The Road to Minnesota with Bing and Bob

Bing Crosby and Bob Hope churned out seven of their popular "Road" movies over the years, starting with Road to Singapore in 1940, and ending up with The Road to Hong Kong in 1962. Just about the time the last one was coming out, the pair combined for this coda, "Vacation Road to Minnesota," a promotional EP sponsored by the state's Department of Business Development.

With many of us packing our bags for a getaway this time of year, I thought it might be appropriate to share this Hope-Crosby aural tour of the Land of 10,000 Lakes. It's enjoyable, but does not come without some painful anachronisms - chief among them (so to speak) is Hope's fake American Indian lingo ("You speakum English? You wanna be guide for white brother?"). But generally the two display their familiar rapport, evident even though it sounds like they were not in the same place when their lines were recorded.

Bing and Bob

Bing also appears on a similar travelogue record sponsored by Oregon and issued around the same time. I have a copy of that one, but the pressing is defective, so I can't supply a transfer. Fortunately the sound on the Minnesota disc is good.

The "Vacation Road" was a product of Capitol Custom Records, and that label's Les Baxter composed and conducted the background music, making this, I suppose, an obscure Baxter collectible as well.

'Hello, Lyndon!'

This being Presidential election season in the US, I thought I might take a musical look back at the year 1964, when Democrat Lyndon Johnson, who had taken over from the assassinated John F. Kennedy the previous November, was battling arch-conservative Barry Goldwater, nominated by the Republicans.

In 1960, the Dems had enlisted Frank Sinatra to refashion his hit single of "High Hopes" into "High Hopes with Jack Kennedy," with lyrics reworked by Sammy Cahn. This was then pressed on a promotional 45, backed with a male chorus doing a custom version of Sinatra's "All the Way," another Sammy Cahn-Jimmy Van Heusen product.

The party apparently did not have Frankie, Sammy or Jimmy to call on in 1964, so they lit on the idea of doing a version of the hit song of the day from the hit musical of the day - "Hello, Dolly!" Louis Armstrong had quite a success with his rendition of the song, which was dominated by his incandescent vocal personality. Pops apparently was not available to the Dems; instead they enlisted singer/actor Ed Ames to sing new lyrics by composer Jerry Herman. Ames was a good vocalist who had had many hits with his family group the Ames Brothers, and would again as a single act in years to come, but incandescent he was not.

Ed Ames

The result is forced bonhomie, not helped by the stentorian Hello, Dolly! male chorus ("The whole world says that he's the one! The whole world says that he's the one! The whole darn world says that he's the ONE!!!").

Oh well - just as Kennedy was a tough act to follow, so was Sinatra.

This is a brief one-sided single, and so is the shortest offering I've ever had on one of my blogs.

Check my other blog for more music inspired by the world of politics - the soundtrack from the 1964 exploitation film The Candidate.