I've been reading a wonderful book entitled "Dig Infinity! the Life
and Art of Lord Buckley", by Oliver Trager, published a couple of
months ago. Lord Buckley (1906-1960) was a humorist, standup
comic, and philosopher who used the jazz or jive venacular in his
pieces, many of them hip re-readings of classic literature. His most
famous piece is "The Naz", and he coined the phrase "Willie
The Shake". This Joni reference appears on page 266:
As evidence of the Ivar albums' resonance in the liturgy
of the following generation of American minstelsy, Joni Mitchell
references Buckley's tag of the Bard in her song "Talk To Me" from
her 1977 album Don Juan's Reckless Daughter when she sings, "I
stole that from Willie the Shake, you know/Neither a borrower or
a lender be/Romeo, Romeo talk to me."
(me again) The "Willie the Shake" phrase was also used by Ken
Kesey in his novel "Sometimes A Great Notion", but Joni's
exposure to Lord Buckley may very well have come from her
relationship with James Taylor, who has stuck a few LB lines in
his own songs, and says in the book:
I was fifteen or sixteen when I first heard Lord Buckley's records.
I was in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and someone down at the
university suggested I listen to him. I had a friend down there and
we got into Lord Buckley and began quoting him...
...His pieces [take on] very important, meaningful stuff like Shake-
speare and Christ, claiming it for a generation and expressing it in
those terms....
Lord Buckley has influenced The Beatles-"make it Jude!" is
from a LB routine- Dylan, who performed "Black Cross" early
in his carreer (Jimmy Buffet has also recorded it), Robin Williams,
The Firesign Theatre, Roseanne, and virtually every comedian. His
buddies included Lenny Bruce, Jonathon Winters, and most of the
40's and 50's jazz musicians including Miles Davis.
You can usually find his records on ebay. His only CD currently
in print is "His Royal Hipness" (which does not contain "Willie The
Shake"), available from Amazon, also they have short realaudio
samples from this CD.
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000003MT9/qid=1026157874/sr=1-1/ref=sr_1_1/102-2021890-5118560
The book also comes with a CD featuring interviews and routines,
including an unreleased rendition of "Willie The Shake" from an
interview.
"You know why they called him Willie The Shake? Because he....
....SHOOK ever'body...they gave that cat five cents worth of paper
and a nickel's worth of ink, he sat down and wrote up such a breeze,
when he got through PPFFTT! ever'body got off! He was too tight
a cat...."
Sounds like someone else I can think of....
RR
ps...isn't "neither a borrower nor a lender be" a Ben Franklin quote?
