Although Columbia Records once issued an Ernie Kovacs album in the 1970s with the audio portions of several of his comedy routines -- and with no visuals, it was definitely missing something -- this 19-track collection zeros in on the music used in his television shows, and it's an absolute delight. Nobody dug the weird and offbeat more than Kovacs, and his penchant for artists as diverse and off the beaten trail as Yma Sumac, the treated pianos of Ferrante & Teicher, and the off-key warblings of Leona Anderson, Les Baxter, ...
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Although Columbia Records once issued an Ernie Kovacs album in the 1970s with the audio portions of several of his comedy routines -- and with no visuals, it was definitely missing something -- this 19-track collection zeros in on the music used in his television shows, and it's an absolute delight. Nobody dug the weird and offbeat more than Kovacs, and his penchant for artists as diverse and off the beaten trail as Yma Sumac, the treated pianos of Ferrante & Teicher, and the off-key warblings of Leona Anderson, Les Baxter, and Esquivel makes him the granddaddy collector of what became known as "incredibly strange music" or "space age pop." Kovacs fans will thrill to the inclusion of the song of the Nairobi Trio ("Solfeggio"), a version of "Mack the Knife" sung in German by Wolfgang Neuss (used for blackout single gag sketches with the band and vocal tracks represented onscreen by a pulsating oscillating soundwave), and Ernie's theme, "Oriental Blues," heard here in two different versions by the Tony DeSimone Trio and Leroy Holmes & His Tug Boat Eight. Ernie himself appears on two duets with wife Edie Adams ("The Wrong Man" and "Indian Love Call") and on his own composition, the silly but fun "Hot Cakes and Sausage." Kovacs could find comedy in anything, and this collection brings his penchant for nutty stuff together in a manner that also shows what a visionary he truly was in every field of endeavor he dabbled in. ~ Cub Koda, Rovi
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