Spike Jones & His City Slickers

Spike Jones kept a frenetic pace in the late 1930s as a freelance studio musician for motion pictures, records and radio shows. The busy young drummer commuted to Hollywood studios in a station wagon that was a veritable junkyard on wheels. But he had little opportunity to employ cowbells, sirens and automobile horns in his work at the time. He felt so frustrated he decided to form his own band "where I could make as much noise as I wanted," he once claimed. Delmar Porter, who sang with the Foursome -- a vocal and ocarina quartet Jones had backed on Decca records -- was Jones' partner in musical mayhem from the outset. Porter led a six-piece group called the Feather Merchants, which was managed by Jones before it gradually evolved into the City Slickers. Few musicians took Jones and Porter seriously when they started the band. It was no more than a spare time proposition, and many of them -- who had steady work in radio -- departed after a rehearsal or two. The precise evolution of the band, which consisted of various studio musicians of Spike's and Del's acquaintance, is unclear. Adding to the puzzle is the existence of a concurrent Jones band which made experimental "penny records" for the short-lived Cinematone Corporation. The second group included not only Porter but future Slickers Perry Botkin (banjo), Kingsley Jackson (trombone) and Stanley Wrightsman (piano). Jones was not officially the leader of the City Slickers -- nor had the group yet adopted the name -- when they entered Victor studios for the first time in 1941. "It was a lot of fun but it never occurred to me it was going to be anything big," said trumpeter Bruce Hudson, who was hired for the afternoon. "We were freelance musicians who were having a ball doing crazy music." Del Porter sang the...