Vikki Carr

            On Sunday morning I ran through singing and playing the first four verses of “Ballad of a Dealer”, which is my translation of “Ballade de la chnoufe” (Ballad of the Snuff) by Boris Vian. It’ll take a few days to get through the song because the chords are placed with the French text and I haven’t memorized the English text and so I have to keep bouncing back and forth. 

            I finished memorizing the fourth verse of “Dessous mon pull” (Under My Sweater) by Serge Gainsbourg. There are only four new lines to learn for the final verse so I’ll probably have it all done tomorrow or the next day. 

            I weighed 88.75 kilos before breakfast. 

            I played my Martin acoustic during song practice for the last of four sessions and it went out of tune for all but the second to last song. 

            Around midday I cleaned my warm mist humidifier but it hadn’t been needed for the most of last week so there wasn’t much to clean. Unfortunately this next week looks like it’s going to be cold and so I’ll need to run it a lot of the time. 

            I weighed 89.75 kilos before lunch, which is the heaviest I’ve been in the early afternoon since March 7. I had saltines with peanut butter, baba ghanoush, five-year-old cheddar and a glass of iced tea.

            In the afternoon I started a bike ride, intending to go downtown but I got caught in a sleet shower. It had subsided mostly by the time I got to Brock and College but the front of my pants was soaked and icy cold so I turned and went home. 

            I weighed 89.15 kilos at 17:15. 

            I was caught up in my journal by 19:21. I returned to trying to digitize in Audacity the cassette tape of a Christian and the Lions concert at the El Mocambo. Yesterday I was able to get a waveform but it disappeared before the second song. This time with the same settings I could not get a waveform. I restarted but there was still no waveform. It was only after a second restart that I got one. I started recording and the waveform lasted for almost 23 minutes through the first three songs and halfway through “The Next State of Grace”. It seems to be a memory issue similar to why Movie Maker sometimes freezes on me. I saved the project and decided I’ll resume it the next time I get a waveform, which will hopefully be tomorrow. 

            I had a potato with gravy while watching season 3, episode 15 of The Carol Burnett Show.

            During the audience warmup Flip Wilson says his real name is Clerow. 

            In the first skit Harvey and Carol play two losers who meet because they are shunned by everybody else at a party. Harvey has ridiculously extreme dandruff and Carol has very bad breath. They bond because of those and various other conditions they have, plus they both have snorty laughs.

            Vikki Carr songs “Go (Voir)”. 

            Flip Wilson tells a story about a soldier named Jenkins in Vietnam who gets in trouble for complaining about the creamed chipped beef on toast. He explains to the captain that the cream is too thin, there should be bigger chips and his mother used biscuits instead of toast. Plus his mother didn’t say “Keep the line moving!” Jenkins is sent into the jungle with a pad and pencil to count the Viet Cong but returns with 4000 prisoners. He explains that he found them sleeping and started counting them. They woke up and asked what he was doing and he told them. He captured them while they were laughing. As a reward they brought Jenkins’s mother to make Creamed chipped beef on biscuits but she said “Keep the line moving!” 

            In the Carol and Sis sketch, Carol and Chrissie (played by Vicki Lawrence) come home from Carol’s 30th birthday party and Carol is smashed on champagne. Chrissie tries to get Carol to bed before Roger gets home from work because Roger doesn’t think Carol should drink as she can’t handle it. But he does get home and finds her drunk and depressed about turning 30. He goes to make her coffee. She tries to follow him but forgets where the kitchen door is and gets hit by it. Then Roger carries her to bed. 

            Vicki Lawrence does a song and dance with the Ernie Flatt Dancers. The song is “Raindrops Keep Fallin On My Head” by Burt Bacharach and Hal David. 

            There’s a parody of Mission Impossible called Mission Improbable. Lyle plays the leader, Carol plays the femme fatale part that Barbara Bain plays in the real show, Harvey plays the master of disguise, and Flip Wilson plays Greg Morris’s part. Carol’s name is Oregano. She makes a slow and sultry entrance and Jim hands her an Emmy Award (Bain won three Emmys in a row for her performances on Mission Impossible). Harvey comes in wearing a combination of glasses, a big pink plastic nose and a moustache and says it’s his best disguise yet. Jim says that deserves an Emmy so he gives another to Oregano. Flip’s character Brainy has a mini laser nuclear ultrasonic transmitting paralyzer gun with a built-in tele-reader differential computer. He got it for 25 cents and three box tops. The mission is to solve the murder of US-friendly dictator General Delsado who led a plot to overthrow himself but failed. He was murdered by his wife Charline but they need to prove it. Charline (played by Vikki Carr) is hooked on Spiritualism so Oregano pretends to be a spiritualist who makes contact with her dead husband played by Harvey. Oregano shouts to Delsado because it’s long distance. He accuses her of killing him but she denies it. They say that her maid was a witness and they bring in Flip Wilson as the maid Geraldine. Geraldine gives a long account of how Charline killed her husband and after she’s finished Oregano hands her an Emmy. Charline confesses that she killed him and Geraldine gives her the Emmy. Charline is carried away and then the real Mission Impossible Team minus Barbara Bain walks in. Geraldine flirts with Greg Morris. 

            The whole cast, the dancers and the guests sing and dance to a song that seems to be called “There’s Enough to Go Around”. 

            Vikki Carr began performing at the age of 4. She signed with Liberty Records at 20. She was the first to record “He’s a Rebel” in 1962 and it was a hit in Australia. Her first album was Colour Her Great in 1963. In 1967 she had a top 5 hit with “It Must Be Him” by Gilbert Bécaud and Mack David. Her version of the song resurged when it was featured in the movie Moonstruck. She had other hits with “Can’t Take My Eyes off of You” and “For Once in My Life”. She was the first female to regularly guest host Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. She made her acting debut on The Bing Crosby Show in 1964. Although of Mexican heritage she didn’t perform in Mexico until she was 30 and she became a superstar there. She became popular throughout Latin America. She’s had several number 1 hits on the Latin charts. She released her first Spanish language album the same year and it became her greatest success. She won three Grammy Awards. Dean Martin said she was the best girl singer in the business and Elvis Presley was also a big fan.