Cliffie Stone was a larger-than-life jack-of-all trades on the Country Music scene in Southern California during the 1940's and '50's.
Singer, musician, band leader, disc jockey, radio and TV host, record producer, manager, A&R man, music publisher - - It seemed he was everywhere.
While under contract as a performer with Capitol Records, in 1946 he became one of their A&R men.
Several of the folks he was working with simultaneously on any of his several radio shows were soon under contract with Capitol, including Tennessee Ernie Ford, Hank Thompson and others.
The first side of this record includes a small bit of vocal breakdown from Stan Freberg, in one of his earliest appearances on a phonograph record.
Young Freberg was working as a comedian and vocal effects artists in Los Angeles at the time, and was a regular for several months on one of Cliffie Stone's radio programs, a morning show called
'Coffee Time at Harmony Homestead'. He was also providing some voices in Warner Brothers cartoons during this same period.
By the end of the decade and the beginning of the 1950's, Freberg's own novelty records would begin appearing on Capitol, while he and Daws Butler were also puppeteering and doing voices on TV's 'Time for Beany'.
Listen to:
Cliffie Stone and his Barn Dance Band, with crying by Stan Freberg -
Wabash Blues
(Capitol Records 78, 1948)
(click for audio)
Listen to:
Cliffie Stone and his Barn Dance Band -
Peepin' Thru the Keyhole (Watching Jolie Blon)
(Capitol Records 78, 1948)
(click for audio)
See also:
- Cliffie Stone bio at All Music.Com and at the Country Music Hall of Fame
- Official Website of Cliffie Stone
- A Stan Freberg Discography
- Previously on this blog - - Stan Freberg and the Mystery of Ronald Long
Cliffie Stone was a larger-than-life jack-of-all trades on the Country Music scene in Southern California during the 1940's and '50's.
