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Click
Jimmy's picture ("My
nose isn't big. I just happen to have a very small head.") to see him perform with Linda Ronstadt, ending the sketch with his signature exclamation.
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With his clipped gravelly speech, New York accent, and comic language-butchery ("It's a castastrostroke!"), Jimmy Durante came on like gang busters and never let up! Legs planted in a defiant stance, slapping the top of the piano, slapping his thighs, grabbing his hat and shoving it over one eye - he took charge of the stage and endeared himself to audiences everywhere.
He was a vaudeville veteran. He could play the piano, sing (in his own rough-jazzy style), dance, and tell jokes - often all at once!
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| Click the "Schnozzola" to hear his signature tune from Two Girls and a Sailor (1944), featuring Harry James and his orchestra. ("That note was given to me by Bing Crosby! And was he glad to get rid of it!") |
Jimmy Durante dropped out of school in the seventh grade to become a full-time ragtime piano player. He worked the city's piano bar circuit and earned the nickname, "Ragtime Jimmy." He joined one of the first jazz bands in New York, the Original New Orleans Jazz Band, and was the only member not from New Orleans. His routine of breaking into a song to crack a joke, with the band chord punctuation after each line, became a Durante trademark.
The band was soon renamed Jimmy Durante's Jazz Band. He was the first white bandleader to feature black musicians in his band.
By the mid-1920s, Durante had become
a vaudeville star and radio personality in a trio called Clayton,
Jackson, and Durante. Lou Clayton and Eddie Jackson, Durante's
closest friends, often reunited with Durante in subsequent years.
Jimmy signed off each show, saying, "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." This was a pet name for his wife, Jeanne Olsen. Apparently, they were both infatuated with a little town, Calabash, North Carolina, on The Atlantic Ocean.*
* [A personal note: Calabash is near Sunset Beach, North Carolina, where my cousins, Paul and Shirley Swartz, used to own beachfront property. In September 2013 I enjoyed a delightful week there with them and other cousins of the Horner clan, my mother's side of the family. We had a lot of fun in Calabash, dining and souvenir-shopping.]
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| Clicking this shot of Clayton, Jackson, and Durante opens a clip of struttin' Eddie Jackson and Jimmy Durante staging one of their vaudeville routines, ending with a rousing "Bill Bailey!" ("Oh, Jose make way for 'nose-say!'") |
Jimmy Durante was known by all to be genuinely one of the nicest persons in show biz. "Be awful nice
to 'em goin' up," he would say gruffly in an attempt to hide his sincere heart, "because you're gonna meet 'em all comin' down."
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| Click Jimmy to see a live 1969 TV performance of "Young At Heart." |
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| Click "Ragtime Jimmy" to hear him belting out, "You Got to Start Off Each Day with a Song" (accompanied by Bing Crosby - "He's got a million of 'em!"). |
Jimmy signed off each show, saying, "Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are." This was a pet name for his wife, Jeanne Olsen. Apparently, they were both infatuated with a little town, Calabash, North Carolina, on The Atlantic Ocean.*
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| Go ahead: It's clickable! Goodnight, Jimmy! |
* [A personal note: Calabash is near Sunset Beach, North Carolina, where my cousins, Paul and Shirley Swartz, used to own beachfront property. In September 2013 I enjoyed a delightful week there with them and other cousins of the Horner clan, my mother's side of the family. We had a lot of fun in Calabash, dining and souvenir-shopping.]
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