As strange as hearing Helen Kane sing I Tawt I Taw A Puddy Tat.

Sounds like Popeye was doing Tuvan throat singing before Tuvan throat singing was cool.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DY1pcEtHI_w

Haha! Thanks for brightening my day, Jerry.

Well blow me down! Mask-ups ain’ts new!

That Lawrence Welk clip made me crap with horror.

Yes, oh yes, oh YES! A true true day-brightener!! Down to the scat-adlibs. I love it!

What’s next, Scrappy singing “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?”

Thuh-thuh-thask’s all folks! Arararararar!

The most interesting part of this to me is that in the middle, when he sings in his own voice, he sounds a lot like Jack Mercer’s real voice.

>Sounds like Popeye was doing Tuvan throat singing before Tuvan throat singing was cool.

I thought the same thing. Billy Costello was obviously a gifted and unique scat-singer (he went to the vocalisms on the chorus even when singing in his crooner-style voice), but this snippet raises intriguing questions about vocalsims. Obviously, Costello isn’t doing two voices at the same time as the Tuvans do, but he shows the basic mode of tone-sliding occurs to folks doing non-verbal singing, probably from day one.

Fascinating.

Did anyone ever ask Billy Costello about why he was fired from doing the Popeye voice? What did he do after being fired? He lived until 1971. Did this talented man, who had also been in Fred Waring’s band, just fall off the face of the earth?

In one scene from Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Roger starts to sing the song with alternate lyrics (”My buddy’s Eddie V/A Sourpuss you see…”)
Judge Doom grabs Roger and pulls him by the ears, IIRC…and then
looks down at the record. “The…Merry Go Round…Broke…Down.
A rather loony selection, yes?”

Thanks for the Lawrence Welk surprise! The only consolation out of that is noticing it was captured from my local PBS station (bugs don’t lie) so I’ll let you off the hook!

Cool tune from the ol’ spinach-packin’ sailor.

As a kid, I used to have a 45 of Popeye & Olive Oyl singing “I’m a Little Teapot”. Wish I knew where it was.

Ah, was the crooner voice really Costello’s “natural” singing voice, or was he just imitating Rudy Vallee or the pervasive crooning style of the time?
Any notes on when the record was recorded? Before it became the celebrated cartoon theme it is today?

Can’t see YouTube at work, so I didn’t spot the Lawrence Welk spot. Have seen the one where they cover “One Toke Over the Line,” though. Trying to verify a claim on Wikipedia that Larry once covered a Frank Zappa song.

He does a better Popeye here, than in the cartoons he voiced.That was indeed a treat ! Nice find.

I’m trying to think of what the best Disney song would have been to hear Costello sing. Probably “Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Bo” from “Cinderella”, but feel free to toss in your own suggestions.

predicted the AAP sale which would end up in Warner Bros.’ hands.

Billy Costello recorded “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down” (along with several other selections) for Rex records in London on August 12, 1937. This was only about three months after the song was being recorded in Nre York by the likes of Gene Kardos (Melotone) and Dick Robertson (Decca).
After Costello left the employ of Max Fleischer, he appears to have gone over to Britain, where he cold trade on being “the original Popeye” without worrying about any cease-and-desist orders that might have popped up. He may have tored more extensively yet, as several of the sides he reocrded in London were only issued in South Africa, including a two-sied “Official Popeye Club Record”. (Wouldn’t we like to find that one in a thrift shop?!)

Thanks for using my image Jerry!