Della & The Detectives - "Drake On the Move"

"Donald Dearest" b/w "Drake on the Move" - 7" single
Della & The Detectives
(Travesty Records, 1984)

White hair, checkered coat, bulge on his cigarette pack
Shadowing the shadows at the corner of the depot
And chasing through the railroad track
Cut out, put your butt out, music up and dissolve
Drake on the move...

This past weekend, I busied myself getting a bunch of my vinyl records digitized so I could make some mix CDs. One of them was this 7-inch B-side written by P. O'Leary and credited to Della and the Detectives about Perry Mason's right-hand man, Paul Drake (played by Hedda "the Hat" Hopper's son William Hopper in the television series based on Erle Stanley Gardner's mystery novels) - the rakish P.I. with the silver hair and pinky ring who always checks and rechecks "every possible lead, every possible angle, and every possible possibility" for Perry so he can once again humiliate Hamilton Burger (TV Land's losingest district attorney) in court. (The Dave Nuttycombe-penned A-side "Donald Dearest" is a tabloid confessional spoof in which a bitter Huey Duck accuses his uncle of abuse.)


William Hopper as Paul Drake

As the Eccentric Roadside blog raved, "Paul Drake is REALLY cool. A big, barrel-chested P.I. with prematurely silver hair in a checkered sportcoat smoking a Winston and driving a T-Bird. He's got his own private back entrance to Perry's office, always sits on the edge of Perry's desk and greets Della with an ever so suave "Hiya, beautiful" (she usually just rolls her eyes back at him)." And (like Warron Zevon's pina colada-drinking werewolf of London), his hair was perfect.

Yet, as the folks at the Thrilling Detective web site lament, despite being "one of the most enduring hardboiled private eyes of all time...he has never been the lead, always playing second fiddle to his famous client." Della and her Detectives try to right that slight, and it's the only musical homage I've ever heard to the legendary head of the Drake Detective Agency.

"Drake on the Move" was a Dr. Demento favorite, though "Della and the Detectives" was actually the work of Washington, D.C.'s Travesty, Ltd comedy ensemble. If my memory serves me well (it usually doesn't), I believe this 7-inch single came inside Travesty, Ltd.'s Teen Comedy Party LP (Used Records, 1983), which featured the final performance of the Starland Vocal Band (famous for 1976's #1 one-hit wonder "Afternoon Delight").


Travesty, Ltd.'s "Teen Comedy Party" album

Out-of-print copies of the original '80s album sell for as much as $45 on the Internet, though in 2000 Travesty, Ltd. released an updated, 40-track CD version of it. One of the skits from this album, "Rock and Roll Doctor," ended up on two Dr. Demento albums and the box set The Greatest Novelty Recordings of All Time.

I think I got my album courtesy of Dave Nuttycombe back in the days when I reviewed music for various publications. The Wheaton, MD-based Nuttycombe was a Travesty alumnus (he wrote "Rock and Roll Doctor," for which the Travesty boys still receive royalty checks from Rhino Records), as well as a Langley Punks/Travesty Films alum (P.G. County's legendary screwball guerilla filmmakers who screened a retrospective of their works at the AFI Silver Theatre as recently as last June 2011 - not to mention previous screenings on Count Gore De Vol's Creature Feature television show - see "Gore Meets the Langley Punks"), Washington City Paper webmeister, and curator of the award-winning ("Best Humor Award," Washington Post) cassette tape Cheap Stories, which featured the best parts of the worst "adult" novels of the '40s, '50s and '60s, read to the accompaniment of "smokey bongo jazz" and the tenor sax stylings of Ron Holloway (veteran sideman with Dizzy Gillespie, Root Boy Slim, Susan Tedeshi, among others).



Speaking of Ron Holloway, his sax is put to great use on "Drake On the Move," as his wild solo riffing at the end plays a clever variation on the Perry Mason theme song. There is no information about any other musicians appearing on "Drake On the Move"; the Teen Comedy Party album credits Jane Raftery, Laura First and Mary Forbes as The Travesty Singers, so I wonder if they were also the voices behind Della and the Detectives (or was it the gals from Starland Vocal Band? Anybody know?)

I also wonder if the writing credit for "P. O'Leary" is a typo for B. O'Leary, as Bill O'Leary was one of the Travesty, Ltd. comedy ensemble.

The song samples some great Perry Mason soundbites, ending with Raymond Burr saying "Paul Drake just left" followed by Paul Drake's quizzical response, "I did?"

Watch & listen to "Drake on the Move."


