Singing Impressionists

I've always loved and been in awed of people who can do singing impressions. I've always thought that if they can sing just like a superstar entertainer, why can't they have their own singing career?  I suppose one could ask me since I'm an animator who could draw any cartoon show, why don't I have my own cartoon show? Good point.

One of the first acts I ever saw that did singing impressions were a comedy duo named Roger and Roger. I caught them in Vegas after seeing them on several television variety shows.  They not only did impressions of popular singers (of the Seventies) but also impressions of actors and politicians, but it was their singing that really impressed me.

A couple of decades later my father took me and my son to the Danny Gans Show in Vegas. Gans was an extremely popular impressionist with his own theater in Vegas who threw it all away by overdosing on drugs at the age of fifty-two. Although he was known mostly as a singing impressionist his show had about a third of straight impressions of actors and comedians. Unfortunately his impressions were very dated such as George Burns and Johnny Carson who my teenage son had never heard of and probably wondered how they ever could have become stars since Gans versions of them really wasn't very funny. 

His singing impressions were much better although he only did a verse and a chorus worth of music for each impression and my father wasn't familiar with half of the impressions as the acts he mimicked were too current for my dad and my son didn't appreciate the other half because the singers were from the Fifties and Sixties. But like Little Red Riding Hood, they were just right for me.

For The Tooners' Rock & Roll Rehab Show we hired a great impressionist named Leo Capone to do some celebrity voices. Leo is also a hard rock singer and was in one of the most popular bar bands in Chicago before he left for Hollywood. When he sang a cover tune he did it in the voice of the original singer, and he is real good.

No comments:

Post a Comment