Ernie Kovacs - The Music Man

The Music Man

Kovacs loved music and its humor possibilities; he was also known for his eclectic musical taste. His main theme song was called "Oriental Blues" by Jack Newlon, which borrows heavily from "Rialto Ripples", a quirky piano number by George Gershwin. The rendition most often heard was a piano-driven trio version, but for his primetime show in 1956, music director Harry Sosnik presented a full-blown big band version.

The German song "Die Moritat von Mackie Messer" from The Threepenny Opera (later anglicized to the well-known "Mack the Knife"), frequently underscored his blackout routines. Robert Maxwell's "Solfeggio" became associated closely enough with the derby-hatted apes that it became better known among Kovacs admirers as "The Song of the Nairobi Trio."

An unusual treatment of "Sentimental Journey", by Mexican bandleader Juan García Esquivel, accompanied video of an empty office in which various items (pencil sharpeners, water coolers, wall clocks) come to life in rhythm with the music, a variation on several famous animations of a decade earlier. The original three-minute presentation was outlined by Kovacs in a four-page, single-spaced memo to his staff. The perfectionist Kovacs can be seen by reading it, as he describes in minute detail what had to be done and how to do it. The memo ends with this: "I don't know how the hell you're going to get this done by Sunday--but 'rots of ruck." (signed) "Ernie (with love)". Kovacs also made careful use of the shrill singer Leona Anderson—who had somewhat less than a classical (or even listenable) voice, by some estimations—in comic vignettes.

Kovacs used classical music as background for silent sketches or abstract visual routines, including "Concerto for Orchestra", by Béla Bartók; music from the opera "The Love of Three Oranges", by Sergei Prokofiev; the finale of Igor Stravinsky's suite "The Firebird"; and Richard Strauss' "Till Eulenspiegel's Merry Pranks". He may have been best known for using Haydn's "String Quartet, Opus 3, Number 5" (the "Serenade," actually composed by Roman Hoffstetter), which was used in a series of 1960-61 commercials he created and videotaped for his sponsor, Dutch Masters.

For the show of May 22, 1959, Kovacs On Music, Kovacs began by saying, "I have never really understood classical music, so I would like to take this opportunity to explain it to others." Presented in the form of the gorilla version of Swan Lake which differed from the usual performance only in the persona of the dancers, giant paper clips moving to music and other sketches, Ernie's offerings showed his instinct for the classics and made them more comprehensible to his viewers.

He also served as host on a jazz LP to benefit the American Cancer Society in 1957, Listening to Jazz with Ernie Kovacs. It was a 15-minute recording featuring some of the giants of the art, including pianists Jimmy Yancey and Bunk Johnson, soprano saxophonist Sidney Bechet, guitarist Django Reinhardt, composer/pianist/bandleader Duke Ellington and longtime Ellington trumpeter Cootie Williams. Both the Library of Congress and the National Library of Canada have copies of this recording in their collections.