006 Victor Borge – Music Trivia

Bob Smith 0:00
What’s the most valuable musical instrument? And how much is it worth? And what famous song most people think was a spiritual was actually written by two Jewish songwriters, answers to those and other questions plus an interview with Victor Borger coming up in this edition of the off ramp with Bob Smith.

Welcome to the off ramp with Bob Smith. Today our topic is music and we’ll be giving you some great trivia about that. Also, a little later on, we’ll be hearing from one of the brightest lights ever to hit the musical stage. A man who could play the most beautiful classical music but also knew how to have fun with music, delighting audiences with jokes and stories in a language other than his native tongue. But before we get to that, here’s my partner Marcia, Drew and Smith and some music trivia. You get some great questions here Marsh,

Marcia Smith 1:27
the audience be the judge of that. Oh, okay.

Bob Smith 1:30
Well, here’s mine. What’s the most valuable musical instrument?

Marcia Smith 1:37
monetarily? Yeah,

Bob Smith 1:38
monetarily, not not sentimentally? In fact, if I had one of these, my sentiment was go out the window. Well,

Marcia Smith 1:45
there’s only one instrument I know about that’s very expensive. A Stradivarius violin

Bob Smith 1:52
Stratovarius. Yes. And really? Yeah, right. In 2011, the lady blunt Stratovarius sold for a world’s record. It was four times the previous auction record for a Stradivarius. How much was it? I have

Marcia Smith 2:07
$6,000,000.15 point

Bob Smith 2:09
9 million. I would part with that in a minute. It was first sold in 1971 publicly for $115,000. So 50 years later. 15 point 9 million. Amazing.

Marcia Smith 2:24
I got one for you. Okay. All right. Three Persons wrote a song that I really like. It’s called What a wonderful world. Okay, yeah. One of those writers became a major musical figure of the 1960s in terms of his own group and his record company. Who was that person?

Bob Smith 2:42
What a wonderful world and Jimmy to Randy did that and a number of other people

Marcia Smith 2:45
are the one I know is Satchmo. Oh, yes. That’s right. Yeah. Armstrong saying it’s okay. Who Herb Alpert, if you can believe it, really. He wrote the song with Barbara Campbell and Lou Adler. Herb Alpert went on. As you know, to Tijuana Brass. You would know that

Bob Smith 3:03
Lou Adler went on to form in M Records. I believe he was a big producer

Speaker 1 3:06
that says od E. Oh, oh, yes. Right. Oh, yes. He did have old records that’s recorded such

Marcia Smith 3:12
top artists as Carol Carol, etc. In the 1970s. Okay, well, that’s a good one. Yeah. Okay. You got one for me. Yeah,

Bob Smith 3:21
I think so. Let’s go country now what country music started once worked as an electrical appliance salesman singing after hours. He sold the electrical appliance going well, I

Marcia Smith 3:33
don’t know that many country. Western singer. So I’ll just say Garth Brooks.

Bob Smith 3:38
Well, that’s a good one. This guy goes back even further. And almost everybody knows Johnny Cash. Oh, really. He found lots of work as a singer while he was

Marcia Smith 3:45
black. So Black refrigerators. Well,

Bob Smith 3:49
I don’t know if they’re black at the time. He was in the Air Force. That’s when he started singing. He couldn’t find work after he got back home as a musician. So he went to work selling electrical appliances singing after working hours. And then finally in 1954, he formed a group called Johnny Cash in the Tennessee two. And then he got an audition at Sun Records and the rest was history.

Marcia Smith 4:09
Very interesting. In the early 60s, Bob Carole King wrote songs for such American artists as the Shirelles Bobby V Little Eva. But in 1964, she helped the British invasion by writing the first hit for a popular British group. And this wasn’t in the musical we saw recently beautiful Carole King’s life, but see if you can,

Bob Smith 4:35
I think it’s I think it’s Herman’s Hermits, and I think it’s I’m into something good.

Marcia Smith 4:40
Well, you think right. Wow, that’s it. So Carole King wrote that.

Bob Smith 4:49
So here’s something interesting somebody wrote, Charlie Mingus, the legendary jazz musician. He once wrote an essay a how to essay on teaching cats to use the toilet. Just a little fact I thought I’d throw out their

Marcia Smith 5:04
music factoid by Bob Smith.

