Only the naturally glamorous can wear
a giant sapphire with certain abandon.
Please click it up big in screen-filling deluxe.
1951
YouTube clips often do not
work on handheld devices.
This link is here, good luck.
Something fascinating happened.
I am researching an interesting 1940s US magician Tommy Woo. I bought the remainder of his magic collection about eight or nine years ago and I have a photo of him taken by a then famous Hollywood star, glamour photographer called John E. Reed.
As I searched any remnants of his work and details about photographer Reed, I found an image of someone I've been thinking about all of my life. He was a pianist, organist I was entranced by as a child. The Australian ABC television network ran filler clips of this young man performing for plenty of years. The ABC must have picked up a package of his fifteen minute films. You'll see why that happened. Anyone who cracks the fifteen minutes of fame remark will have to leave the room. He was well ahead of Andy.
From time to time I've recalled this pianist and realised I had no idea of his name. But there, in a Google link, was an Indian name connected to a picture by John E. Reed. I was thunderstruck when I saw who this person was. It was ... Korla Pandit! So I spent some time seeking out bits and pieces, as we all do. I lucked into some video clips. Back then it was incredible to see anyone playing an organ and a grand piano at the same time. That was enough then to ensure excitement. Yes, yes, ambidextrous ambience.
He was apparently one of the most famous people on early US television. His androgyny took the fancy of people everywhere. He was the first to have his little tea-time show syndicated across America. He was so successful that a certain Wladziu Valentino Liberace saw what could be achieved ... and ... muscled in. Liberace convinced Korla Pandit's show producer to take him on instead. The producer dropped Korla and produced instead the now famous Liberace TV shows in the same way. Liberace had something better, the gift of the gab. Cool was replaced with schmaltz.
Pandit was later known as the Godfather of Exotica. That was surely the thing that wildly excited me. There was not much exotica in the Buckland home in those years ... except for me, of course. And Korla Pandit is now widely accepted as the person who popularised exotic music and he predates all the others by years. He paved the way for precious, exotic, high camp imports like the Peruvian Yma Sumac the Inca Princess. You are sure to have heard her enchantments warbling away at equally exotic parties here and there. Though, she was very, very good.
Korla Pandit never spoke on television until he attended a televised reunion of a San Franciso TV station in the 1980s [most of his shows came out of KTLA Los Angeles]. He simply used his remarkable eyes during presentations.
In the end his producer clearly thought his production company was due for a refresh and Liberace's line of patter and shrewd goop won out. However Korla went on playing music for the rest of his life.
I remember being dumbstruck to see someone who was probably my mysterious organist in that marvellous Johnny Depp movie Ed Wood. It was him. How clever were they to get Korla Pandit to play in a down-at-heel nightclub scene in the film? The timing was spot on because Korla would have been at his height during the making of those early Ed Wood Z-grade flicks. It made no difference that Korla was about 60 years older in the Tim Burton movie. How clever is Burton? However, after I left the movie theatre in those pre-Google and internet days, I had absolutely no way of following up on who he was. I still did not even know Korla's name. How things have changed.
Now my childhood wonderment has been revealed to me. I busily downloaded as many clips of him as I could. He died in early 1998, four years after the Ed Wood film was released. But before he whisped away into nowheresville, and this is really cool ... Korla made a punk record with the Los Angeles band, The Muffs.
Some people are really good aren't they?
Oh and here's the John E. Reed picture of Tommy Woo. He started my search and he deserves the credit wherever he is.
But shh. Quick come behind the crimson velvet curtain; there's something I must whisper in your ear. Like so many others, Tommy stopped being glamorous with all that dazzling Brylcream and oriental snap and opened a tawdry trick shop in San Diego where he grafted a living selling cloth snakes that jumped from peanut cans and vomit ala fake.
Woo who!
Tommy Woo performing with Loyd's equally
exotic Chinese Sticks with fire-branded
insignias and turned jade ends.
Liberace always knew how to pick the most enjoyable support acts for his extravangazas. He knew that giving audiences preceding acts as lovely gifts he would be adored even more when he arrived on stage. That, my friends, is true show business nous. In da house.
