Over the years I’ve noticed that people with a steel backbone of talent often have a sense of humor about themselves that others lack. It’s people who are unsure of themselves that are deadly serious about everything. When you doubt your own ability to “get over” with an audience, any distraction, any ad-lib, any hiccup in the proceeding can lead to a total breakdown. The most virulent forms of this phenomenon leads to actors who demand that no one even look them in the eye when passing them in the hall at the movie studio, or maybe demanding that their M&Ms get sorted before they’ll eat them.
I’ve played in bands for money. Lots and lots of bad things have happened during shows. I’ve seen performers literally freak out if a string breaks on their guitar. The audience never would have caught on if they hadn’t pitched a fit in the middle of a song instead of soldiering on. I was very lucky that some of the people I worked with would just use whatever happened during a show as fodder for humor or entertaining seriousness, the best kind of humor.
So here’s Tennessee Ernie Ford, Molly Bee, and Merle Travis singing the hell out of a country standard, Dim Lights, Thick Smoke, and Loud Loud Music in 1960. It’s before my time, but I’m familiar with the principals. Ford based his TV career on a kind of offbeat, corn pone humor and good music. Like Dean Martin, who also had a teevee variety show later on in the decade, he seemed to be having fun the whole time, and be self-deprecating and nearly disorganized. Of course nothing was disorganized in the slightest. Both were consummate professionals, and would know what to do if anything from a heckler to a world war broke out during a number. Ford always used to close his show with a hymn, which was a novelty at the time, and since. Everyone loved TEF, or at least his public persona.
It wouldn’t surprise me if the rebel yell halfway through was a put-up job from a stage hand, and planned by Ford well in advance. Seeming spontaneous takes a lot of preparation, generally. But it also wouldn’t surprise me if it was a happy accident, someone in the audience just transported by the singing, and Ford didn’t miss a beat, and simply used it to get a laugh and carry the performance along.
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As one of my piano tutors (the jazz guy, of course) told me, “If you mess up a chord, just keep playin’ on. But don’t forget how it sounded, you might have discovered something.” Which seems to have been good advice, seeing as how my sheet music is scribbled all over with “discoveries.”
Hey, you don’t know if you’re doing it wrong until you do it and it don’t work. Until then, it’s just a different way of doing it right.
And Tennessee Ernie Ford doing ‘Sixteen Tons’ kinda defines cool. Walkin’ music.
GOOD MORNING! Thank you for that early morning bit of sunshine! DH and I enjoyed the film. Both of us are of an age that enjoyed TEF for many years.
I love doughnuts. Hawaiian doughnuts (Malasadas) hot out of the fat are the best! In 1973 I was on the Big Island (Hawaii) and driving up the coastal highway from Hilo toward Waimea. It was a small two lane road (one going each way). Cane fields and ocean and blue sky hardly any cars. I pulled off to get some doughnuts which I did every time I made this trip. That little doughnut joint was the best! Standing out there in the parking lot enjoying a beautiful cup of Kona Coffee and a Portuguese Doughnut I was not alone. There were two men out there enjoying the same treats. One of them started chatting with me–we laughed and giggled and spilled coffee. Then he TEF asked me if I would like to go to dinner with him that night? I politely declined. But I have always been a girl who enjoyed a good sense of humor–there was a split second there when I might have broken my “no go” rule about strangers!