeles, where Ms. Klein plies her particular trade,
the performance and recording of what she calls "obscure, naughty
and lovely songs from the 1910s, 20s and 30s." I must confess
that no recordings made today have gotten under my skin more than
the two discs released by her own Coeur De Jeanette Productions. They
are full of pleasure and gaiety, and I cherish them because I'm a
fellow who finds inherent delight in a sparse ukulele background and
a pretty voice singing the Kurt Weill/Ogden Nash collaboration, "Wooden
Wedding," which includes the lines: "Heyday will bring a
magic casement/ Opening on something peachy/ Maybe a trip to Macy's
basement/ Or a double feature with Don Ameche.."
The beauty of
Come Into My Parlor is in the simplicity of it all. The instruments,
whether the uke, a guitar, an accordion or mandolin provide a light
pillow of sound on which Klein gently sets the lyrics to wonderful
songs; sweet ones like "What a Night For Spooning" ("When
the birdies go to sleep and the stars begin to beam she says, What
a night for spooning,") or her sad and knowing delivery of "If
you Want the Rainbow You Must Have the Rain," or when she becomes
a sort of Patrick Henry of romance declaring "Give Me Liberty
Or Give Me Love."
Klein is not
all sweetness however. With a coy wink she delivers naughty novelties
like "If I Can't Sell It I'll Keep Sitting On It," "Banana
In Your Fruit Basket," and especially racy "I Need Alittle
Sugar In My Bowl", where she coos "Get off your knees I
can't see what you're driving at, it's dark down there and it looks
like a snake. So come on here and drop something in my bowl."
What to make
of Janet Klein, this Jazz Age thrush who, without any trace of irony,
brings to us these wonderful songs of another age? "I'm not into
the old stuff because it's 'funny', she told The Sentimentalist, "I
like it because I think it's great and I have respect for it."
That respect comes through on every track. And one gets an idea of
where her feeling comes from in a fragment of a note she sent late
last year "I'm attracted to old stuff mostly out of discontent
and an 'out of my elementness' with the modern world."
Klein's disconnect
with contemporary America is revealed in her comment, "The idea
of singing a song about bluebirds makes me feel nice." So I was
pleased when her second CD, the ambitious Paradise Wobble (featuring
her band the Parlor Boys), included the 1928 Harry Woods composition,
"Lonely Little Bluebird". I was pleased with all the tunes;
the opener "I Wish I Were Twins" and "You Went Away
Too Far" and "Cooking Breakfast For the One I Love"
("My baby likes bacon and that's what I'm Making"). And
how can you not adore a pretty lady in a vintage dress, a flower in
her hair, cradling a ukulele in her hands singing, and sweetly, "Real
Estate Papa You Ain't Gonna Subdivide Me."
The Parlor Boys
are a hot jazz aggregation heavy on strings. Two former, and versatile,
members of R. Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders are here, Tom Marion on
guitar, banjo, mandolin and violin and Robert Armstrong who backs
Ms. Klein on Hawaiian steel guitar, banjo, ukulele and musical saw.
They have joined with a host of others to fashion a wonderfully textured
canvas for Klein to paint lovely cameos of the first third of the
20th century.
Among the 23
tracks that make up the disc, my favorites are those recorded in a
Los Angeles dance studio Klein calls "The Ross Deluxe Room,"
an homage to the sound made by the Ross Deluxe Syncopators. "I
was wildly inspired by those recordings made in an unidentified room
in Savannah,Georgia in 1927. The sound was so haunting and natural,
you could just picture this big wood dance floor with high ceilings
big high windows..well I wanted to try to get that feel." She
succeeds, especially on the title track, "Paradise Wobble,"
and Lil Hardin Armstrong's "Clip Joint." (If you're not
familiar with the Ross Deluxe recordings, a similar sound is present
on Bill Russell's 1940s recordings of Bunk Johnson and George Lewis
at San Jacinto Hall on Dumaine Street.)
We at the Sugarshack
offer a hearty salute to Janet Klein for turning her pangs of discontent
into something beautiful, and in so doing bringing joy to the hearts
of her fellow travelers. In her honor The Sugarshack Festival has
installed the "Klein Shrine" a collection of press photos
and assorted ephemera associated with our favorite songstress.
