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Original Post By:
bassfiddlesteve
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Date: 3/5/2010 1:00:37 PM |
Yesterday I caught parts of a 1940 movie called "Flowing Gold" on TCM. Cliff Edwards has a role providing a little comic relief and during several scenes he scats a bit and strums his Martin tenor. Towards the end of the movie another character who seems annoyed by Cliff's playing says "why don't you bust that porkchop" and Cliff obliges by smashing it over his leg! The characters on screen were just as shocked as I was.
- Steve |
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Posted By:
AlanJ
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Date: 3/5/2010 4:36:33 PM |
| New euphemism for playing the uke... gnawing the porkchop? I haven't seen the movie but would you suspect the uke to be a prop? What would it feel like to take a tenor and break it over your leg? Did he do it with 2 hands? I could see that.
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Posted By:
bassfiddlesteve
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Date: 3/5/2010 5:06:42 PM |
It could have been a prop, but there were not many ukes that big in 1940 and Martin tenors were fairly cheap at that time, so it probably was the real deal.
- Steve
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Posted By:
AlanJ
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Date: 3/5/2010 7:05:09 PM |
| I'm just thinking of the pain factor. Of course, there's the possibility that Cliff was lit at the time.
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Posted By:
Ukester Brown
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Date: 3/5/2010 10:15:27 PM |
| That would be cool to see and it is not on a current schedule. It say's Cliff's name in the movie was "Hot Rocks".... sounds like one of his songs about a bear....
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Posted By:
bassfiddlesteve
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Date: 3/5/2010 11:58:38 PM |
The character he played was part of a group of men working in an oil field. The well had just struck oil so he justified breaking his uke by saying "I'm gonna be so rich that I can buy a million ukuleles, and when I have a million ukuleles I'll have all of them!". That line wasn't funny enough to justify busting the Martin in my opinion.
Cliff sure was in a lot of movies. He was even in "Gone With The Wind".
- Steve
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Posted By:
mLKauai
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Date: 3/6/2010 3:17:03 AM |
| like those ferarri's and corvettes that get smashed by the Transformers!
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Posted By:
NinaC
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Date: 3/6/2010 5:51:51 AM
(Updated: 3/6/2010 5:59:45 AM)
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"Martin tenors were fairly cheap at that time"
I don't know about that. When I wrote my book ten years ago I had to research what certain things would cost today based on prices in the 20s-70s, adjusting for inflation using published indices. I found that the prices in 2000 were roughly 20x what they were in 1940 on the average. So, hypothetically if a uke was 25 dollars back then, it would translate to 500 dollars in 2000, and here we are ten years later. I'm not sure what Martin tenors were running back then but I would think it was more than that, which was a figure I'd read for some soprano models from the '20s.
There are many exceptions to this, real estate being the most glaring, but for everyday consumer goods it's a fairly accurate rule of thumb. Things like rare collectible instruments also are exceptions.
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Posted By:
Craig Robertson
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Date: 3/6/2010 9:59:31 AM |
| "Porkchop" was a fairly common term for a ukulele in the 20s,30s and 40s. I've heard it used many times, in films especially.
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Posted By:
bassfiddlesteve
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Date: 3/6/2010 7:19:47 PM |
Eddie Condon called his four-string plectrum guitar his "porkchop" and that's term some old jazz players use when I play my electric bass instead of the upright.
Nancy, you're absolutely right about the cost factor. It's easy to forget about that when you look at old catalogs and fantisize about finding a 5K for $50 in today's money. My parents bought their Levitt house on Long Island for $8,000 in 1958 and they couldn't believe it when I showed them what they sell for now.
That being said, I do think it was a Martin tenor that got smashed in that movie. Nowaday's they would used CGI.
- Steve
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Posted By:
ukrazy
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Date: 3/6/2010 7:41:06 PM |
This guy would never break his "porkchop" He even kisses it twice during the song.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VsR5I32noig
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Posted By:
bassfiddlesteve
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Date: 3/6/2010 8:27:07 PM |
That Jack Pepper video is great stuff. Why wasn't he better known...and is that "porkchop" of his actually a Martin concert?
I like that line "It's a little song I wrote myself enitled Blue Skies...by Irving Berlin". I've gotten a few laughs with that one myself.
Here's a video with Jack peforming three songs, two while playing his uke and one while waving it around: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W89JZVfUNTE
- Steve
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Posted By:
looney tunes
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Date: 3/6/2010 10:57:45 PM |
Great stuff; where has this guy been hiding? That first song was fantastic, the ukulele was "shining" in each bit, and he was a hoot when he signed off. Thanks for the links.
Loon
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