Bob Smith 5:06
I got another one here. All right. Adolf Hitler loved Irish music. So much. So he invited an Irish musician to play for him in Berlin in 1936. Can

Marcia Smith 5:16
you see him doing the Irish jig or the, you know, those little Irish dancer dances? So can

Bob Smith 5:22
you imagine seeing this? There was no room for the musician to sit down so Hitler ordered an SS member on his hands and knees to act as a chair. Oh, goodness. So so the Irishman could perform his music.

Marcia Smith 5:34
All right. Oh, that’s crazy. All right. Here’s an amusement. What mid 1960s Rock and roll singer was a film stuntman before he fronted a popular band, a

Bob Smith 5:49
stuntman, mid 60s Rock and roll.

Unknown Speaker 5:52
Stop, man. I

Bob Smith 5:53
don’t know

Marcia Smith 5:54
why you want to guess this? Okay. Obviously you didn’t. The answer. Dave Clark of the Dave Clark, five. The British group. All the band members had regular jobs. But Dave Clark, he was a stunt man. And their big break came when they received an invitation to play at the annual Buckingham Palace staff ball not to confuse with the with the big time ball in the other room when Queenie comes out, but okay, that’s that’s it for Dave Clark.

Bob Smith 6:26
Speaking of previous job, Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. We’re both backing musicians. For what? Early rock and roll star?

Unknown Speaker 6:35
Well,

Marcia Smith 6:38
James Brown, really rock and roll star. And the other ones I can think came after. Well,

Bob Smith 6:46
here’s the answer. Okay, Little Richard. Okay. They were both backing musicians for Little Richard early in their careers Jimi Hendrix and James Brown. And when Little Richard couldn’t make some shows because of a scheduling conflict, James Brown would actually fill in and impersonate little.

Marcia Smith 7:02
Oh, that’s cool.

Bob Smith 7:05
Here’s another one Michael Jackson composed songs. But What didn’t he do?

Marcia Smith 7:12
He didn’t sing them. It was all lip sync. No, no, no, no brother Tito. No.

Bob Smith 7:19
He couldn’t play any instruments. Or at least he didn’t play any

Marcia Smith 7:22
instruments. While he was busy with his feet, he would build

Bob Smith 7:25
each element of a track with his voice. So Pitch Perfect that studio musicians could match chords to his singing That’s fascinating. I never thought of Michael Jackson is not playing an instrument but he never did apparently in any of his songs.

Speaker 2 7:40
He had enough going on, apparently. Okay,

Bob Smith 7:43
any other interesting facts there?

Marcia Smith 7:45
The famous old song Old Man River was actually written by a pair of white Jewish songwriters was

Bob Smith 7:53
what Old Man River was written by some Jewish songwriters. Yeah,

Marcia Smith 7:57
well, many things were and still are Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern penned the song. I thought that was a old spiritual voted i Okay, well, it’s wrong. Okay. What famous song that we associate with the American Revolution was actually written by a British song writer. Well, there aren’t that many. So you should guess associate

Bob Smith 8:20
with the American Revolution. Well, that would be key doodle, Yankee Doodle.

Marcia Smith 8:27
But the words were written by a British surgeon, Dr. Richard shuckburgh. The music comes from a traditional folk tune. The term macaroni was a term used for an English fop. You know what a fop is I think it’s A dandy kind of a guy. Yeah. So fop. Is foppish? Dandy. Yes, it’s a dandy,

Bob Smith 8:48
okay. In the late 1970s. The Eagles were a very famous country rock group. And our famous I think they had a song entitled we wish you peace on one of their albums. Birdie leading of the Eagles wrote the song with his girlfriend at the time. His girlfriend has a very famous father who helped Bernie lead and write the song. wish you peace. Me there was this girlfriend. She helped write the song. Patti Davis, Ronald Reagan’s daughter. Yeah.

Marcia Smith 9:20
Oh, come on. Billy. Bob, do you remember? They call me Mellow Yellow? Yes, yes. Yes. Yes. That was down event Correct. Back in the 60s. And remember the subtext in it? Quite right. Yes, quite rightly. Quite rightly, well, who do you think whispered that?

