Allee Willis Blog

06Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Pufnstuffin’ With Sid Krofft

06Mar 2012

Allee Willis’ Kitsch ‘O The Day – Pufnstuffin’ With Sid Krofft

New Year’s Eve, 2011. I’m coming down Sunset Plaza, a really windy road with million dollar homes right above Sunset Blvd. in LA. I’m in my Green Beetle, which is a lean and fast machine.

Sunset Plaza’s a pain in the ass to drive under any circumstance but nightmarish should you end up behind a slowwww driver, which is what fate dealt me this New Years when I was in a big hurry to get to my destination, my friends Nancye Ferguson and Jim Burn’s pad, an ultra modern built-for-Brian-DePalma-in-the-70’s house that teeters on stilts overlooking the city. Here’s the view from the balcony:

There are very few parking spaces to accommodate a small fraction of the 50 people on their way up there. If you don’t get one of those spaces you have to turn around in a teeny tiny cul-de-sac and drive a quarter mile out the little windy road with hardly any shoulder and a drop-down of hundreds of feet. And then you’re back out on the main winding road where there are about two parking spaces for every fifty people. No way am I limping back up that hill on foot! So I start leaning on the horn behind this little black car driving at funeral speed. To my credit, I only honked when there was enough room for the stupid driver to pull over so I could pass. Finally, after five minutes the car hugs the curb and I whiz past, gunning it extra hard to show my annoyance even further.

I get to the house and thank God there’s a space left. I pull in, put some lipstick on and send a few emails on my iPad before I go in. A couple of cars pass me and I don’t see them coming back down the hill, which means they must’ve found parking spots too. I finally get out of the car and trudge the last 20 feet up to the house. Standing there is my good friend, Beverly D’Angelo, with a guy I don’t know. Beverly and I go way back and I love her. She’s also an excellent party guest, a criteria I have incredibly high standards for, and has been coming to mine for years.

Just as I’m getting in hugging range I hear Snappy P yell, “Green Beetle, that must have been Allee!”. “You fucking asshole, you almost drove us off the road!!,” screams Beverly as I approach. Oh shit, I rarely misbehave behind the wheel anymore and now I’ve gone and terrorized a friend. But then it gets worse, “Meet Sid Krofft,” she says, referring to the mystery man next her, adding that she brought him to the party specifically to meet me. Now I’ve been waiting to meet this guy since the late 60’s when his puppets, marionettes and insane live action shows started ruling TV and now I’ve almost killed him. “I wanted to get out of the car and tell you what an asshole you were” he says. Thank God the Beetle was turbo-charged and he didn’t have a chance. I ate a lot of crow for the next few minutes, but it was immediately apparent that Beverly was completely right. This guy was a kindred spirit and we hit it off like we had known each other for decades.

Though Beverly had told Sid he HAD to come to Willis Wonderland, I went to his place first, now a couple weeks ago. I took hundreds of photos but I can’t show any of them because Sid’s a really private guy. But it’s as handcrafted as my place is times 6 trillion-on-steroids.

In actuality, I didn’t really get full tilt into the Kroffts back in the day when their shows were on the air because by then I was way way way deep into records and the radio. As a fan and later as a songwriter, when my radio habit lurched into twelfth gear and I lived and breathed music every millisecond of every day, I was still aware of that Sid and Marty Krofft name and that it stood for something crazy. But it really wasn’t until so many friends of mine insisted I go to an auction of their props at the Beverly Hills Hotel in 1998 that I realized the extent of that craziness as well as the magnitude of its reach. As a kitsch lover, how could I have not been familiar with every single detail of the Kroffts’ career, the guys on the throne at the top of the kitsch mountain??

YouTube, of course, makes for an excellent crash course. So I’ve seen more of the Krofft brothers’ magic in the last month than I have in my lifetime. And my respect and discovery of the depth of influence their work had on me subliminally has been a revelation. H.R. Pufnstuf is probably their most classic:

I don’t like to wake up early for social visits but at 82, Sid Krofft is in REMARKABLE shape, jogging 9 miles a day + a couple hours in the gym, so he’s raring to go when the sun comes up. 10:30 bright and early a couple of Tuesdays ago he and Beverly were at my doorstep.

I even got it together to cut up healthy food for him.

This is a BIG step for me as this is what’s more likely to be on that table on a regular basis:

Sid was as fascinated by Willis Wonderland as I was of his hand-built abode. As my yard is part of my living room, we hit that first.

Although it was raining when I took the following shot, you need to see those GORGEOUS 1950’s fiberglas fish lounges sans people:

As we strolled around outside we were joined by Donny Molls, a great artist and Sid’s next door neighbor:

We stopped and chatted in every room:

My downstairs, where that shot was taken, is particularly packed with memorabilia, some of which is Krofft Brothers stuff I’m happy to say I had the good sense to collect even if I wasn’t sure exactly what it was when I bought it.

If you’ve never seen Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, double up your sedation and watch now! EASILY one of the greatest title sequences in the annals of kitschdom:

Thank god I had a few View Master disks of Electra Woman and Dyna Girl in my collection too:

Sid and Michael Jackson were great friends so I pointed out some of my primo MJ cheese:

You really need to see what I’m pointing at. Yeah, I got the doll and the puzzle like a zillion other people…

…but who else do you know who has the drink cooler?! This is easily my favorite piece of MJ memorabilia I own:

When we got to my dining room…

… Sid posed in front of Mr. Wah Wah, a stunning portrait painted by my alter-ego, Bubbles the artist.:

We spent a lot of time in my recording studio too.

Although Sid has a computer he’s not obsessed with them as I am of my 11 networked Macs. So what we really wanted to do was show him how much of his stuff is online.

And there’s gaggles of it – H.R. Pufnstuf, Land Of The Lost, The Bugaloos, Lidsville, The Donny and Marie Show, not to mention Electra Woman and Dyna Girl for starters. And no exploration of Sid and Marty Kroffts would be complete without the Brady Bunch Variety Hour:

The Brady Bunch is certainly coming up A LOT lately!

One of THE most classic and cheesiest shows EVER on TV was called Pink Lady and Jeff. 1981. I remember being so intrigued by that nutty title that I tried to catch the show whenever I could. Imagine the complete and total ecstasy-breakdown I had when I saw the Pink ladies immortalizing my song,”Boogie Wonderland”:

Watching this again with the creator of that show who was totally in on the cheese joke of it all was even more thrilling. As we were poking around doing searches on YouTube I discovered that not only did Pink Lady do that quintessential performance of the song, they also recorded it. I’m still gasping for breath:

What a day I spent with the gang. Here’s one last parting shot for the photo LP before everyone left:

I sho love me some Sid Krofft!!

10Aug 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Being Even More Fluff – Part 2

10Aug 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Being Even More Fluff – Part 2

So as I was saying yesterday, this last weekend at Willis Wonderland we aKitschionados from The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch saw the light of Fluff!

For a quick recap if you were too lazy to click on that link, many of us are converging on Somerville, MA. September 24th to attend the fifth annual Fluff Festival to celebrate the marshmallow food topping in the city it was invented in. aKitschionado Rusty suggested that we first convene at Willis Wonderland in LA, the physical arm of AWMOK.com, and spend a day cooking with Fluff. Bear in mind that many of the aKitschionados in attendance had never met before and only knew each other by commenting on the kitsch they’d submitted to AWMOK. So everything served had to be a real icebreaker. As such, the first course was Fluff inspired sandwiches…:

… accompanied by Goldfish in sea foam dip vegetables:

All of which was washed down with Flufftinis…:

…an original recipe by aKitschionado iamfluff, a.k.a. Susan Olsen, a.k.a. Cindy Brady of the Bunch:

Extra points were earned for color-coordinated food, dishware and clothing:

Even more points racked up for color-coordinated lamps and other sugary Fluff alternatives:

aKitschionado Mark Blackwell scored even more bonus points for coordinating his jellybean tribute to The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch with the aforementioned lamp and M&Ms.

I hope anyone reading this appreciates the importance of color-coordinated meals and accoutrements. If there’s any question at all about the importance of food and furnishings color-coordination, please refer here.

The main course was delicious and nutritious Fluffernutter cake. I know this photo’s blurry but so was my vision after the day’s 21-gun sugar salute.

If you think that cake is gooey, let me tell you that as the party hostess who had to clean up – actually I didn’t clean up at all as the aKitschionados are a very conscious and esthetically tidy breed – there were vestiges of Fluff everywhere. Like on Mark’s pants:

Slightly less lava-flowish-of-Fluff were the fried S’Mores made by akitschionado Snappy P.

Technically, there’s no Fluff in this recipe but as its fraternal twin, marshmallows, are a key ingredient the Willis Wonderland stove did not discriminate.

Many aKitschionados came bearing gifts. Doug Wood, for example, brought me a lovely kitsch-filled basket:.

One of the gifts was a practical Hostess Twinkie holder:

Many aKitschionados were jealous of my acquisition:

Just as important as protecting your Twinkies is protecting your Pringles. Thank you, aKitschionado Windupkitty, for the lovely Pringles protective case.

By the way, a practical party hint: name tags are essential. Even if your guests know each other for a hundred years it gives them an opportunity to express what they’re feeling in name, which acts as much of an icebreaker at a party as food no one has eaten since they were 11 years old.

It also saves the host or hostess time in making introductions.

As I said, the bulk of the day’s festivities centered around cooking and eating. But aKitschionados were free to wander around Willis Wonderland to enjoy the artifacts they’ve been seeing in my posts since I first launched AWMOK.com in 2009. Many of them also enjoyed the fine reading materials scattered around.

and

That book deserves a close up:

In fact, my whole Soul kitsch collection deserves a close-up. Here’s but a few of the shelves of it:

I think Fluff is a soulful food. It recalls one’s childhood and brings feelings of peace to the mind if not the blood vessels, as aKitschionado John Zenone experiences here:

Off in my recording studio, I was showing some of the aKitschionados some more of my Soul kitsch collection:

You might want to see the front of that picture frame:

As much as I covet my James Brown autograph, I covet this bit of Soul kitsch almost as much, Sammy Davis Jr’s last stash of marijuana:

Slightly easier to see than the cannabis in that last photo are the edges of the round circle rugs that cover the floor in my recording studio. They’re there to protect the plastic that’s actually the floor surface that scratches as soon as you breathe on it. Here’s what the floor looks like in real life:

Despite signs posted all over begging aKitschionados to carefully step on the rugs, several of them found it necessary to defy their leader’s command. Bad girl, kookykitsch!

And Meshuggah Mel!

And Rusty!

And Ken!

Although it was close to 100° and muggy, we also spent time outside. That’s where my over 200 pieces of bamboo dinnerware are.

And for anyone who missed the sugar inside, there was plenty of cotton candy floating in the pool.

Food that floats is something every party chef should consider when throwing summer parties.

So all in all, a good and Fluffy time was had by all! Come back again soon, aKitschionados. See you all in Somerville in “September” one way or the other.

Photos: Allee Willis, Prudence Fenton, Mark Blackwell, Rusty Blasenhoff, Ken Dashner.

14Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 3, The House

14Apr 2011

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Allee Willis Marches on Detroit! Part 3, The House

I know… I promised that Part 3 was going to be about finally getting into the house I grew up in on Sorrento Ave. in Detroit after trying for the last 46 years. But, as someone who’s conscious of her evolution and creative process every waking moment, this finally-going-home experience was BIG for me. Also, it’s not like I can go posting detailed photos of someone else’s stuff, which is inevitable if one is photographing a room. So this isn’t so much about documenting the actual house as it is about what I felt like being back in it.

I remember when I finally went to Disneyland for my 50th birthday, after I had only been there once when I was 14, I was shocked that everything was so small. The same thing, of course, happened when I walked into the house I lived in from 5 to 16 years old last week. It was like walking into a dollhouse. Like here’s me with the banister that in my head was a giant slide, down which I rode every morning en route to breakfast:

The house now is, of course, filled with other people’s stuff and taste, but it still had the same soulful vibe I was aware of even back then. Here’s the living room corner in 1961:

And here it is in 2011:

Thank God I finally got out of those heels and into more comfortable shoes.

My shoes were also very comfortable in this photo taken in my driveway around 1957. I remember testing my penny loafers on my pink and gray Columbia bike against other shoes I had for the firmest peddle grip.

Albeit slightly worse for wear, the driveway remains intact today.

This is the Magnolia tree that was the subject of one of my earliest songs, “I Fell Out Of The Magnolias”.

