Parkeology 015: Buttons and Birds

During the subsequent “Roost Period,” two developments on the 1948 national entertainment scene had some influence on Parker’s work. They were the popularity of Frank Loesser’s Slow Boat To China, and the release of the Bob Hope-Jane Russell comedy movie, The Paleface. Bird began playing Slow Boat at an uptempo as part of his repertoire, and the opening phrase of Buttons and Bows, a hit tune from the Hope movie, began creeping into his solos. – Lawrence O. Koch, Yardbird Suite

“Buttons And Bows” is one of Bird’s most preposterous quotes, but I contend it represents a new phase in his development. It makes its debut at the Royal Roost on January 22, 1949. Bird inserts it at the outset of his solo on “Oop Bop Sh’bam,” keeping a straight face as he plays the first ten bars of the melody verbatim.    

Unlike most quotes, “Buttons And Bows” can be traced to a specific place and time. “The Paleface” was released on December 24, 1948, a few weeks into Bird’s run at the Royal Roost, which began December 9. We know Bird loved movies, especially westerns, so it’s possible he first heard “Buttons And Bows” in the theater, as sung by Bob Hope. Hope plays a city slicker stranded in the old west, pining for the east, where women wear finery (“frills and flowers and buttons and bows”) rather than frontier garb.

Here’s the Hope version from the movie. Mercifully, we only need concern ourselves with the first ten bars:

By some showbiz twist of fate, Dinah Shore released a version on August 16, 1948 that hit the top of the charts four months before the movie came out. Here’s her first ten bars:

If you are underwhelmed by this song, you have every right. Just bear in mind that it won the 1948 Academy Award for Best Original Song.

Bird began quoting “The Woody Woodpecker Song” around the same time, and this can also be easily traced to its source. The two quotes make strange bookends. 

Woody Woodpecker was created in 1940 by Walter Lantz, but he had no specific theme until “The Woody Woodpecker Song,” as recorded by Kay Kyser, appeared in the opening credits of the cartoon “Wet Blanket Policy,” released August 27, 1948. Personally, I rate this song somewhere between unlistenable and unbearable.

Bird began quoting “The Woody Woodpecker Song” in July 1948, during his week at the Onyx Club, well before the cartoon was in theaters. This is easier to explain than it is to believe: the song was a stand-alone hit for Kyser, entering the charts in June and reaching number one in early July. Its success earned it a place in the cartoon, not the reverse.

Bird quotes “Woody Woodpecker” for the first time on July 7, during the fours on “The Way You Look Tonight.” He seems to have trouble breaking in this new quote. His first attempt is inelegant, so he waits through Miles’s four bars and tries again, still falling short.

He has better luck on July 10, on “How High The Moon,” where he fashions it into a sequence. 

Thus “Woody Woodpecker” enters rotation in Bird’s vocabulary, appearing periodically going forward. It’s a typical quote, short enough to be integrated into longer phrases. “Buttons And Bows,” ten bars long, is more of a “found object.” Bird presents it unaltered and unconnected to the ideas around it.

This would seem to be a new category of quotes: long passages drawn from popular songs, played verbatim. I can find very few examples in Bird’s earlier work, except for verbatim jazz solos, such as “Shoeshine Boy,” and compositions, such as “Cotton Tail,” which are of a different order.

“Buttons And Bows” reappears at the Roost on February 12, 1948, this time in Bird’s fourth chorus on “Barbados.” It must have become routine by then, because you can hear Max Roach heckling from the toms. Bird shortens it to eight bars, possibly because he’s playing over the twelve bar blues form.

This is not an isolated incident. In his second chorus, he quotes six whole bars of the piano piece “Dizzy Fingers,” by Zez Confrey, the composer best known for “Kitten On The Keys.” 

During the fours on “Oop Bop Sh’bam,” Bird quotes “Charmaine,” a number one hit for Guy Lombardo in 1927. He inserts it as is, square and unswinging.          

Howard McGhee speaks to Bird’s use of obscure quotes:

Bird would turn around and look at you and play something he know you know, that you’ve heard before, and it would crack you up. Because how would you figure him to think of that particular thing, from 1923 or 1921? And he turn around and look at you and play it, and then he’d go back into what he was doing.

So it’s entirely possible that Bird was looking directly at somebody as he quoted “Charmaine.”

Bird follows “Oop Bop Sh’bam” with “Salt Peanuts,” and travels back to 1896 to retrieve another eight bar quote, opening his solo with “A Hot Time In The Old Town Tonight.”

Given that Bird started quoting “Buttons And Bows” on January 22, I like to think he saw “The Paleface” in the theater that afternoon and brought the quote to work that night. Had he been inspired by the Dinah Shore recording, it would have appeared, at least in theory, much earlier at the Roost. 

In any event, “Buttons And Bows” enters the rotation at this point, and appears periodically going forward, just like “Woody Woodpecker.”  There’s only one solo I know of that contains both: “I Cover The Waterfront” from Bird at St. Nicks (February 18, 1950).

“Buttons And Bows” appears first, pruned to a mere two bars and inserted into a larger phrase. Then, in the last sixteen bars, Bird plays the most soulful “Woody Woodpecker” known to man.

Dreadful though it may be, “Woody Woodpecker” is the only song from an animated short subject ever nominated for the Academy Award for Best Original Song. But the year was 1948, and it failed to make the cut, losing out to–wait for it!–“Buttons And Bows.”

Do two wrongs make a right?