Back in the late 1950s, George Mar­tin (may he rest in peace) began his career as a pro­duc­er record­ing two albums with the come­di­an Peter Sell­ers–The Best Of Sell­ers and Songs for Swing­ing Sell­ers. When he joined forces with the Bea­t­les a few years lat­er, Mar­tin put the come­di­an in touch with the lads from Liv­er­pool, and they became fast friends. This rela­tion­ship paved the way for some good com­e­dy. As you might recall, Sell­ers made a cameo appear­ance on “The Music of Lennon and McCart­ney” in 1964, and read “A Hard Day’s Night” in a way that com­i­cal­ly recalls Lau­rence Olivier’s 1955 per­for­mance in Richard III. (Watch the spoof here.) And then, also dur­ing the mid 60s, Sell­ers record­ed a com­ic read­ing of “She Loves You” — once in the voice of Dr. Strangelove (above), again with cock­ney and upper-crusty accents (both right below), and final­ly with an Irish twist (the last item). The record­ings were all released posthu­mous­ly between 1981 and 1983 on albums no longer in cir­cu­la­tion. Sell­ers clear­ly had a thing for accents. Here you can also explore his Com­plete Guide to the Accents of the British Isles.

Cock­ney

Upper Crust

Irish

A ver­sion of this post first appeared on Open Cul­ture in Feb­ru­ary, 2012.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peter Sell­ers Per­forms The Bea­t­les “A Hard Day’s Night” in Shake­speare­an Voice

Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Gui­tar Solo by George Har­ri­son

Gui­tarist Randy Bach­man Demys­ti­fies the Open­ing Chord of ‘A Hard Day’s Night’

Hear the Unique, Orig­i­nal Com­po­si­tions of George Mar­tin, Beloved Bea­t­les Pro­duc­er (RIP)

Peter Sell­ers Presents The Com­plete Guide To Accents of The British Isles

I won­der: do the fan bases of mod­ern com­e­dy and mod­ern jazz over­lap at all? At first, it’s hard to imag­ine two artis­tic worlds far­ther apart, with the come­di­ans seem­ing like unse­ri­ous goof­balls who con­sid­er noth­ing sacred and the jazz play­ers seem­ing like seri­ous artists who regard their musi­cal tra­di­tion as sacred indeed. But look clos­er and the dif­fer­ence does­n’t seem as stark as all that: com­e­dy and jazz, both per­for­ma­tive pur­suits, demand from those who want to suc­ceed in them an almost obses­sive com­mit­ment to improv­ing their craft. And the best prac­ti­tion­ers of both, despite acknowl­edg­ing the impor­tance of learn­ing and build­ing upon the work of their antecedents, have to know when to break from tra­di­tion and exper­i­ment.

So per­haps H. Jon Ben­jam­in’s new album Well, I Should Have…, which brings com­e­dy and jazz togeth­er but not in the way any of us would have expect­ed, comes as some­thing of an inevitabil­i­ty. Ben­jamin, a come­di­an best known for doing voic­es on such ani­mat­ed shows as Archer, Bob’s Burg­ers, Dr. Katz: Pro­fes­sion­al Ther­a­pist and Home Movies, has put out not a record of sketch­es or stand-up mate­r­i­al, but of actu­al jazz music, with him sit­ting at the piano. The comedic ele­ment? The album has a sub­ti­tle: … Learned to Play the Piano.

“I don’t play piano at all,” Ben­jamin dead­pans in the trail­er for Well, I Should Have… at the top of the post. “And I’m not a huge fan of jazz. I nev­er was. And that’s why I thought it would be fun­ny to make a jazz album.” To com­pen­sate for his total lack of skill or expe­ri­ence at his instru­ment, Ben­jamin brought three gen­uine jazz pro­fes­sion­als into the stu­dio to fill out the quar­tet: Scott Kre­itzer on sax­o­phone, David Finck on bass, and Jonathan Peretz on drums, all of whom do their best to build legit­i­mate com­po­si­tions around Ben­jam­in’s near-ran­dom pok­ing and slap­ping of the ivories. Here we see — or rather hear — revealed some­thing else in com­mon between come­di­ans and jazz musi­cians: both need to impro­vise.

