jim henson

Finally, I've found a copy of this LP!

I remember a time when there was much less interest in Bill Cosby's non-stand-up recordings, and so once upon a time you could find this and other of his musical ventures piling up in bargain bins.

Then I guess I blinked at some point and they became collector's items as people caught on to them.

This is a fun & funky album, in which Cosby tweaks the sound of
Barry White and
James Brown.

It was one of several projects over many years in which Cosby has collaborated with producer-arranger-musician
Stu Gardner.

It's been reported that his vocal patter on this LP was improvised during recording, which makes perfect sense.

Several of the tracks have aged well, the few that don't have gained some 'contextual' interest over the years.

- Follow link to personnel credits for the 'Disco Bill' album in a new window.

1977 was part of a busy period for Bill Cosby.

He co-starred that year in 'A Piece of the Action', his 3rd film teamed with Sidney Poitier, after having made 'Mother, Jugs & Speed' with Raquel Welch and Harvey Keitel the year before, the same year his TV variety show 'Cos' failed to take off.

In 1977 he was still involved in the production of Saturday Morning TV's 'Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids'.
It was that same year that Cosby received his doctorate in Education from the University of Massachusetts for writing his thesis on the use of the animated series as a teaching tool.

Also in '77, following the release of 'Disco Bill', Cosby put out his first stand-up comedy LP in four years (his 18th), 'My Father Confused Me... What Must I Do? What Must I Do?'.

His 1980's 'renaissance' was still several years away...

From Bill Cosby's LP
'Disco Bill'
(Capitol Records, 1977),
Listen to:

A Simple Love Affair
What Ya Think 'Bout Lickin' My Chicken
Rudy
Boogie On Your Face
Happy Birthday Momma
That's How I Met Your Mother
One, Two, Three
Section #9
A Nasty Birthday
What's In a Slang

(click for audio)

- - OR download all 10 tracks in one 31.1 Mb zipfile.

See also:
- Album entry at All Music.Com

- An article at Funky 16 Corners focusing on some of Bill Cosby's other musical endeavors.

- Some background on Stu Gardner at In Dangerous Rhythm, with a couple of tracks from the 1967 Stu Gardner Revue LP, 'To Soul With Love'.

_ You can hear "Sister Matilda', a cut from Stu Gardner's 1974 LP, 'Sanctified Soul' at YouTube.

This being the internet, several other folks have already posted online regarding
Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist, a curious little footnote in the history of comic books and
animated cartoons. I figure I'll take a turn anyway...

One interesting facet about J. Evil Scientist and his family was that the characters were one of the few Hanna-Barbera properties to appear in their own comic book without ever having had a series of cartoons devoted to them.

Gold Key Comics (who published many
Hanna-Barbera cartoon-based comics in the '60's) printed only four issues of the title, releasing one a year just prior to Halloween from 1963 to 1966.

Looking back on the mid-1960's, the ghoulish clan fit right in with assorted monster crazes and popular creepy families like the Addamses and the Munsters on TV.


(◀ Cover to issue #3, 1965.
A couple of excerpted story pages from this issue follow below.)



As the mining of hit sitcoms for animated series scenarios was a tried-and-true method for Hanna-Barbera, it would be natural to assume that had been a key to the creation of 'the Scientists'.

In fact, the characters' history in cartoons and in comics predates those television comedies.
Their origins go back to 1960, when the characters began as 'supporting players' to established H-B stars in a few various 'tryouts' (or pilots) for their own series.

Though unnamed in the cartoon, Mr. and Mrs.
J. Evil Scientist and their son, Junior made their first appearance in a
7-minute animated Snooper & Blabber cartoon,
'Surprised Party', which (according to The
Big Cartoon Database) premiered on TV's
Quick Draw McGraw Show on December 3rd, 1960.

This was shortly followed by another 'guest appearance', opposite Snagglepuss in
'Fraidy Cat Lion', which had its premiere on The Yogi Bear Show on February 20th, 1961.

(See video clips at the end of this post!)

