Benny Bell was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriter

Singer-songwriters are musicians who write, compose and sing their own musical material including lyrics and melodies. As opposed to contemporary popular music singers who write their own songs, the term singer-songwriter describes a distinct form of artistry, closely associated with the...

 who reached popularity in the 1940s, with a comeback in the 1970s. He is particularly remembered for his risqué but cheerfully optimistic songs.

Career

Benny Bell was born to an immigrant Jewish family in New York City

New York City

New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

. His father wanted him to be a rabbi

Rabbi

In Judaism, a rabbi is a teacher of Torah. This title derives from the Hebrew word רבי , meaning "My Master" , which is the way a student would address a master of Torah...

, but after trying various odd jobs including self-employed street peddler, he decided to pursue a career in vaudeville

Vaudeville

Vaudeville was a theatrical genre of variety entertainment in the United States and Canada from the early 1880s until the early 1930s. Each performance was made up of a series of separate, unrelated acts grouped together on a common bill...

 and music, sometimes under the names Benny Bimbo and Paul Wynn. His first record, "The Alimony Blues" (backed with "Fast Asleep on a Mountain"), for Plaza Records on December 16, 1929 was a comical song about preferring to spend time in jail rather than pay alimony

Alimony

Alimony is a U.S. term denoting a legal obligation to provide financial support to one's spouse from the other spouse after marital separation or from the ex-spouse upon divorce...

. He went on to write approximately 600 songs, most of which are documented in his many notebooks, ledgers and copyright papers, all of which he had given to his grandson, journalist Joel Samberg, between 1994 and 1998, whom he had designated as the one to protect and continue his legacy as a songwriter and performer.

In addition to songs with English

English language

English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

 lyrics

Lyrics

Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...

, he also wrote and recorded in Yiddish

Yiddish language

Yiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...

 and Hebrew

Hebrew language

Hebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...

, sometimes mixing two or even three languages in one song (e.g. "Bar Mitzvah Boy" which uses all three). According to liner notes on his albums, these multiple-language songs are intended to be understood by listeners who speak any one of the languages used.

Bell founded his own record company under a variety of names: Bell Enterprises, Madison Records, Zion Records, and Kosher Comedy Records, to release his own material. He also wrote and recorded commercial jingle

Jingle

A jingle is a short tune used in advertising and for other commercial uses. The jingle contains one or more hooks and lyrics that explicitly promote the product being advertised, usually through the use of one or more advertising slogans. Ad buyers use jingles in radio and television...

s for radio

Radio station

Radio broadcasting is a one-way wireless transmission over radio waves intended to reach a wide audience. Stations can be linked in radio networks to broadcast a common radio format, either in broadcast syndication or simulcast or both...

. His jingle for Lemke's cockroach powder, sung in a mixture of Yiddish and English, has been released on record

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

.

Bell enjoyed writing risqué lyrics, and in 1939 he was advised that he could make so-called party records with "blue" lyrics, primarily for use in juke boxes in cocktail bars. He entered into this endeavour using his self-established record company, while continuing to make ethnic and mainstream comedy records. In an interview on the Dr. Demento

Dr. Demento

Barret Eugene Hansen , better known as Dr. Demento, is a radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present....

 radio program, Bell stated that he kept his straight and blue careers separate for many years, the latter being a secret to most of his fans and associates. His eventual fame would come mostly from his risqué material. His first juke box release was a hot jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 arrangement of a traditional risqué drinking song, "Sweet Violets", but his first big success in this field was an original song, "Take a Ship for Yourself".

In 1946 he released his three highest-selling songs: "Take a Ship for Yourself," "Pincus the Peddler" which drew from his personal experience in the trade, and the notorious "Shaving Cream". "Pincus the Peddler" became Bell's signature tune, despite the title character's disreputable violent tendencies, and it concludes with his deportation to Petrograd (the older name for Leningrad, known today as Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg

Saint Petersburg is a city and a federal subject of Russia located on the Neva River at the head of the Gulf of Finland on the Baltic Sea...

, Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

). "Shaving Cream" uses a technique in which each verse suggests a rhyme with an obscene word, but replaces the word with the title, which is alliterative with the obscene word. The same concept was used in "Sweet Violets" and many other songs that he recorded.