******************************************************************
San Francisco
Stories
Janet Klein & Her Parlor Boys by Jon Pult
In
previous columns I have let known my affinity for hot music and the
ukulele. Janet Klein sings and plays the ukulele, her band the Parlor
Boys play the hot music. They assembled on a recent Friday evening
in the subterranean depths of Cafe Du Nord on Market Street in San
Francisco, a club with a slightly dangerous, prohibition era speakeasy
feel. When the curtain opened on the small stage Ms. Klein, this sprightly
oddball prone to wacky hand gestures (rivaling DeMond) began singing
"Good Little Bad Little You," a number I count among my
favorites as performed by the great Cliff Edwards, and a tune one
never ever hears performed live. She sang "Exactly Like You"
and "If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight". When she
sang "Banana In Your Fruitbasket" well, let's just say I
was glad to be presently on the "Dole." She even unearthed
a little known Cole Porter masterpiece, "The Physician,"
and I therefore melted when Ms. Klein, this lively thrush, cooed the
following: "He said my epidermis was darling, and found my blood
as blue as could be, he went through wild ecstatics when I showed
him my lymphatics, but he never said he loved me."
While I was pining
in a sort of joyous trance, the Parlor Boys (three guitars, standup
bass, washboard and a guy who doubled on Hawaiian Lap Steel and Musical
Saw) were augmented by a trumpeter and accordionist (this is San Francisco
after all). The latter looked quite familiar to me, and soon my assumptions
were correct when Ian Whitcomb, the spry English chap who had a rock
and roll hit in the 1960s with "You Turn Me On" and then
turned his formidable talents to playing, researching and writing
about the music of Tin Pan Alley and its immediate precursors,was
introduced. It is fitting that Mr. Whitcomb's latest offering is a
songbook and CD set entitled Ukulele Heaven for that's where he put
me when he and his little Martin uke were featured on that most bouyant
of Walter Donaldson numbers "T'aint No Sin" (When a gal
wears X-Ray dresses, and shows everything she owns, t'aint no sin
to take off your skin and dance around in your bones.") Klein
and Whitcomb undoubtedly had me in ukulele heaven.
******************************************************************
Translated
article from Dutch Music Magazine “Smiling Ears”
by Marco Kalnenek - Holland
Americans sometimes claim that Europeans take more care of the
American Cultural Heritage than people in their own country. The fact
that many jazz musicians move to Europe because they can’t earn
an honest living in America is proof enough, they say. Also the fact
that during the last few years, our own Beau Hunks have done a great
deal to draw new attention to the Americans, Leroy Shield and Raymond
Scott, strengthens the theory.
Still there are
definitely musicians in the United States to be found who carefully
occupy themselves with the musical past of their country. Sometime
ago I came in contact quite accidentally with Janet Klein of Los Angeles.
Klein sings and plays material from the first thirty years of the
last century. She tours along clubs in and around LA with her own
band, and also writes poetry, paints and works on film soundtracks.
Her many-sidedness is easy to explain: Janet comes from a family of
vaudevillians, magicians, filmmakers and artists. One of her forefathers
seems to even have been involved in the development of the synthesizer.
Everything about Janet’s first CD, “Come Into My Parlor”
breathes the atmosphere of the twenties and thirties. In the photographs
in the CD’s book, we see Klein posing as a cross between a sexy
vamp and a young somewhat naughty girl. Of course the hairdo and makeup
are completely of the period. In her interpretation of the then daring
numbers such as “Banana In Your Fruit Basket”, “Nasty
Man”, and “If I Can’t Sell It I’ll Keep Sitting
On It”, the opposites of innoncence and naughtiness are expressed
beautifully. Because of the subtle accompaniment--Janet Klein accompanies
herself on ukulele--the whole thing becomes something intimate and
warm. The numbers don’t sound kitsch or unauthentic, and that
is perhaps Klein’s greatest acheivement: the love for this kind
of music radiates out of every note.
A second CD,
this time with her band, “The Parlor Boys”, is on its way.
The title will be “Paradise Wobble”. Here too “Entertaining
Songs, Emotive Ballads, Hot Chansonettes and Lyrical Notions”
from the beginning of the last century will be presented. Together
with the Beau Hunks, R. Crumb’s Cheap Suit Serenaders, and the
German Palace Orchestra, Janet Klein keeps the musical tradition alive
which might otherwise die out.Hopefully she will succeed in finding
a good distributor so that “Paradise Wobble” may easily
be found in our own outlets. Record Bosses, be aware!!