In those days, the most likely influence for the creation of the
'J. Evil Scientist' characters would have been the pre-TV
'Addams Family' seen for many years in the Charles Addams
one-panel cartoons that ran in the New Yorker.







Mr. and Mrs. Scientist would turn up a few times in Gold Key-published Hanna-Barbera comic books as supporting characters or as a back-up feature, but in April of 1963 they had their 'official' comics debut in the anthology 'Hanna-Barbera Band-Wagon', ▶
issue #3.

The first issue of their own title appeared just a few months later. ▼













Given that the earlier comics pre-date 'The Munsters' and such on TV, I wonder if part of the 'Scientist' formula had perhaps come from the 'Bizarro' stories running in various Superman comics in those days.

Some of the backward 'good=bad' / 'pretty=ugly' machinations seem similar, though maybe this
over-estimates the popularity and influence the Bizarro World may have had at the time.


(From issue #1, interior page below ▼ ganked from Uncle Ernie's Creature Ink)













































Although their characters may have pre-dated the proliferation of monster-family TV sitcoms, certainly by the second or third issue of 'The Weird World of Mr. and Mrs. J. Evil Scientist' Hanna-Barbera had caught up to the bandwagon.

The strongest evidence would come in 1964 with the morphing of J. Evil and his crew into
The Flintstone's new neighbors, the Gruesomes.

That the Gruesomes looked slightly less reminiscent of The Addams Family could only work in H-B's favor.

(Cover to issue #2, 1964. ▶
A small excerpt from this issue follows below.)

Adding insult to injury in the demise of the
J. Evil Scientist franchise was Gold Key Comics spinning the concept into their own
non-Hanna-Barbera-owned property,
Little Monsters, a comic book which ran
from 1964 to 1978.










See also:
- An entry at Scott Shaw's
Oddball Comics regarding
'J. Evil Scientist' #1.

Scott identifies the issue's artwork as being by Pete Alvarado and fellow Gold Key workhorse Dick Hall.

- Comics creator Jay Stephens loves him some J. Evil Scientist, but as of this writing a couple of related posts archived at his Monsterama blog are missing their image links.
Perhaps that will change.

































- As previously referenced, here's a couple of video clips featuring early cartoon appearances of the
J. Evil Scientist family.
(Catch 'em
while you can)

Below, ▼ Snagglepuss in 'Fraidy-Cat Lion'



- - followed by ▼ Snooper & Blabber in 'Surprised Party'

(This is a compiled repost of items culled from my soon-to-be-extinct subsidiary blog, 'Brief Window')

1. Follow the link to Society In Decline's Intrastate Commerce flickr set.

(Found via
bad banana blog)

Over 450 photos so far in this set, collecting old business signs and 'totems' from around the U.S.

Lots of neon, lots of vintage design, lots of faded evidence of a bygone era...


































































































































2. George Takei, the original Mr. Sulu from the original 'Star Trek' TV series wed his longtime partner, Brad Altman in a multi-cultural ceremony in
Los Angeles earlier this week.

Takei and Altman were among the first couples to receive a marriage license in West Hollywood when California began granting licenses to gay couples on
June 17, 2008.

- Follow the link to the story at Washington Post.Com for more details.

LOVE that photo of the couple flanked by Takei's former co-stars Nichelle Nichols and Walter Koenig, flashing their happy-but-cheesy 'Live Long and Prosper' gang signs...

(Sigh) I remember as young trekkie, attending my very first convention, seeing George on stage explaining that his name rhymed with "okay".
That was a long time ago, in a much different world.

- You can read George and Brad's wedding vows at George Takei.Com


3. Mehrzeller: The trailer of the future comes from Austria

Most likely, Bucky Fuller would have approved...

The prototype for the new Mehrzeller ('multi-cell') trailer was recently seen at the 'Caravan Salon' expo in Düsseldorf.

With financial backing secured from BMW, 3M and others, the innovative, completely user-customizable 'mobile living solutions' design from Austria has a strong likelihood of going into mass production in the near future.

An article at The Cool Hunter (found via Mod*Mom) provides the rest of the story.

You can also read the
press release and experiment with the model for their online 'configurator' at the
Mehrzeller website.