Search - Jimmy Durante :: Great Schnozzle

A Cultural Icon

R. L. MILLER | 03/09/1999

(5 out of 5 stars)

"This CD is listening to a time capsule of one of our greatest cultural icons. Jimmy Durante's humor, wit, and inventiveness are well represented. You'll also find it astounding how many of his comic manglings of the english language are now commonly used by people in everyday conversation! The "nice guy" with the self-deprecating humor, Durante seems very genuine. He's really enjoying his work, and I think others will too."

"Yuh gotta start out each day widda song!"

R. L. MILLER | FT LAUDERDALE FL USA | 09/22/2001

(4 out of 5 stars)

"I'm reminded of the universality of Jimmy Durante's music by the fact that the screen I was on before this one bore the cover of the last album I reviewed--by prog/ metal supergroup "Liquid Tension Experiment". You just can't lump this man with any fixed genre identity--he doesn't have a good voice, he sings mostly cover material, his piano playing is chord accompaniment that's a cross between cowboy saloon and lounge lizard--just enough to back up his singing. The secret was that he wasn't a musician--he was a comedian who sang. My first exposure to Durante was when I was little--he had a regular series on network TV where he immortalized the line "Good night, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are" during the closing song "Good Night". I tried to find that on a peer share site--no dice (grrr!). The episode from his TV show that sticks in my mind after all these years is one in which he ran for the title of "Mr. United States" (he even made up a song about that) and almost beat a real bodybuilder. But in my opinion, Durante's big super-hit was "Start Out Each Day With a Song" (featured here). I must admit that my favorite comedy is the non sequitur-based skits of Monty Python, but I can still appreciate this bouncy little ditty dotted with gags like "I wuz tellin' a friend about a new concerto I wuz workin' on called Tony's Pushcart. He asks me how does it go? I tell him it DOESN'T go--yuh gotta PUSH it!""