Red Ingle

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Best known for his comedy records with Spike Jones and his own Natural Seven sides for Capitol, Ernest Jansen "Red" Ingle (1906-65) was an American musician, singer and writer, arranger, cartoonist and caricaturist.

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[edit] Early years

Ingle was born in Toledo, Ohio on November 7, 1906. He was taught basic violin from age five by Fritz Kreisler, a family friend. However at 13, he took up the saxophone, and that instrument became his main instrument from then on. At 15 he was playing professionally with Al Amato, and by his late teens, Ingle was touring steadily with the Jean Goldkette Orchestra, along with future jazz legends Bix Beiderbecke and Frankie Trumbauer. He then joined up with Ted Weems in 1931, after briefly being a bandleader himself, and working under Maurice Sherman. His work with Weems was such a success that they worked together into the 1940s. The boy singer in the band, Perry Como, later called Ingle 'one of the most talented men I've ever met.'

[edit] The City Slickers

There then followed two years of unexciting war work. After he failed an eye test for the Air Force, he returned to music with Spike Jones & His City Slickers, where his comedic talents and flair for vocal effects found a welcoming home. Jones started featuring him as a front man immediately, and Ingle's outrageous stage presence helped transform the City Slickers' stage act into something more visual than before.

With Ingle's input, the band gradually became a complete stage package that would eventually peak (after his departure) in the late 1940s and early '50s with the wildly successful Musical Depreciation Revue.

"There was nobody in the band as funny as Red," said Zep Meissner, the band's clarinetist; "guys like him were funny in themselves, they didn't need material."

An example of his routine appears in the film Bring on the Girls, where he takes off the vaudeville song "Chloe." He would run on in a frightwig, combat boots and a nightgown, while waving a lantern, climaxing the song with the cry "I gotta go!" as he dived into an outhouse. A record of this song went gold for the band, spending four weeks in the top ten. He was also the featured vocalist on other City Slickers hits, such as "You Always Hurt the One You Love" and "Glow Worm," - this last being featured in the film Breakfast in Hollywood, one of many films featuring the band.

Red Ingle (also called "Swamphead" by this time) was also the band's resident caricaturist, designing many of the Spike Jones likenesses used in, among other things, stage backdrops and press advertisements.

[edit] The Natural Seven

Ingle left in November 1946 after a salary dispute. He drifted through Radio and Hollywood, even working in light opera, until he made "Tim-Tay-Shun", a spoof recording of the then-popular Perry Como hit "Temptation", with Jo Stafford (under the name "Cinderella G. Stump"). As the single went on to sell three million copies, Ingle formed a new band - Red Ingle and His Natural Seven; the group included several former City Slickers, among them Country Washburne, who had arranged "Tim-Tay-Shun". The band had several more hits, including "Cigareetes, Whuskey, and Wild, Wild Women", "Them Durn Fool Things," and "'A', You're a Dopey Gal." The band also recorded short films of their numbers, before finally disbanding in 1952.

[edit] Retirement from music

After working again with Weems, Ingle eased out of music, tiring of touring. He reunited with Jo Stafford on one of her television programs; by this time he had lost a great deal of weight and was barely recognizable as the former leader of the Natural Seven. There was one last reunion with Spike Jones, an album called Persuasive Concussion (satirizing the then-popular Persuasive Percussion albums). Sadly, it was never completed; Jones died in 1965. Ingle also died the same year of an internal hemorrhage. Excerpts from Persuasive Concussion, featuring Ingle, were issued on LP in the 1970s (The Very Best of Spike Jones, on the United Artists label).

[edit] External links

[edit] References

  • Visser, J. "Spike Jones and his City Slickers - Strictly for Music Lovers" Cd sleevenotes.Proper Records Properbox 5 (Proper Records, London 1999)
  • Young, Jordan R. (2005). Spike Jones Off the Record: The Man Who Murdered Music. Albany: BearManor Media ISBN 1-59393-012-7 3rd edition.