Other songs written by Bell include "Without Pants", "My Grandfather Had a Long One", "The Girl From Chicago", "The Ballad of Ikey and Mikey", "My Condominium", "I'm Gonna Give My Girl a Goose for Thanksgiving", "There Ain't No Santa Claus", and "Everybody Wants My Fanny".

He continued recording and releasing records into the 1980s, but he remained little-known beyond New York City until the 1970s when "Shaving Cream" was played regularly on the Dr. Demento radio program, leading to its re-issue as a single in 1975 on the Vanguard Records

Vanguard Records

Vanguard Records is a record label set up in 1950 by brothers Maynard and Seymour Solomon in New York. It started as a classical label, but is perhaps best known for its catalogue of recordings by a number of pivotal folk and blues artists from the 1960s; the Bach Guild was a subsidiary...

 label, along with a similarly titled album. The single peaked at #30 on the Billboard Hot 100. Around this time, Bell was still writing new songs about current topics such as disco

Disco

Disco is a genre of dance music. Disco acts charted high during the mid-1970s, and the genre's popularity peaked during the late 1970s. It had its roots in clubs that catered to African American, gay, psychedelic, and other communities in New York City and Philadelphia during the late 1960s and...

 music and the Watergate scandal

Watergate scandal

The Watergate scandal was a political scandal during the 1970s in the United States resulting from the break-in of the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C., and the Nixon administration's attempted cover-up of its involvement...

.

Bell continued self-releasing vinyl albums into the 1980s, and they often resemble 1950s releases, featuring somewhat plain covers with the same graphics (an array of laughing heads) re-used for decades, or with no art except a plain cover with hole to view the label. He continued to issue 10-inch albums long after that format was considered obsolete. Some albums have new spoken jokes edited into breaks in older songs as "asides", a technique Bell had been using since the 1950s, and some songs contain comic interruptions made over several decades.

A book called "Grandpa Had a Long One: Personal Notes on the Life, Career and Legacy of Benny Bell," which is a combination biography and memoir written by his grandson, Joel Samberg, was published by BearManor Media and released in 2009. It is available from the publisher and from Amazon.com.

Bell died in New York in July 1999, at the age of 93.

Albums discography

• Kosher Comedy (Kosher Comedy Records, 1956)
• Kosher Comedy (Zion Records 126, 1956, not the same album as above)
• Kosher Comedy (Madison Records 120, 1960, not the same album as either of the above)
• Jewish Comedy (1st Issue) (Bell Enterprises, 10-inch album)
• Jewish Comedy (2nd Issue) (Bell Enterprises, 10-inch album, essentially a "volume 2")
• Jewish American Novelty Tunes (Bell Enterprises, 1958)
• Pincus the Peddler (Zion Records 234, 1959, re-issue of above, as Benny Bell and the Agony Trio)
• To the Bride: "G'zint mit Parnussa" (Zion Records 252, as Benny Bell and the Brownsville Klezmer
  Klezmer
  Klezmer is a musical tradition of the Ashkenazic Jews of Eastern Europe. Played by professional musicians called klezmorim, the genre originally consisted largely of dance tunes and instrumental display pieces for weddings and other celebrations...
  
  s)
• Laugh Along With Pincus (Madison Records 523, re-issued with different cover in 1972)
• The Opera Star (Comic Opera) (Bell Enterprises 900, 10-inch album)
• Be a Comedian (1958, re-issued as Bell Enterprises BB-801, 1961, 10-inch instructional album)
• Shaving Cream (Vanguard Records VSD-79357, 1975)
• Showtime (Bell Enterprises 303, 1977, jokes by Slim Jim and songs by Benny Bell)
• The Hilarious Musical Comedy of Benny Bell (volumes 1 to 8, Benny Bell Records, on CD)
• Benny Bell: Another Close Shave (Benny Bell, 2005)

Further reading

• Joel Samberg, "Grandpa Had a Long One: Personal Notes on the Life, Career and Legacy of Benny Bell," BearManor Media, 2009
• Roland L. Smith, Goldmine Comedy Record Price Guide. Krause Publications, 1996.
• Ronald L. Smith, Comedy Stars at 78 RPM: Biographies and discographies of 89 American and British recording artists, 1896-1946. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 1998.
• The Encyclopedia of Popular Music. Third edition. Edited by Colin Larkin. London: MUZE, 1998. Grove's Dictionaries, New York, 1998.

External links

• [ Benny Bell] at Allmusic website
• Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University, with online recordings courtesy of Bell's estate