Nat Shilkret & Victor Orchestra "The Kinkajou" (1927) vocal Billy Murray Victor 20474

Nat Shilkret & the Victor Orchestra plays "The Kinkajou" on Victor 20474, recorded February 3, 1927. When you do the kinkajou, you dance before you think you do. You clown around you’re feeling oh so lazy--before you know it you’re shouting "whoopsy dazy!" First you feel a kink or two, but here’s a kick for you. Your one desire is to acquire. Each moment of the daisy dance will thrill you through. Oh, I know it will enchant you when you do the kinkajou! If you are a literature fan, you will recall that Zooey (not Buddy Glass) plays this tune on piano in J. D. Salinger´s "Zooey." The kinkajou is an arboreal fruit-eating mammal of tropical America with a long prehensile tail. It is sometime said to move with a snake-like motion, so Sam Browne's lyrics may be "snakely dance" rather than "stately dance.” The song is from RIO RITA. Vocal is by Billy Murray. Lyrics are by Joseph McCarthy. Music is by Harry Tierney. Nathaniel Shilkret, born on December 25, 1889, shaped the musical sound of the Victor Talking Machine Company in the 1920s perhaps more than any other musician, and he was important in the early years of RCA Victor, formed in 1929. This classically trained clarinetist served as bandleader, composer, piano accompanist, and musical director for countless popular Victor discs as well as many Red Seal discs. From the mid-1920s onward his name was often on labels, but much of his work conducting Victor's "house" orchestras went without credit. He was most influential in Victor's early electric era of recording but had recorded prolifically in the acoustic era. He was successful at giving popular tunes of the day a semi-classical treatment, tunes being sometimes arranged for a small ensemble of instruments, other times for a symphonic orchestra. Several reference books erroneously cite 1895 as Nat's year of birth. He was born in Queens, New York as Naftule Schuldkraut on December 25, 1889, according to his birth certificate. Researcher Bob Arnold also located the birth certificate of Jack Shilkret, who was born on October 9, 1896, and the family name on Jack's birth certificate is given as Skilkrout, which means the name had already changed in the six years since Nat's birth. During an interview in Nat Shilkret's home in Massapequa, New York, on October 7, 1963, he told Brian Rust, "My folks came from Austria...I'm another famous Jew born on Christmas Day." They probably came from Galicia, at that time in Austria but in present-day Poland. Beginning in 1926, Shilkret wrote a series of autobiographical pieces for Phonograph Monthly Review, and he states in the February 1927 issue that he began to study music with lessons by his father on the clarinet. Page 72 of the September 1927 issue of Talking Machine World states, "At the age of twenty-four, because of his ability, amounting to genius, as an arranger and musician, he was made a conductor in the company. In addition to this, he is also manager and musical director of the foreign language department, where records in thirty-five different languages are made. Publications sent in for examination are left to the judgment of Mr. Shilkret and many of these selections are arranged by him...Very often he is accompanist for many famous artists who made Red Seal records." Shilkret died on February 18, 1982, in Franklin Square, Long Island, New York. He was married to a woman named Anna, or Ann. Their son, Arthur Shilkret, wrote a letter to Barry Cheslock on July 6, 1982, from his home at 632 Smith Street in Franklin Square, and his letter lists manuscripts left by his father, including "a fully typed ms. for an autobiography of some 1000 pages" but that manuscript has never been published and may have been destroyed in a house fire.