Kosh's Shadow 6/20/2022 4:55:33 PM

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Took our dogs to be groomed today, at "Puttin' On The Ritz" (emblem of a poodle in high hat dancing with a cane)

Jukebox 1

Jukebox2

@PBJ3 6/20/2022 5:25:20 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 1:

It sounds like a cute emblem.

buzzsawmonkey 6/20/2022 7:05:57 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 1:

I love the Richman version.   Of course, it refers to going slumming up in Harlem on domestics' night off (Thursday) to laugh at the pretensions of people with only $15 in their pocket, wearing a high hat with a colored collar or a hand-me-down dress.

Berlin was famous for rewriting/repurposing his songs; "Mandy," an early-20th-century blackface minstrel number, appears in the film "White Christmas" in a very non-blackface dance number.  Note, also, that the song "Slumming on Park Avenue" is a sort turned-inside-out version of the original "Puttin' On the Ritz.  As another cross-reference, note that in the rewritten, Park Avenue version of "Puttin' On the Ritz," Astaire talks about going "...where Rockefellers walk with sticks and umbrellas," which is an allusion to another Berlin song, "Without My Walking Stick."

Kosh's Shadow 6/20/2022 7:26:32 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 3:

And of course, only poodles can properly carry a walking stick and wear a top hat/

I actually had trouble finding the more recent version!

buzzsawmonkey 6/20/2022 7:31:05 PM

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Reply to Kosh's Shadow in 4:

Here's another rendition, by Ann Miller and Ray Bolger (the "Scarecrow" in "The Wizard of Oz"), with yet another twist on the altered words.

Occasional Reader 6/20/2022 7:56:49 PM

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buzzsawmonkey 6/20/2022 8:22:29 PM

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Reply to Occasional Reader in 6:

The more I read up on the Juneteenth thing, the sillier it gets.  I can understand it being a Texas holiday, in that it commemorates when blacks in Texas found out about the Emancipation Proclamation, but

a) it was something like a year after the war had ended; and

b) if I have my dates right, the 13th Amendment, abolishing slavery in the entire US, had already been ratified by the time Juneteenth rolled around.  The Emancipation Proclamation was of questionable legality, and in any event applied only to the Confederate states, whereas the 13th Amendment actually formally abolished slavery in the country as a whole---something far more worthwhile celebrating.  

It seems to me that if one was going to do some commemorating, celebrating ratification of the 13th Amendment way outranks the gross inflation of a regional folk holiday into a federal holiday.

@PBJ3 6/20/2022 10:10:35 PM

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Reply to buzzsawmonkey in 7:

I agreeI