Bob Smith 9:40
I know Paul McCartney was on some of his records and he was on some of Paul McCartney stuff too. I

Marcia Smith 9:45
didn’t know that but yes, that’s the answer. Is Yes. Call

Bob Smith 9:48
McCartney saying quite rightly. Yes. Yes. No kidding. They call them out. right

Marcia Smith 10:05
all right, Bob. This is called name the artist. Okay, name the art. At one point, this person was the only artist who had hit number one nationally as a solo artist, a member of a duo and a member of a trio.

Bob Smith 10:19
Is this a male or female? Female? Could it be somebody like Stevie Nicks of Fleetwood Mac? Ah,

Marcia Smith 10:25
good guests? No. Oh,

Bob Smith 10:28
okay, who was it? Diana

Marcia Smith 10:29
Ross, her solo career spanned the 70s and 80s. And her career as a singer in a trio was during the 60s when she was a lead singer for of course, the supreme Yes, yes. Her first number one hit as part of a duo was endless love with Lionel Richie. Remember that right? Yes, yeah, it was very nice song in 81. So there you have it. And then she sang with the Supremes, Lionel Richie, and all by herself, so

Bob Smith 10:54
she broke a lot of records. And speaking of that, think of some of the artists breaking records today like Drake, the rapper, he has had an amazing career. In May of 2018, he broke a record the Beatles had for 51 years, he charted 14 songs simultaneously on the Billboard Hot 100. And that equals the 14 titles that The Beatles placed on the hot 100 Way back in 1964. And then in October of 2018, he scored his 12th Billboard Hot 100, which passed the Beatles for the most in a single year. They had 1111 Top 10s and the hot 100 in their breakout year.

The amazing Victor Borger what what can you say about him this was a classy, classy guy. He was a concert trained pianist, a very, very well known act and had been a child prodigy. But the thing that was most remarkable about him was was the way he took the English language, which was his borrowed tongue, and could just play with it play with all the similes and metaphors and so forth and so on. And that was fascinating. And he did a terrific show, in Dubuque. And then when we went backstage afterwards, a Telegraph Herald reporter and I interviewed him, and he apparently was just sort of lying in wait for some of the phrases that came out of our mouths and me particularly he turned all these catchphrases and turns of phrase on me and, and made it very funny. So this was recorded in his dressing room. This is Victor Borger. Victor Borga is a very funny music man. He does things many musicians just wouldn’t think of doing. He pokes fun at opera singers. Displays wit and irreverence to classical music.

Speaker 3 12:49
I’m permits I would like to squeeze in the minute was by Chopin,

Bob Smith 12:52
and he knows how to handle interruptions and hecklers in a way that adds to his show rather than detracts from it.

Unknown Speaker 12:59
Why did you say that again?

Bob Smith 13:06
He has been a hit on the American scene for more than 40 years. Victor Bourgault was a musical prodigy born into the family of a symphony orchestra musician in Copenhagen, Denmark, and a few ask him today what led him to make serious music with comedy. He’ll stop you called who

Victor Borge 13:22
says comedy? I’ll come to you laugh at it. That doesn’t make a comedy. It’s very true. I tell you the story of my family. I tell you everything I tell you is fact that they seem to be funny. That’s another story. I don’t tell stories. I don’t make up jokes or things.

Bob Smith 13:42
But the truth is Victor Borge does tell jokes in a show like this one about his grandfather.

Speaker 3 13:47
He was a strange personality, or was experimented with something once he he crossed an Idaho potato with a sponge. Imagine that silly idea. It tasted horrible. But it sure held a lot of gravy.

Bob Smith 14:12
Where did that ability come from? He says it began when he was just a youngster

Victor Borge 14:16
I didn’t decide to do it. It was a natural development and I was almost forced to do it because people always invited me and after dinner I had to do something and not always people just like to sit and listen to Beethoven as your powers not necessarily orthodox audience you are confronted with as a child you know. So I had this ability to entertain and make an I still have it and I guess that’s what it is. But it’s based on music, which is the only thing you know anything about. Did

Bob Smith 14:50
you ever meet any resistance from classical music lovers? Because you made the made light of

Victor Borge 14:55
only when the piano burned once in a while? No to the Contrary of no no my best audience is, is the musicians actually themselves you can name them anybody who might have met from the Heifetz of mine and of anybody said they were sitting there dying laughing had buried in their handkerchiefs. Victor

