Ish Kabibble

Born Merwyn Bogue, this versatile and amusing artist managed to come up with a stage name that was even weirder sounding than his real name. Or actually, his boss, Kay Kyser, came up with the name when the trumpeter joined Kyser's band in 1931. At first, "Ish Kabibble" was just the name of a trumpet feature that allowed Bogue a chance to do his thing. When Kyser became the host of the enormously popular '30s radio program kraftily kalled Kay Kyser's Kollege of Musical Knowledge, Bogue began to portray a perpetually silly and addled character named Ish Kabibble, serving as a comical sidekick to the leader. Why Bogue decided to take his character's name as his own might have had something to do with being named Merwyn Bogue, but the most likely inspiration for the Kabibble name itself was a humorous popular song by Sam Lewis entitled "Isch Gabibble" or "I Should Worry," published in 1913. The lyrics to this song connect the title with a relaxed, casual attitude about life: "I never care or worry/Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble/I never tear or hurry/Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble/...When I owe people money/Isch Gabibble, Isch Gabibble," and so forth and so on. A further presence of at least the "kabibble" part of the name was in a comic strip of that time, Abie the Agent by Harry Hershfield. This comic presented the adventures of a character named Abie Kabibble. Both the song and the comic probably helped popularize the expression "ish kabibble" as slang for "who cares?" in the early 1900s. Defying this interpretation of his name, the trumpeter Kabibble remained one of the standout soloists in the Kyser group for nearly 20 years, minus a brief and unhappy stint with Spike Jones and the City Slickers. He often played the same sort of instrument as Dizzy Gillespie, a trumpet or...