Presently, two labels will be releasing his material in 2021. Patty has written the liner notes! As she reminisced of the love she shared with Slim as well as poignant stories about this jazz legend that nobody else knew.
I've heard several different recordings of Slim Gaillard singing this song and each one is unique. Many of his songs are like that, I think he made up the words as he went along. Which version is the 'original', hard to say. Each one is a work of art...
By the late 1950s, however, the music scene had started to change, rock’n’roll was coming to dominate the airwaves, the jazz clubs which had lined Manhattan’s 52nd Street were shutting down, and Gaillard was starting to feel like he no longer belonged. It’s unclear if the 1957 release of Little Richard’s “Tutti Frutti” had anything to do with this perception. The song was of course a massive hit and is today considered a fundamental, defining classic of early rock’n’roll. True to form, Little Richard refused to acknowledge the song (down to the “Tutti Frutti-o-roottee” chorus) was simply a bowdlerized version of Slim and Slam’s 1938 hit of the same name. Little Richard fans insist up and down they were two completely different and unrelated songs since the Slim and Slam version was about ice cream not girls, but when the singer himself notes his original title was “Tutti Frutti McVouty,” well, there you go.
Gaillard insisted he had nothing against the new music, but it simply wasn’t his scene, so by the end of the decade he stopped recording, stopped performing, dropped out and started looking for something else to do.
Slim disappeared for 10 years. He was found living out of an RV in an orchard in Tacoma. He worked as an appliance repairman. Word started to get around as to who he really was. The owner of Parnell's, a legendary jazz club, gave him an apartment, and had him come in to play a couple of times a week. Dizzy Gillespie found Slim at Parnell's and convinced him to move to Europe and perform at the Jazz Festivals there.
https://chiseler.org/post/182960232191/mcvouty
Bulee "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
Dizzy Gillespie revived slims career when he found him washing dishes and cooking in a jazz club in Washington state..Dizzy called promoter George Wein right away..’guess who I found?’ Mr wein hired him that next summer for a series of European concerts,slim was a hit and his career was back on track and thriving until he passed away..thanks to Dizzy..
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaxpujmz7Q04ziynScA-wvDxIFVSJ42oc
I saw a vid of this pianist that I did not recognize! So then I discovered that he was just as awesome as I suspected he was.
Amazing that he is unknown in the U.S. - and yet the BBC made a documentary about him.
I have two of the 4 parts in the playlist I made.
Yep Roc Heresay," a recitation of the menu from a Middle Eastern restaurant that one radio station banned for its "suggestiveness."
......
I first saw Slim at Birdland . The place was divided into 2 sections separated by a railing. The high rent district had tables and a minimum charge. The low rent had some scattered chairs. We always called it the bleachers. Slim called it Wino Junction. One night I had a date and was trying to impress her, so we sat at a table. Slim was playing when we got there. All during the tune, he would look at me and play the first few notes of "Here Comes the Bride" and nodding his head yes. I kept shaking my head no. When the tune ended he announced "We would like to dedicate this next number to our newlyweds spending their honeymoon here in Birdland. What a drag. If that was me we go somewhere, lock the voutie and throw the reenie away!." A few years later we got married and were together for over 50 years. I always like to think that Slim had something to do with it.
The name is really 'floozie' and 'floy floy' referred to venereal disease.
Floy Floy was hip speak slang for VD back then. Flat Foot Floogie was hip speak slang for a Street Walking prostitute. The original title for the song was Flat Foot Floozie with the Floy Floy and all the jazz musicians and hipsters in 1938 knew exactly what that meant. They had to change Floozie to Floogie in order to get the song past the censors for radio air play.
Vocalion, however, objected to the word "floozie",[3] meaning a sexually promiscuous woman, or a prostitute. The second recording in February changed the word to "floogie". In the second part of the title phrase, "floy floy" was slang for a venereal disease, but the term was not widely known and failed to catch the attention of censors. On February 17, 1938 Slim and Slam recorded "Flat Foot Floogie" (Vocalion 4021). The song was apparently "covered" by many other people in 1938 alone: Wingy Manone on May 23; Nat Gonella; Benny Goodman & His Orchestra on May 31 (Victor 25871);[10] Louis Armstrong with The Mills Brothers on June 10 (Decca 1876);[11] as well as Woody Herman and Count Basie. In Europe, Fats Waller recorded it in London while on tour (HMV BD5399), an instrumental version was recorded by jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt (Decca F-6776)[12] and the Dutch singing duo Johnny and Jones covered it. I'm here from the movie "Swing Kids". American "swing" music was apparently popular with some German kids in Nazi Germany. Those kids were persecuted by the German authorities. Here's an article about them "Swing Heil"--https://www.nationalww2museum.org/war/articles/swing-youth-jazz-nazi-germany
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/mcvouty-the-life-and-times-of-slim-gaillard#/
McVouty: The Life and Times of Slim Gaillard
Jazz is America's one true art form and is the original soundtrack to the American dream. Our history cannot be played without the sweet notes of Satchmo, Duke, and Cab. But, there may not be a more important and influential voice in the nation’s first great musical language than the bootleggin,’ boogie-woogieing, boxing mortician gang-running vaudevillian, cult figure: Slim Gaillard.
Bigger than life, there aren't enough words to describe this enigmatic and legendary figure.
So, with the help of the Vout-o-Reenee language Slim that invented, we go back to Slim's first scattin' measure in the song of his life with melody, harmony, improvisation, and rhythm.
If only a fraction of Slim Galliard’s unbelievable story were true, then he led an extraordinary life.
Even his birth is enshrouded in mystery. Although Slim himself often claimed to have been born in Cuba, all accounts place “Bulee” Rothschild origins in Alabama, born to a former slave and a Bavarian Jew in 1911.
Slim went to sea with his dad on an around the world voyage when he turned 12. As legend has it, he fell asleep under a tree, missed the boat, and was stranded alone on the island of Crete for four years, never to see his father again.
When he returned to America at the age of 17, he landed in Detroit working for the notorious criminal mob, The Purple Gang. For $20, he picked up stiffs in the alleys and ran booze in a hearse. When Al Capone heard Slim play piano, he ordered him to play all night or he’d break both his hands. According to Slim’s son Mark, many years later, in Vegas, the mob broke both his hands!
https://volodymyrbilyk.medium.com/slim-gaillards-vout-6d559ae0c76d
http://www.pocreations.com/vout.html
http://blues.gr/profiles/blogs/the-son-of-mcvouty-mark-gaillard-talks-about-bulee-slim-marvin
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