The Singing Bush
Through my aimless wander through the internet this morning, I came across a curious coincidence. I noticed that comic strips gained popularity right around the same time that records were becoming commercially successful. In the 1920s and 30s, newspapers began running story-boxed pictures, and this sequential art form would become the second most popular section by the 1930s. One hundred years ago, recorded music and cartoons walked into the cultural lexicon of American life. All this because I was hunting around for the phrase, “see you in the funny papers.”
I was also looking for the phrase “see you in the movies,” but to no avail. I have spent the better part of 2020 researching Umm Kulthum, a famous Egyptian singer who made several movies about people who were suspiciously similar to her persona and life circumstances. Elvis made several of the same type of movies. These were films that didn’t necessarily mirror his actual life, but that depicted characters that we could easily see fitting the King’s personality. Musicians would continue this practice throughout the ages, with similar examples from the pseudo autobiographical types of films like Prince in Purple Rain, to the reality we all wish was true like David Bowie in Labyrinth.
Then there’s the cameos. There are too many to list, but I would like to talk about the one I was reminiscing on this morning. In 1986, a touching tale about three friends looking for success south of the border turns into a grand adventure as they save a small Mexican village from a terrible fate. Within the scope of this film, comes a short, memorable scene where one of America’s great musical treasures was able to fill a minor, but humble part.
I am, or course, referring to Randy Newman as the Singing Bush in Three Amigos.
The impact of having this bass voice altered to reach the high-pitched timbre while rattling off “Goodnight, Ladies,”, “Blow the Man Down,” and “She’ll Be Coming ‘Round the Mountain,” and other various sea shanty’s and vaudeville tunes, is almost as bold as finding out who is singing them. There is no real story behind how the decision was made to have him play this role, but I would have loved to have been in the writers room while they came up with the idea.
This might sound like a hard story to follow, for those who are unfamiliar with it. I’d invite you to try to follow the narrative of the “Burning Bush” from old religious texts if you want a real challenge. I won’t even go into it here, if only to say I didn’t get past the part where Moses dropping his staff had something to do with leprosy. It’s not nearly as funny a tale.
But back to Randy Newman. In this earliest of auto-tunings lies one of his most memorable performances, and I didn’t even know it was him. If comics and records made their hay-day in the 1920s, then surely the music boxes and satire paintings of the 1880s were their predecessors. Let’s enjoy some lighthearted technological sampling and studio mixing from the 1980s this hump-day in 2020, for what could be finer in the month of May?