Mark Your Calendars! April 5, 2006
Yes, it's something, all right. April 5, 2006 is the 100th birthday of Lord Buckley.
http://www.lordbuckley.com/LBC/LBC_Misc_Pages/LBC.html
Lord Buckley was born April 5, 1906 in a little mining and lumber town called Tuolumne, California. His parents were William (Bill) and Annie Laurie Buckley. Bill Buckley was proportedly from Manchester, England. Annie Laurie's parents were born in Cornwall, England.
His Royal Hipness was as unique as they come, an eccentric old white man who made his mark by recasting familiar tales--from Shakespeare, the Bible, and beyond--in a frantic spray of black street lingo, jazz-speak, and hipster jive. In Buckley's mind, Jesus became "The Nazz," Gandhi "The Hip Gan," and explorer Vasco da Gama "Cabeza de Gasca." That would be adventurous now. It was simply unheard of in the 1940s and 1950s when Buckley was plying his trade, entertaining audiences he called his Royal Court.
He was too weird to be more than a cult figure, but his defiant persona, deep individualism, and comic sense of cool certainly influenced the likes of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and even Bob Dylan.
My mother had some recordings of his, broadcast on Chicago radio. WFMT's "Midnight Special" on Saturday night would play some of his rare stuff, and it was enthralling to hear.
He died in New York in 1960. I sure hope somebody's doing something somewhere to commemorate this special man. Since I'm living in Seattle now, maybe something's happening here...
http://www.lordbuckley.com/LBC/LBC_Misc_Pages/LBC.html
Lord Buckley was born April 5, 1906 in a little mining and lumber town called Tuolumne, California. His parents were William (Bill) and Annie Laurie Buckley. Bill Buckley was proportedly from Manchester, England. Annie Laurie's parents were born in Cornwall, England.
His Royal Hipness was as unique as they come, an eccentric old white man who made his mark by recasting familiar tales--from Shakespeare, the Bible, and beyond--in a frantic spray of black street lingo, jazz-speak, and hipster jive. In Buckley's mind, Jesus became "The Nazz," Gandhi "The Hip Gan," and explorer Vasco da Gama "Cabeza de Gasca." That would be adventurous now. It was simply unheard of in the 1940s and 1950s when Buckley was plying his trade, entertaining audiences he called his Royal Court.
He was too weird to be more than a cult figure, but his defiant persona, deep individualism, and comic sense of cool certainly influenced the likes of Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, and even Bob Dylan.
My mother had some recordings of his, broadcast on Chicago radio. WFMT's "Midnight Special" on Saturday night would play some of his rare stuff, and it was enthralling to hear.
He died in New York in 1960. I sure hope somebody's doing something somewhere to commemorate this special man. Since I'm living in Seattle now, maybe something's happening here...
posted by John Bernat @ 2:03 PM
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