NERVOUS NORVUS
Stone Age Woo: The Zorch Sounds Of... (Norton)
Reviewed by DJ Johnson

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If you pop the radio dial over to the classic rock AM station now and then you might luck into a novelty song by Nervous Norvus, most likely "Transfusion," the 1956 top ten hit that got the ball rolling for this most unusual artist. It was a song with a horrific body count, accompanied by the sounds of skidding tires and crashing cars that ushered in a bizarre sub-genre of more subdued tragedy tunes, but this one was all tongue-in-cheek.

Nervous Norvus was the performing name of Jimmy Drake, the other Memphis truck driver to hit the scene in 1956. Drake's passion for music and his twisted sense of humor collided in a most non-lucrative way, but ol' Jimmy was all about having fun, so he built a makeshift recording studio in his kitchen and started his own business making demos for songwriters. For those who've never heard about that world before, the gig is that some songwriters can't play or sing, so they take their songs to someone who can, and that person makes a tape that they can send around to recording artists in hopes of making a sale. Drake made very simple recordings, usually featuring only his voice and his baritone ukulele or tenor guitar, both of which he played just well enough to do the job. Listening to those demos today you can't help but notice that, despite his limitations, there was something genuinely engaging about his performances. Or, at least, most of them.

Norton Records once again proves to be a label dedicated to preserving the things people long ago forgot were cool, and as usual they do it up big. Stone Age Woo, The Zorch Sounds of Nervous Norvus, collects not just the six singles you may possibly know, but 33 tracks on a single disc, accompanied by a ten-page booklet with a detailed track list and the well-told story of Drake's life. As Weird Al had his Dr. Demento, Jimmy Drake had Red Blanchard, a bandleader and disk jockey who did a program that included novelty songs. Drake would send his homemade recordings and Blanchard offered encouragement. In fact, when Blanchard received Drake's recording of "Transfusion" in '56, he liked it but decided it needed a li'l something, and it was he who added the sounds of screams, skids and crashes before putting it on the air and causing a stir. "Zorch," by the way, was one of Blanchard's words, as was "Nervous," though not the way we mean it. To Blanchard and his followers, it meant "Cool." "Zorch" and many other bits of Blanchardspeak would show up in Drake's tunes over the next few years, and now, of course, you realize he was actually "Cool Norvus." One of those nervous but little-known stories from the history of pop music.

Is 33 tracks of mostly demos from a novelty artist something you're going to want to listen to? Probably not all at once, but taken in just a few bites, it's a worthy listening choice. It's funny, clever, sometimes annoying, but almost always charming in a way that's hard to nail down. Knowing the full story (or as full a story as you can know in 10 pages) of Jimmy Drake makes it still more entertaining. If you don't know the history between Drake and Blanchard, "I Listen to Red in Bed" makes no sense.

Odd little song, that. Drake sings the first half in a high falsetto, in the character of a little boy who listens to the Red Blanchard show on a radio his mother doesn't know he's hidden in his teddy bear. He sings the second half in his own voice and tells of listening to Blanchard's show late at night on a radio his wife doesn't know he's hidden in his Belfast (whiskey) jug. Can't be autobiographical, though. Ol' Nervous was 40-somethin' by the time he ever heard Red Blanchard. A clever little middle-aged boy.

Track List:

Transfusion * Dig * Ape Call * Wild Dogs of Kentucky * The Fang * Bullfrog Hop * Stoneage Woo * I Like Girls * Does a Chinese Chicken Have a Pigtail? * Noon Balloon to Rangoon * Kibble Kobble (The Flying Saucer Song) * The Lean Green Vegetable Fiend (From 'Tuther Side of the Moon) * Little Cowboy * The Blackout Song * Kangaroo Hop * I Listen to Red in Bed * Sparks * I Hate Bugs * The Clock Shop * I'm Waitin' Up for Santa Claus * Boris the Blue Nosed Baboon * When I Hear the Honkin' of the Diesel Train * Ape Call ("No Ape") * The Bully Bully Man * Elvis You're a G.I. Now * Stop Your Foolin * Pony-Tail * I'm Comin' Home My Baby Federer * The New Beat and Step * The Clock Shop * The Evil Hurricane * The Plaster Song * Sparks

[Note: Songs listed in red are known as the Dot Six, the six songs released on Dot Records under the name Nervous Norvus.]

© 2004 - DJ Johnson