Bob Smith 15:26
Borger came to America in 1940. And like millions of his fellow Europeans, he was fleeing Adolf Hitler. But now he can even look back on that with a sense of humor. Yes,

Victor Borge 15:36
because there was not room enough for both of us, but he was. So

Bob Smith 15:43
he achieved his first American notoriety on Bing Crosby’s radio program the craft music hall in 1940, where he did a guest shot one week and was so successful he was asked back the next and the next until he had played 56 weeks on the Kraft Music Hall. For his radio appearances, burger was named the comedy find of the year in 1940. Even so he said he found acting and performing without an audience. Seeing him a little bit odd

Victor Borge 16:11
was very strange, because I’ve never thought of radio I think I should be seen. That’s why I couldn’t understand the radio, but that was an extra added attraction. That saved me for a long wait, I guess.

Bob Smith 16:23
In a few years, he was seen by millions as he began popping up on early American television shows. He started a one man had show on Broadway in the 1950s and success followed success. In the years since he has been honored by countries all over the world, his own country, and three times by the Congress of the country he officially adopted in 1948. Today Victor Berger lives in Connecticut, but he is truly a world citizen and his travels take him around the globe. He show is a rich mixture of humor, clever departures from serious pieces and straight performances of the classics. One trick Borge uses to lighten things up is to play a piece of sheet music upside down, unbeknownst to the audience

Unknown Speaker 17:14
that’s what it says.

Unknown Speaker 17:23
Oh

Bob Smith 17:34
it’s not easy being a comedian, and it’s almost unheard of to be a comedian in a foreign language. But Victor Borga is that he can see humor in many of the words that we English speaking people can take for granted. In his performance. Burgas son acting as a stagehand was asked what he did at the auditorium, I run the lights, he said, you run the lights, repeated Borga. How far throughout his career, that type of humor has been a hallmark of your style, you have such a way of you can point out the idiosyncrasies of the language that Americans take for granted until you point them out.

Victor Borge 18:07
Well, I think it was like harmony in music you hear I have learned grammar in school, but I never spoke English. I mean, one thing is to learn the basic grammar in English language. And another thing is to speak. I couldn’t understand a word of encouragement I came I was both spoken, in spite of the fact that I had quite a glossary. I knew there was a paper chair, table girl, man woman here, but it’s never been put together, you see. And I listened and I still listen to every word in the sentence. Whereas you speak in phrases, I listened to work. So it’s very simple. It’s very simple analysis. And

Bob Smith 18:48
if you’re not careful, he can catch you using some of those same phrases. You’ve done radio, you’ve done TV, you’ve done Broadway shows. Do you enjoy live performances better?

Victor Borge 18:59
I’ve never performed but I was dead. So I don’t know. Another

Bob Smith 19:02
strength of Victor Borg. His style is his ability to weave into his performance any incidents or mishaps that might be funneled any other musician in his debut performance? semis on the truck route outside of the Civic Center Created occasional and annoying noise and Berger would pause in his performance listen to them. And joke is if only one truck was continually circling the building. He was asked later if that really was a problem for him. Seriously,

Victor Borge 19:28
the truck bother you might say yes, of course, is my show. But it is a I have learned a long time ago to incorporate anything that happens so that it becomes part of the show. We have at flies landing on my nose while I was playing and people have asked me how do you train to fly to do that? And you say it’s comedy. I mean, it has happened I’ve seen pianist very seriously accompanies the fly’s open, you know, and the didn’t know enough people sitting around listening, the guy sitting there not knowing. And this is exactly what I tried to bring to the attention of the people that no matter how much they can do, no matter how serious, they attempt to perform, still as ridiculous things that happen. And I just proved by doing things that really happen. Not all at the same time.

Bob Smith 20:24
We’ve heard performers Talk about a bad audience, is there such a thing? No, there’s

Victor Borge 20:28
no such thing as a bad audience. Because we’re not gonna be a bad performance, or they’re gonna be a performance in which audiences cannot hear well, or see well, or to call lawyer The condition can be bad, but you cannot have 500 I don’t know how many people are, were denied about three 4000. All right, you cannot have three or 4000 people buying tickets in order to be a bad audience. It’s impossible, you know, they come to be a good outcome to be injured, to enjoy, say, and when they get what they expect, then they’re happy. And that’s what they come to see is like in the restaurant, you don’t go into a to buy bad food. But you go to a good restaurant, because you expect good food and you get it you are happy and they are happy to deliver. Same thing here they expect to hear certain quality of certain form of entertainment, which they are looking forward to when they buy the ticket.

