Slim Gaillard was completly mad but I loved his fun piano playing style. He was an interesting character if nothing else. His true past was a bit of a mystery that in itself would have made a good book.
ulee "Slim" Gaillard (January 4, 1916 – February 26, 1991), also known as "McVouty", was an American jazz singer and songwriter who played piano, guitar, vibraphone, and tenor saxophone.
Gaillard was noted for his comedic vocalese singing and word play in his own constructed language called "Vout-O-Reenee", for which he wrote a dictionary. He spoke five other languages (Spanish, German, Greek, Arabic, Armenian,) with varying degrees of fluency.
He rose to prominence in the late 1930s with hits such as "Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy)" and "Cement Mixer (Put-Ti-Put-Ti)" after forming Slim and Slam with Leroy Eliot "Slam" Stewart. During World War II, Gaillard served as a bomber pilot in the Pacific. In 1944, he resumed his music career and performed with notable jazz musicians such as Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Dodo Marmarosa.
In the 1960s and 1970s, he acted in films—sometimes as himself—and also appeared in bit parts in television series such as Roots: The Next Generations.
In the 1980s, Gaillard resumed touring the circuit of European jazz festivals. He followed Dizzy Gillespie's advice to move to Europe and, in 1983, settled in London, where he died on 26 February 1991, after a long career in music, film and television, spanning nearly six decades.
Early life
Along with Gaillard's date of birth, his lineage and place of birth are disputed. Many sources state that he was born in Detroit, Michigan, though he said that he was born in Santa Clara, Cuba. of an Afro-Cuban mother called Maria (Mary Gaillard[) and a German-Jewish father called Theophilus (Theophilus Rothschild) who worked as a ship's steward. During an interview in 1989, Gaillard added: "They all think I was born in Detroit because that was the first place I got into when I got to America." However, the 1920 census lists one "Beuler Gillard" as living in Pensacola, Florida, having been born in April, 1918 in Alabama. Researchers Bob Eagle and Eric LeBlanc have concluded that he was born in June 1918 in Claiborne, Alabama, [where a "Theophilus Rothchild" had been raised the son of a successful merchant in the small town of Burnt Corn; other documents give his name as Wilson, Bulee, or Beuler Gillard or Gaillard. According to obituaries in newspapers, Gaillard's putative childhood in Cuba was spent cutting sugar-cane and picking bananas, as well as occasionally going to sea with his father.
At the age of twelve, he accompanied his father on a world voyage and was accidentally left behind on the island of Crete.On a television documentary in 1989, he said, "When I was stranded in Crete, I was only twelve years old. I stayed there for four years. I travelled on the boats to Beirut and Syria and I learned to speak the language and the people's way of life." After learning a few words of Greek, he worked on the island "making shoes and hats" He then joined a ship working the eastern Mediterranean ports, mainly Beirut, where he picked up some knowledge of Arabic.When he was about 15, he re-crossed the Atlantic, hoping the ship would take him home to Cuba, but it was bound for the U.S. and he ended up in Detroit. He never saw either of his parents again.
Alone and unable to speak English, he tried to get a job at Ford Motor Company but was rejected because of his age.He worked at a general store owned by an Armenian family, with whom he lived for some time, then tried to become a boxer. During Prohibition in 1931 or 1932, he drove a hearse with a coffin that was packed with whiskey for the Purple Gang.He attended evening classes in music and taught himself to play guitar and piano.When Duke Ellington came to Detroit, he went backstage and met his hero. Determined to become a musical entertainer, he moved to New York City and entered the world of show business as a 'professional amateur'. As Gaillard recalled much later:
The MC would say, "Here they come, all the hopefuls!" Well, we may have been hopefuls but we weren't amateurs. Of course, you had to be a little bad in spots. If you were too good you'd lose the amateur image. I would be a tap dancer this week, next week I'd play guitar, two weeks later some boogie-woogie piano. They paid us $16 a show. I did one with Frank Sinatra I got $16 and he got $16. Every time I see him I say, "Got a raise yet, Frank?"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isL8nSr … sL8nSrJX6E