In the end, you could lis­ten to this as either a con­cep­tu­al com­e­dy album, a con­cep­tu­al jazz album, or both. You can hear selec­tions from it (though, giv­en the videos’ geo-restric­tion, that depends on which coun­try you’re in) in the playlist just above. For most of us, show­ing up to a record­ing ses­sion com­plete­ly igno­rant of the instru­ment we have to play con­sti­tutes the stuff of night­mares, but Ben­jamin uses it as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to play a role he calls “Jazz Dare­dev­il.” Does this count as real com­e­dy? It cer­tain­ly gets me laugh­ing. I’ll leave the oth­er obvi­ous ques­tion to the seri­ous jazz afi­ciona­dos, who seem to enjoy only one thing almost as much as lis­ten­ing to jazz: argu­ing over what counts as jazz. If Ben­jamin has a par­tic­u­lar joke to make with all this, it may be on them.

via Metafil­ter

Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is Your Brain on Jazz Impro­vi­sa­tion: The Neu­ro­science of Cre­ativ­i­ty

Philoso­pher Jacques Der­ri­da Inter­views Jazz Leg­end Ornette Cole­man: Talk Impro­vi­sa­tion, Lan­guage & Racism (1997)

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Mar­shall writes and broad­casts on cities and cul­ture. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer, the video series The City in Cin­e­ma, the crowd­fund­ed jour­nal­ism project Where Is the City of the Future?, and the Los Ange­les Review of Books’ Korea Blog. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

We knew David Bowie could pret­ty much do it all—glam rock, jazz, funk, Philly soul, cabaret, pop, drum and bass, folk, avant-garde, you name it. In front of the cam­era, he could stretch him­self into the beau­ti­ful but wound­ed alien in The Man Who Fell to Earth, the scary-sexy-cool Gob­lin King of Labyrinth, the mys­ti­cal genius Tes­la in The Pres­tige. Noth­ing he attempt­ed seemed beyond his grasp, includ­ing, as you can hear above, off-the-cuff, most­ly spot-on impres­sions of friends and fel­low singers like Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Tom Waits, and Bruce Spring­steen.

The audio clip you hear comes from out­takes pro­duc­er Mark Saun­ders hap­pened to cap­ture on tape dur­ing the 1985 ses­sions for the Absolute Begin­ners film sound­track (“a bet­ter sound­track than it was a movie!” Saun­ders remarks).

While record­ing a lead vocal, Saun­ders writes, Bowie “broke into the imper­son­ations and I real­ized that these might get erased at some point, so I quick­ly put a cas­sette in and hit ‘record.’” You can read his full rec­ol­lec­tions at The Talk­house in a short essay he wrote to accom­pa­ny the audio—introduced by Zach Stag­gers of indie band the So So Glos, who writes:

Bowie goes through a hand­ful of sung impres­sions, includ­ing but not lim­it­ed to, Bruce Spring­steen, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits, Loud Reed and Antho­ny New­ly, who was such a big influ­ence on the icon­ic singer that the imper­son­ation almost sounds like Bowie mim­ic­k­ing him­self. Between takes you can hear Bowie hav­ing fun and going back and forth with the engi­neers. Jokes.

Bowie also does what sounds like Bob Dylan (or Tom Pet­ty, or Marc Bolan as some have spec­u­lat­ed?) in the sec­ond take and a pass­able Neil Young in the last. His Spring­steen, Reed, and Pop are excel­lent (Bowie called the Iggy impres­sion “dif­fi­cult, he’s some­where between all of them.”)  He clos­es the impromp­tu per­for­mance with “That’s it, night night.”

Bowie did indeed have jokes, though any­one who fol­lowed him over the decades knows of his comedic tal­ents, whether play­ing straight man to Ricky Ger­vais’ obnox­ious super­fan or dis­play­ing impec­ca­ble tim­ing in his dead­pan deliv­ery of “Bowie Secrets” from Late Night With Conan O’Brien in 2002.

Despite the kiss-off he gives Ger­vais in their com­e­dy bit, those who knew and worked with Bowie all tes­ti­fy that he nev­er took him­self too seri­ous­ly or, as Saun­ders remem­bers, threw his weight around by “using a big rock star ‘Hey, I’m David Bowie and I want it done my way.” He may have seemed to many like an alien or a god, but he was appar­ent­ly in per­son a pret­ty hum­ble, and very fun­ny, guy.

via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie Per­forms a Live Acoustic Ver­sion of “Heroes,” with a Bot­tle Cap Strapped to His Shoe, Keep­ing the Beat

David Bowie Gives Grad­u­a­tion Speech At Berklee Col­lege of Music: “Music Has Been My Door­way of Per­cep­tion” (1999)

David Bowie (RIP) Sings “Changes” in His Last Live Per­for­mance, 2006

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness