Allee Willis Blog

09Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Plastic Rolly Polly Doll

09Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Plastic Rolly Polly Doll

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This was a gift from Michael Patrick King, writer and director of Sex and the City, a couple of years ago for my birthday. I always thought the doll had a Carrie Bradshaw vibe to her, smiling and happy and looking good in red. One day I slammed my shin into the table Rolly Polly sits on and it made such a great chime sound I didn’t mind the dripping gash down below. I limped into my recording studio and dragged a mic to reach her, tilting her in all directions, spinning her around and pushing her across the table. The different chime patterns sounded great and distinctive, sometimes carrying on for 30 seconds or more.

I love working with tracks I record just by banging on things around my house. This is nothing a skilled or trained musician would do but my specialty is hearing rhythm and time in places most people don’t. As my Color Purple collaborators used to say, “All aboard for Willisville!” as I continually heard things in different time signatures they thought a piece of music was in and never cared about working off of a grid, preferring instead for everything to play as it lays, natural and funky. I love things that lazily and organically hang together and this little Roly Poly girl doesn’t disappoint. I doubt MPK thought he was giving me a musical instrument for my birthday but that’s exactly what she’s become.

If you ever get a chance to knock one of these gals around I hope you do. She makes one of the happiest sounds in the world.

08Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Academy Award Screen Stars Stamp Album

08Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1950’s Academy Award Screen Stars Stamp Album

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This is an amazing movie find, especially for a stamp collecting movie nut (which I’m not but I can appreciate the passion). Sixty pages of blank squares, each ascribed with the name of a 1920’s – 50’s star, from Academy Award winners to TV stars, “The Young Set”, International stars, World-Famous Women, Animal stars, Shootin’ stars (Western), Symphony stars, Singing stars, Comedians and every other category that Hollywood could possibly subdivide itself into.

The Screen Stars Photo Album was made in 1955 by the Harlich Manufacturing Co. of Chicago and approved by the National Poster Stamp Society with “All Rights to Screen Star Stamps and Stamp Albums fully protected by Hollywood Star Stamps, Inc. in cooperation with the Stars, Studios And Motion Picture Relief Fund, Inc.”.

07Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1976 Do-It-Yourself Oscar

07Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1976 Do-It-Yourself Oscar

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This is a product worthy of an Oscar for Best Kitsch, a fake wood cardboard stand-up “plaque” that looks suspiciously like the piece of cardboard that comes with any cheap picture frame, stapled on, staples askew, emblazoned with a cheap gold embossed sticker with three imprints, none of which have anything to do with the Academy Awards other than a trophy atopped with a nude female athlete that kinda sorta is in that Oscar trophy pose.

All of this is encased in a really cheap brittle plastic enclosure that’s tinted gold to make it look more fancy. The writing on the package slays me. As if any idiot wouldn’t know to “INSCRIBE IN ALLOTED SPACE YOUR OWN GRAND AWARD WITH ANY BALLPOINT PEN”. How elegant! And how worthy of ALL CAPS!

These “Awards for those you Love and Admire” – I guess ALL THREE stickers are Oscar worthy despite the lack of tie-in – were made by Syd Art Novelty Company, Inc. of New York in 1976.

The Do-It-Yourself Oscar is “Fun Giving for Gags”. Then come the words “Sports” and “Occasions.”, the latter of which somehow also merits a period. Perhaps next time Syd Art could hire an actual writer rather than some family member to create the language for a product that supposedly honors achievements in creativity.

An excellent feature of this is that the price tag is still on and it’s from the Hollywood Magic store, a relic a lot older than this do-it-yourself Oscar that’s still alive and well on Hollywood Boulevard, just down the street from where the real Oscars take place tonight.

04Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Rubber Waffle

04Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Rubber Waffle

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Of all the things I have in my house, a 40 year collection of Atomic, Soul and Kitsch memorabilia, this rubber waffle that’s sat out on my kitchen counter since I bought it in the 1980’s is one of the most popular things in the joint. Made by Iwasaki Images of America, the premiere display food manufacturer in the world, this waffle looks so drippingly, syrupy and buttery real even I’m tempted to chomp a bite out of it every now and then.

I also have a huge roast beef, some sushi, a dozen sweet rolls, donuts, a glass of milk, a glass of orange juice and some scrambled eggs. There’s rubber food that looks like it’s made out of rubber and rubber food that looks good enough to eat. No question that Iwasaki serves up the latter.

03Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Green Thumb Planter

03Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Green Thumb Planter

I may have sore thumbs but not green ones. Not an area I have especially great skills in other than I seem to have a talent for nursing baby Palm trees. Nothing that would fit in this 5″ ceramic planter with the perfect green thumb though. Instead, seeds drop from two 80-year-old massively high Palm trees at my house and thousands of little baby Palms sprout all over my yard. They’re faithfully mowed twice a week so they look like the perfect sheared bright green astroturf lawn.

I’ve never heard of a Palm tree lawn before. I’ve seen a lot of green thumb vases too but this one feels as special as my lawn.

02Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1959 “Name That Tune” Game

02Mar 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – 1959 “Name That Tune” Game

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Well, the obvious tunes I would name are “September”, “Boogie Wonderland”, “Neutron Dance”, “What Have I Done to Deserve To This?” and I guess “I’ll Be There for You”. The rest of my favorite tunes are here. But if I have to credit an early source of inspiration for being in the music business and then becoming a songwriter it would have to be the TV show, “Name That Tune”, upon which this game is based and which I watched religiously as a wee nip.

There’s nothing more I like in a game from a Kitsch perspective then if it’s convoluted to play. On the other hand, I love the early attempt at injecting multimedia interactivity into it. Made in 1959 by Milton Bradley, you play “Name That Tune” by the player elected to be “Disk Jockey” spinning the dial three times, calling out the numbers on which the arrows stops each time and then spinning the enclosed 78 on which actual TV host, George De Witt, introduces himself, calls out a number and “plays” a tune.

From here on in I don’t understand the instructions. But maybe you do as there’s still a foot of them to go through:

“Name That Tune” ran from 1953 to 1959 on CBS with De Witt as the most popular host until it came back from 1974-’81 with Tom Kennedy and later with Jim Lange. The game show became the template for a continuing slate of copycat shows as well as ones that borrow from it heavily including current fare like “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” and “The Singing Bee”.

28Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Church Fans

28Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Vintage Church Fans

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I’ll be waving one of these all day and night today as these are the final two performances of the First National Tour of my musical, The Color Purple. The whole 4-1/2 years I was writing this with Brenda Russell and Stephen Bray we waved these church fans and others from my collection of 60 from the 1950’s and ’60’s daily. I’ve been stuck on songs before but being stuck on a song for a musical when one has to consider way more then the singer or the content of the song like the plot, which we were writing at the same time as the songs, the dialogue, whether something should be musicalized or spoken, is there dancing to it or not, does the wig guy have enough time to make the wig changes, on and ever-increasingly on…, let me tell you the sweat pours down and these church fans, totally organic to what we were writing other than a couple decades too late, came in mighty handy.

As a passionate collector, I love things to be very organic. In its simplest form, if you find a poster for an album you need to collect the album and anything else related to that group of recording sessions. I had collected my church fans for years but I never had more organic moments then when Alice Walker, the Pulitzer prize-winning author of The Color Purple novel, would fly into LA every few months to listen to our progress and curl up in a fetal position in my Chromcraft purple lounger, close her eyes and listen to the new songs, smiling as wide as a mile while waving one of the fans, a different one each time, of course.

Today I wave my final two fans, one at the matinee and one at the evening performance. I’ll say goodbye to Fantasia who made an absolutely and insanely stellar Celie (along with LaChanze, Jeanette Bayardelle and our other wonderful Celies along the way since we opened on Broadway in 2005). I’ll say goodbye to the rest of our glorious cast, many of whom are from the original Broadway cast, not the least of which is Felicia P. Fields aka Sofia, the first actor we cast in 2003. Rumor has it that tons of actors from the original cast are showing up tonight and will be in the final show along with the tour cast. If both of my hands aren’t gripping Kleenex this is the fan I’ll be waving. One last time…

… until the second national tour begins in two weeks. That will be a total surprise as I’ve never seen the production or met any of the cast. But I’ll be sure to have my fans in tow when I do.

26Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cockeyed Coffee Cup

26Feb 2010

Allee Willis’ Kitsch O’ The Day – Cockeyed Coffee Cup

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I’m still incredibly bleary-eyed from my month’s buildup to my Sound Of Soul extravaganza Monday night, the recuperation after from which I still feel numb not to mention running back and forth to The Pantages to see the final ever performances of my musical, The Color Purple, as originally conceived before it closes on Sunday and jumps to another tier of performance when the second national tour begins in a couple weeks. Honestly, I’d rather be lying in bed watching TV, my favorite sport, then running myself ragged like I was 16. But I’ve never been the type to do the former and I seem to eternally be the type to act the latter so at least it makes me smile when my drinkware matches my state of mind.

I’ve always admired cups like this, interpreting in clay what the artist feels inside. I’ve also never been the type to practice perfection, preferring instead to let things happen as they may, my skill being to figure out a creative way to deal with everything that smacks down into my path. Were I a sculptor of coffee cups I would naturally be drawn to this philosophy of design. If the cup isn’t perfect, crush it. Then it looks intentional. Then people like me come along and go this is just what I feel like today and if they have the need, as I do, to make each action in their life organic and connected they have no alternative other than to pop down the coin for the cup.

This beauty has no other manufacturing marks than simply “Japan”. Of course, it was the 1960’s.

May you also see the day out of cockeyed eyes so you notice something new and wonderful to be grateful for.

25Feb 2010

A Kitsch Sign Of The (Los Angeles) Times

25Feb 2010

A Kitsch Sign Of The (Los Angeles) Times

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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!

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. 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!