March 2009

This month’s Dardanella is one of the earliest recorded, and at last we have a version that includes a full vocal performance: a duet, circa 1920, by Gladys Rice and Vernon Dalhart. Click to play, my venerable dummies:

	Gladys Rice and Vernon Dalhart - Dardanella
	Found at skreemr.com

Given that we finally have a performance that includes all the lyrics, it makes sense to post them, at last. Here you go:

Down, beside the Dardanella Bay,
Where Oriental breezes play, there lives a lonely maid, Armenian.
By, the Dardanelles with glowing eyes,
She looks across the sea and sighs, and weaves her love spell so sirenian.
Soon I shall return to Turkestan,
I will ask for her heart and hand.

Oh sweet Dardanella, I love your harem eyes.
Oh, a lucky fellow, to capture such a prize,
Allah knows my love for you, and he tells you to be true,
Dardanella, oh hear my sigh, my Oriental.
Oh sweet Dardanella, prepare the wedding wine,
There’ll be one girl in my harem when you’re mine.
We’ll build a tent, just like the children of the Orient.
Oh sweet Dardanella, my star of love divine.

My reference books say little about Gladys Rice, but they do note one odd fact: Her father was John C. Rice, the amorous fellow in the famous 1896 silent film, “The Kiss,” which we may show in its entirety here:

Of Vernon Dalhart, more is known, especially since his “Prisoner’s Song,” recorded in 1925, was probably the most popular recording of its decade:

The Prisoners Song - Vernon Dalhart

A rather maudlin song, that. If you register at imeem.com, you can hear the whole dreary thing. My guidebook (Joel Whitburn’s “Pop Memories, 1890-1954″) says that Dalhart began his recording career in 1916, and that it was his transformation from a light opera tenor to a singer of “mournful hillbilly ballads” that “enabled Dalhart to make music history with monumental sales on some thirty record labels under dozens of pseudonyms.” Perhaps the two songs we review today gives us an idea of the range of that transformation.

I first encountered the Rice/Dalhart Dardanella at Archive.org — a tremendous resource that is a vast online warehouse of sound recordings, videos, and other items. I encourage you to click on that link and explore. But be warned before you do: You’ll likely lose hours clicking from one fascinating artifact to another.

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Back in the day - and I’m talking about 25 years ago - if you were an aspiring comedian, and you lived in Milwaukee, you didn’t have a lot of options. There was a handful of dismal open mics in the most depressing rooms you could imagine. One of these was Wimpy’s Hunt Club, which was a corner bar on North Avenue, the sort of place that retired alcoholics would go to drink up their pensions. Comics would stand on a plank set up at the end of the bar and do their bits to heckles, at best, or, more usually, indifference. There was another open mic in the decaying ballroom of the infamous old Ambassador Hotel on Wisconsin Avenue - the hotel’s claim to fame being that it was the site where serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer did in one of his first victims. There were no actual comedy clubs at all.

I was in the audience at a lot of these shows - being a big fan of comedy, but too frightened to take the stage myself, I got to live vicariously by watching a lot of very raw comics struggle to eke out some yuks in the very worst of circumstances. If I had managed to work up the nerve to get on stage then, I’d probably still be dealing with some serious post-traumatic stress issues.

Not one of the dozens of would-be comics I used to watch ever went on to make a career of comedy. Not one - except for Dobie Maxwell. Dobie was a very hungry kid at the time, growing up in some very harsh circumstances without a lot of breaks - his parents were gang members who abandoned him to be raised by his grandparents. Through sheer force of will he fashioned himself into a nationally touring headliner with an aggressive and relentless delivery and the sort of mind that knows how to turn a thought into a real joke - not a common talent. If he reminds you a little of Rodney Dangerfield, that’s not an accident - Dangerfield has been been Dobie’s comedy hero since the first days I’ve known him.

Tuesday night, Dobie gets his first national television spot. He’ll be appearing on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson. It’s a break he’s earned. Nobody has paid more dues than Dobie. He’s had no shortage of hardship over the years, including two auto accidents, both of which came close to killing him - the hazards of being a touring road comic. Some of us have been following his career over the decades. Now, at last, the whole country will get its first look at him. I’m thinking that with the world in the state it’s in, he just might be the sort of comic voice we need right now.

Congratulations, Dobie. You’ve come a long way from the Wimpy’s. Tuesday night I’ll be tuning in, and rooting for you.

I’ve found a YouTube vid of one of his performances that will give you a head start on what you’re in for next Tuesday night. Also, check out Dobie’s Dented Can Diary, where he has been detailing the life of a road comic every day for the last few years.

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