Bob Smith 21:24
And does he care whether the audience comes to see the music or to see the comedy? No,

Victor Borge 21:28
it’s always there. There. I think that’s what counts isn’t it? When I do a concert with Symphony Orchestra, I divided into both classical and kind of show people the audience that I can have, you can have a lot of funded music. In other words, how the funding musicians have when they get together, I just bring it on the stage. That’s then there is no professional has better stories, or more hilarious incidents than the musical profession. But it’s never told on the stage. You can find some in books, but this is exactly what I’m doing. I’m just drawing out from the experiences that I’m bringing to the to the state, a man

Bob Smith 22:14
at the top of the music world for over 40 years. A man who plays the classics with finesse. A man who knows how to handle an audience or a heckler.

Unknown Speaker 22:26
I think it is to your left.

Bob Smith 22:30
The man who says he never rehearses that’s Victor Borge. This is Bob Smith. The amazing Victor Borger. I have such fond memories of that evening what a great concert it was with just some of the most beautiful, tasteful, wonderful music and terrific, hilarious jokes. Plus, Victor Borger was such a delightful host in his dressing room there. One last routine of Victor Borga. He did this at one point in nearly every concert. It’s called punctuation. I’ll let him explain it.

Speaker 3 23:09
Then in 19 140, I luckily arrived in the United States, unable to speak a word of English, which was a handicap because I found most people over here do. And I tried to learn the language. And I got along as time and a half went by and I picked up a few words here and there. Mostly, because I hadn’t been here yet. But I found that people who speak English sometimes do not understand each other too well, due to the fact that they do not use punctuation marks when they talk. And that that is why I invented phonetic punctuation. Which means that while we talk, we will integrate punctuation marks by giving them sounds so that we can underline our sentences as well when we speak as we do when we read. And all right. I’ll teach you the system a period sounds like here is a dash. An exclamation point is a vertical dash with a period underneath. Here’s a comma quotation or two commas. If you happen to be left handed question mark is rather difficult.

Unknown Speaker 24:53
Finally the colon the two little dots you know you put them either over or under each other

Unknown Speaker 25:01
That is

Speaker 3 25:03
the sound for the quarter. And I’m going to read to you a short story. So, you can hear how this system really sound. This book was written by Shakespeare this time

Unknown Speaker 25:16
Johann Sebastian Shakespeare This is a pickpocket edition by the way I have a short story right here in the beginning of the book

Unknown Speaker 25:39
it isn’t page two in the open window the sudden became light beautiful reading all sat alone creaming off but one thing

Unknown Speaker 25:58
two years had passed since she met, so Henry she would still remember the unhappy evening when her father had thrown him out they had been sitting in the park and then we had said

Unknown Speaker 26:27
darling

Unknown Speaker 26:36
is this the first time you have loved

Unknown Speaker 26:45
your answer yes

Unknown Speaker 26:52
it is all wonderful. But I hope it will not be the last

Unknown Speaker 27:12
suddenly you had a well known sound

Speaker 3 27:20
it was he into straits he was near embraced, kissed and caressed.

Unknown Speaker 27:48
What is love? She asked. You answered well I couldn’t live without

Unknown Speaker 28:11
she asked I’m sorry. Where have all your thoughts been this wild? With the my maidens

Unknown Speaker 28:31
suddenly he was gone. All she hired

Speaker 3 28:42
was the well known sound of his departing horse

Bob Smith 28:56
Victor Borga a different kind of musician. Well, that’s it. Time to leave the off ramp and get back on the highway and the fast lane of life. This is Bob Smith. We hope you’ve enjoyed our fun facts about music and the laughs we’ve shared with the late great Victor Borg. And we hope you’ll join us again next time for more fun here on the off ramp.

The off ramp with Bob Smith is produced in association with CPL radio and the Cedarbrook Public Library Cedarburg, Wisconsin.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai