Hep Cats

As I work on different voices for characters, I get flashes of inspiration in the flavors of "a whole act."

For instance, singing along with Frank Sinatra's incredible The Lady is a Tramp,  I hear him us the term "broad" referring to the title female, And FLASH - why not create a cool Las Vegas night club singer-type who calls women "broads" and says "hey baby" a lot.

Then FLASH - a ventriloquist homage to the Rat Pack. (I'm flying now - weee!) A quick reality check (in terms of the voices):

• Frank Sinatra - Challenging; not actually that distinct. It's all about phrasing.
• Dean Martin - would actually play better in a Dean Martin/ Jerry Lewis schtick.
• Sammy Davis - I can just say "groovy" a lot; but that doesn't make my imitation that good.
• Peter Lawford - um.... who was he again?
• Joey Bishop - I perfected many years ago. The best of the bunch.

Then, my enthusiasm wanes. A spot-on Joey Bishop imitation just doesn't get a guy very far these days. And having seen videos of the "Summit at the Sands," the other reality is they weren't that funny. Their "cool" was way whack, but on the humorgrammeter? Not really.

Rats. Got to move on.

Maybe my old Perry Como albums will inspire something.

***

It's true. The Rat Pack wasn't actually very funny. However, Dean Martin and Jerry Lewis were actually very funny.

My "Jerry Lewis as a human ventriloquist dummy" fixation has still strong. And before you ask (because I know you are checking the sidebar list), he's not on the "faces" list because it's not just about his face. Kapeesh? (For all you spellers out there - Capisci?)