No one ever released it but it was one of those songs that impressed all of my singer and songwriter friends back in 1974 when I cowrote it with David Lasley (who I would later write “Lead Me On” with) and one of those songs that when I bump into any of them they still sing a little of. Forget about “September” or the Friends theme, “Magnolias” is the classic. Here I am back in the ‘Magnolia” days:

When I first set eyes on the house I live in now in LA back in 1980, my realtor had heard about it at a dinner party the night before we went house hunting. I didn’t want to live in the Valley but after looking at and hating a bunch of square boxes in Hollywood I decided to drive over the hill and see the house described in the brochure as a miniature Hollywood Palladium. This was a day before it officially went on sale. There was a party going on in the backyard but the back gate was open so I just ran in and raced up the stairs into the house, with the owner chasing behind me. My realtor caught me just as I entered the living room but I remember turning my head and not only seeing a curved wall in the living room that reminded me of a curved wall in the living room on Sorrento but I was dying at the bathroom, just off the living room, because it was filled with gorgeously aged vintage maroon tile. Here’s the bathroom floor as it was that day:

I didn’t know what it was about the tile but looking at it made me dead certain this was MY home. So I almost died when I walked into the bathroom on Sorrento to see the exact same tile there. I had totally blocked it out of my memory but there it was with that deep almost orange hue that only hugs tile that old.

Another unbelievable thing is the people who live in the Sorrento house. First of all, it’s the same folks who bought the house from my father in 1965. Second, their last name is Broadnax, a name I’ve only heard once before because it’s the name of one of the characters in my musical, The Color Purple, and one of the only characters’ names mentioned in song. As soon as I walked in, the Broadnax’s, both Reverends, told me that my mother, who passed away very suddenly when I was 16, was still in the house. They hear her walking down the steps, and growing up their kids often told them there was a white lady in the house. In my youth, I may not have believed this but when my co-writers and I first started working on the musical, Alice Walker, author of the Pulitzer prize-winning book, told us that it was all she could do to keep her hand moving fast enough to scribble down the thoughts in her head she was certain her ancestors were dictating to her. The book was written in one quick draft. Alice told us her ancestors would be contacting us. I swear to God, there were times when I would just move my mouth and words or a melody would tumble out, as if someone else was dictating them. It happened to me, Brenda (Russell) and Stephen (Bray) throughout the four years we were writing the show. So I definitely believe that my mom could still be hanging around Sorrento. I hope she was home when I came over.

One last little bit of synchronicity, throw in that the person who sang the “Magnolias” song demo was the only old friend of mine cast in The Color Purple, Charlo Crossley, former Bette Midler Harlette and Church Lady Doris on Broadway. She’s been talking about that Magnolia tree for decades now.

Friday night, the Broadnax’s sat next to me at The Color Purple, where it was playing over the weekend at the Fox Theater. I totally got a vibe that my mom was there.

It’s pretty overwhelming to be in spots where you have very specific memories and to see it through adult eyes. Especially for me, as I have so few photos and zero movie footage because all of it got tossed after my father remarried. Which I’m sure is why I so obsessively document now. I don’t ever want my past thrown away again. And now at least I can visit it more often.

12Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Massive Vintage Resin Grapes Lamp

12Sep 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Massive Vintage Resin Grapes Lamp

In the land of kitschified 1960’s and 70’s decor there was no higher form of craft art than a bunch of resin grapes stuck on wire, drilled into driftwood vines and, if you were lucky, turned into lights. As much as resin grapes spread through living rooms of yore like asphalt, this is one of those buying trends that really exploded decades later with the growth of eBay. Ripped from the belly of garages and attics, these vestiges of middle class decorating tastes used to go for a few bucks a bunch. But in more recent years many have climbed into the hundreds. Yeah, you can still find a ratty little grouping of three or four scratched up grapes in the low-end of the pocketbook but the sets that are still in great shape, and especially the ones that have been turned into lamps and hanging lights, can go for a king’s ransom. But make no mistake about it, there are resin grapes and there are resin grapes. The 20 inch long grape beauty featured here is a masterpiece of RESIN GRAPES!

I’ve been collecting grapes for decades. I have plain old bunches that I scatter around the yard:

Some of them are multicolored:

Sometimes I group them with some of the ceramics that have hit the yard because they’ve cracked or chipped but are still too pretty to throw out:

There’s an area of my yard that’s like a retirement home for the grapes. I haven’t found their final resting spot yet but here they sit among their fellow fruit waiting for placement:

The really pretty grapes get to stay inside:

Among resin grapes, pink is one of the rarer colors.

Even rarer are the grapes that are lucky enough to have been turned into pineapple lamps. I have two of them:

As many resin grapes as I have, I haven’t gone as fruity as this person in East LA has:

My dream in life is to befriend whoever lives in this place. Can you even imagine what it’s like on the inside?!

But no matter how many grapes I should acquire over the coming years or how many more houses I stumble upon that treat the grapes like paint to cover drab walls, my twenty inch long hanging bunch is still the Godfather Big Kahuna Mighty Mighty of resin grapes as far as I’m concerned, lighting up my yard and life in all of its sweet grape spectacularness.

12Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Tree Growing Out Of Traffic Cone and Palm Trimming Nightmares Abated

12Aug 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Tree Growing Out Of Traffic Cone and Palm Trimming Nightmares Abated

tree-growing-outta-traffic-cone_4285

Yesterday, all 31 palm trees that surround my house were trimmed. I’m used to this being a total nightmare. As much as I love my Palm trees, 29 of which are the babies of the original two planted when my house was built in 1937, trimming all of them at the same time has traditionally been hell – expensive, messy and dealing with a bunch of tree trimming shysters. All of which makes me long for a simpler approach to fauna, perhaps this little miracle tree growing out of a seemingly dead tree trunk and the traffic cone set on top to protect it. And trust me, it’s really growing. Right on Tujunga Ave. in Studio City. I even got out of my car and tried to pull it out. It’s real.

The fact that freaks of nature like this exist, the little twig that could, busting through a stump and reaching for the sun as if it were God, which I guess it is if you were a tree, makes me wonder if the trauma of maintaining 31 palms is worth it.

Palms are my favorite kind of tree in the world and my grove is, after all, family. The two original trees are close to 80 feet tall. They spit out enough seeds when it’s windy to populate all of Los Angeles with its kids. My entire front lawn is shaved palms that long ago took over where grass used to grow. They look exactly like grass blades except that when you get down to their level you see the blades are oblong and not straight.

The babies even grow through rocks:

Let me tell you, for what it costs taking care of this massive palm family as it grows these trees may as well be going to college. But thank God I finally found an honest, neat and reasonably priced tree trimmer. I’m used to being held hostage for days by companies who promise me they’ll take care not to poke thousands of holes in the trunks as they shimmy up them with metal spiked heels, not to crush all the plants and flowers below and not to leave my house looking like this overnight:

I know it doesn’t look that bad in the dark but there are palm fronds, seeds and ripped plastic covering everything, not to mention a massive shovel and ladder left out to make it convenient for anyone who wants to to break in. I usually have the happiest house on the block but when the A&M tree company took over it looked like the most haunted house on the block not to mention the dirtiest. Here’s what it looked like during the day despite the fact that the clean-up was “almost done”.

A&M even wanted to leave it like this over the weekend. I insisted on next day cleanup but that didn’t stop them from leaving a 25 foot truck parked out in front of my neighbor’s house for four days before they got it together to pick it up.

Once you have this many palm trees you really have to keep the trimming up because they start growing things that look like shafts of wheat (if I really knew what wheat looked like).

And those growths start throwing up all over everything below them so that a once pristine table and chairs now looks like this all the time:

It doesn’t look so bad in the photos but some of this stuff gets really sticky and also if you sit down on a bunch of it it pokes you in the ass.

I’m happy to report that I found a fantastic tree trimming company this time, Manuel’s Tree Service. They don’t mess up your trees with those hideous cleats. They don’t bitch about not leaving jagged frond ends hanging 60 feet up in the air. They’re not too lazy to put the equipment away at night if they don’t finish in the eight hours they swore they would be finished in. They don’t whine about covering everything below in plastic and even brought a roll of their own, something that no other tree company ever did unless you call two little tattered 10 foot tarps enough to cover a nice big lawn and three cars enough. And they don’t burn out entire sections of your plants like the Thrifty Tree Service did when they parked their Chipper only inches away from my 12 foot high wall of horsegrass and burned a 5 foot hole in the wall.

At Manuel’s they finesse those trees with skill. This guy swung from tree to tree, and I’m talking about 80 feet high in the air, never leaving a mark and clipping the tops just so.

In the end, all my trees have nice new haircuts and the lady of the house spent a nice, trauma free day out in the sunshine watching an artist do his work.

Now I have a nice trauma-free six months before the whole thing starts up again. But at least I no longer am at the mercy of companies like A&M and Thrifty, both of whom also repeatedly showed up on the wrong day because they were trimming other trees in the neighborhood and thought they could save on truck rentals. Thank you, Manuel, for turning what was once a nightmare into a pleasure. I no longer have to consider a little tree growing out of a tree trunk and traffic cone as a plausible alternative to maintaining my grove.

21Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cootie Game

21Jul 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cootie Game

cootie_2815

I can’t remember any game more popular than Cootie when I was growing up. But forget about the game itself, I loved playing with the little plastic body parts. I’m quite positive that the full-on-plastic-soaked-saturation of the pink Cootie legs is where my love of that particular color came from.

My house is the same pink:

So was my car:

I still get a thrill when I touch any of the Cootie contents today, especially those pink legs.

I’m sure that looking at all this saturated color all day when I was a kid influenced me as an artist. Here’s my very first art piece I made as a grownup artist in 1983:

It was a 5 1/2′ x 8′ collage of made out of (primarily) pink house paint, 70’s Ebony magazine clips and 50’s TV knobs. It was called “Dialated Pupils”.

Here’s a blurry photo of James Brown sitting in front of it when we worked together in the 80’s:

None of this has much to do with the subject at hand other than my life is filled with pink and there was no bigger fan of my memorabilia collection than The Godfather. But back to Cootie:

This particular Cootie game was the victim of a flood just weeks after Mr. Brown was over when some of my underwear clogged the drain that the washing machine dumped into.

The same flood ruined the my Beatles wig…

… but that doesn’t have much to do with Cootie either.

I don’t even really remember the rules of the game – I just liked twisting the little pink legs into the Cootie bodies. But I do remember not liking the directions because they were so slanted towards the dominant sex it was assumed would play the game:

Cootie, my house, my art, my car, James Brown, my Beatles wig – this post is all over the place, just like the Cootie legs are going to be as soon as I pick this up:

As much as I loved/love those pink legs the Schaper Manufacturing Company of Minneapolis, who made the game in 1949, never mastered a tight enough fit of them into the body holes. The last time I officially played Cootie I was 10, stepped on one of my beloved pink legs and slid into a bridge table with a cup of coffee on it, the contents of which dumped on my pristine white buck shoes forever staining them just like they had been in a flood over here all those years later.

07Apr 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1952 Chris-Craft Portholes

07Apr 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1952 Chris-Craft Portholes

porthole-bk-door_6101

I have three of these insanely beautiful vintage portholes off of a 1952 Chris-Craft boat. I found them in three separate eBay auctions a few years apart.

I love all portholes but especially these with the chrome fins across the glass.

My studio is a classic Streamline Moderne boat looking structure built as the MGM party house in 1937 and although there were no portholes when I moved in it was screaming, no BEGGING, for me to pop a few in.

As much as I love these they’re not my favorite porthole around here. That honor is reserved for my $11 used-to-be-a-flimsy-brass-mirror porthole that I sunk into the floor and now serves as my laundry chute.

My laundry chute porthole was featured in the Los Angeles Times twice last year alone. When I get completely frustrated writing, painting, making films, curating AWMoK.com and everything else I fill my time with I always think I could go into the business of selling porthole laundry chutes.

Studio photo: Maryanne Bilham

25Feb 2010

A Kitsch Sign Of The (Los Angeles) Times

25Feb 2010

A Kitsch Sign Of The (Los Angeles) Times

52396732

There it is this morning, right there on the homepage of the LA Times – the Sound Of Soul celebration at Willis Wonderland, the physical extension of The Allee Willis Museum Of Kitsch, to honor all things Soul – historic audiotapes and my collection of whacked out Kitschified Soul artifacts: http://www.latimes.com/theguide/events-and-festivals/lat-et-soundofsoul-pg,0,2371356.photogallery Movin’ on up!

24Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ Soul O’ The Day – My Color Purple Sound Of Soul party!

24Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ Soul O’ The Day – My Color Purple Sound Of Soul party!

ruuuuIMG_0393

. Me and RuPaul

I go through this after every party I throw. I work for weeks and sometimes months doing everything from fixing my house up to handmaking invitations, building displays, making mix tapes, signs, planning theme food and drinks, games, lighting the place like it’s Disneyland, basically doing anything I can to make this the most amped up party atmosphere on Earth.

I’ve long viewed my parties as my ultimate art form so I put every ounce of strength and sweat I have into it. I want to have the greatest time of my life and unless my guests feel the same way it doesn’t work for me. I not only host these things but emcee, produce and direct them as they evolve throughout the evening. All of this means I end up being a verrrrrrrrrrry tired little girl once they’re over. So as much as a great hostess should be conscious of posting photos in a time sensitive fashion befitting of the web, the only thing I saw yesterday, the day after the party, was my bed and the tail end of the evening’s performance of The Color Purple at The Pantages. So I apologize for the now 36 hour delay…

The Sound of Soul party this last Monday night, February 22, 2010, was one of my favorite AW extravaganzas ever. In commemoration of Black History Month and the fact that my baby, The Color Purple musical I spent five years co-creating, is in town for the very last performances of the First National Tour, it seemed ripe to tie the occasions into the bi-annual fundraiser I do with Pacifica Radio Archives to raise money to digitize never-before-heard, historic 24 track African-American audiotapes and get them into schools. This stuff is heavy duty like Rosa Parks’ first interview after getting out of jail, Alice Walker’s first ever reading of The Color Purple and Coretta Scott King reading the speech Martin Luther King was to deliver the day he was assassinated to 30 of their closest friends in Central Park 3 weeks after the assasination. The only other time that was heard was when Pacifica digitized the tape and sent it to Mrs. King’s funeral. This stash includes incredible speeches, casual conversations and performances by every major Black figure of the 20th century including Martin Luther King, W.E. B. DuBois, Ruby Dee, Ossie Davis, Malcolm X, Rev. Ralph Abernathy, Marcus Garvey, Mohammed Ali, Angela Davis, James Baldwin, Miles Davis, Dorothy Dandridge, Fannie Lou Hamer and hundreds more… An apt cause to celebrate, which we did… heavily.

I’m just beginning to feel my legs attached to my body again. I wanted to throw some captions on the photos but I don’t want it to be 2011 by the time I finally post them. Just know that I enjoyed having all these beautiful, handsome, happy, uplifted, talented and generous folks here at Willis Wonderland and we did, in fact, raise lots o’ cash to get these tapes into many of the schools that my guests went to. And as if that wasn’t enough, thank you, Colt 45, for those 15 cases.

Here’s the whole party!

22Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ Sound O’ Soul Day – James Brown Whistle

22Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ Sound O’ Soul Day – James Brown Whistle

james-brown-whistle_5924

In anticipation of the throngs about to stroll through my house tonight for my annual Sound of Soul fundraiser with Pacific Radio Archives not to mention a celebration of the culmination of The Color Purple First National tour I thought that my James Brown whistle from the Godfather’s little known late 50s TV show, a rare item indeed, was the perfect Kitsch O’ The Day today. I rotate my collection fairly regularly but for this particular party everything in the house is part of my African American Pop Culture stash. As I said yesterday, it was James Brown himself who encouraged me to keep collecting these Soul artifacts as there was usually no budget to market these products on a national let alone worldwide level so they were only popular regionally. Like my game of Slang-A-Lang, Black Bingo, that was manufactured in 1969 in Detroit probably never got on shelves farther away than Cleveland.

So I’m spending the day swapping white memorabilia and otherwise for black, painting posters, moving heat lamps around – no rain in LA, yay! but still very chilly – setting out tables for fried chicken, ribs, yams, greens, peach cobbler and the like, and tweaking the house all while limping around on on a leg I wrenched a muscle in yesterday. Which means I will be blowing my James Brown whistle A LOT today trying to get everyone’s attention as we get ready for the barrage.