Paul Drake Lives!
According to the Travesty-Brand Fine Products web store, you can still buy this 7-inch vinyl single (as well as other products) by sending a check or money order in the amount of $5.00 + $2.50 payable to: West Production Services, Inc., P.O. Box 2810, Merrifield, VA 22116.


"Paul Drake just left." "I did???"

***

The Langley Punks/Travesty crew (Pat Carroll, Jim Phalen, Bob Young, Larry Zabel, Bill O'Leary, Tom Welsh, Rich West, Don Hogan, and Dave Nuttycombe) clearly knew their classic cult television history, and not just Perry Mason. Back in 1984, they made a cable TV pilot for The Travesty Show, a period throwback to The Honeymooners replete with gag commercials and black-and-white kinescope video look. DC's Wanktones (a Slickee Boys rockabilly side project) even made an appearance on the show, as shown in the YouTube clip below:


Mark Noone of The Wanktones on "The Travesty Show"

Watch The Wanktones on "The Travesty Show."


Root Boy Slim and Ron Holloway also made cameos on The Travesty Show, as shown in the video clip below:

Watch Root Boy Slim on "The Travesty Show."

Naughty Nightstand Novels

I unearthed some more treasures during my weekend cleaning binge (aka Spring Forward/Fall Backwards Toward Nostalgia)...some naughty nightstand novels from the '60s! Some of these even escaped notice in Feral House's exhaustive Sin-a-rama collection. In today's anything goes moral climate, when you can see and download just about anything on the Internet, it's easy to forget what a lost art these sleaze sex paperbacks from the '60s represent. A number of legitimate authors - Robert Silverberg, Harlan Ellison, Lawrence Block, and Donald E. Westlake among them - got their start writing these books under various nomes de plume. (By the way, my all-time fave pseudonym is Jerome Murray writing as "Dr. Lance Boyle"!) Not to mention a number of talented artists, like Robert Bonfils, whose sexy covers (along with the salacious titles, which always managed to contain the words "sex," "sin," "lust," "passion," "flesh," "wanton," or "orgy" in there somewhere) really sold the merchandise. I actually own at least one confirmed Bonfils cover:


Typical Bonfils Babe

More importantly, these prurient pulps were from an era of strict censorship, when one had to "sell the sizzle, not the steak." According to John Gilmore - a Hollywood crony of both James Dean and Ed Wood, Jr. - who wrote a dozen or so titles (including Lesbos in Panama, Dark Obsession and Brutal Baby) under the pen name Neil Egri, "The law was hard and fast: no dirty words, no "cock" or "cunt," you couldn't directly mention the sexual organs, and even pubic hair was taboo. Sex scenes had to result from relationship - couldn't be promiscuous or they would be considered pornography. The books had to have a moral, Good had to shine through in the end. They couldn't even smell dirty."

God I miss those quaint times!


Sex After Sixty
by Hal Kantor
Pad Library (1966)

This one inspires me. I turned 52 this year and this former Peeping Tom has to confess that it's an indisputable fact: the sex drive takes a nosedive at the half century mark. I get more excited by food (especially Ceriello's orgasmically satisfying Rotisserie Chickens!), English Premiere League football matches, and new episodes of Lost than looking at naughty bits these days. But according to author Hal Kantor, the sex drive returns after 60 - and how! And this book was written in the pre-Viagra '60s (1966 to be precise). Johnny Carson once quipped that having sex at 65 was good, but that it was even better when you got off the highway and turned the car off. Kantor's tome offers yet another view of what to look forward to.

Love the cover text: "Though he was an old man, he performed like a stud! And because of his reputation, his apartment was a harem for every girl who wanted him - and there were so many, he had to turn them away!"

The back cover continues: "His prowess and his endurance seemed to increase with age. And though he didn't understand it, he made use of his abilities as he had never been able to in his youth! And the girls couldn't stay away from him - they wanted him with a fervor and a desire that left him limp and exhausted. But he was always ready for more! And there were always more who were ready for him!"

The front cover is typical of this genre in that while all the women look exotic and are dressed in sexy accoutrements, the men are uniformly bland and always - always - wear white button-down shirts (the ultimate '60s square accessory!)


AC-DC Sex
by Rick Raymond (pseudonym of Gil Porter)
Playtime Books (1964)

"Sex for her was a gay, two-way game, until he made her burn to play it straight."

Sex is a topic that's always, um, current...but what I like about this one is the cover. No, not her love pillows! I'm talking about the fact that the chick is AC-DC and can get turned on by men and women alike isn't as nearly as strange (especially in our current Girls Gone Wild era) as those Nancy and Sluggo dolls in her arms. What's that all about?


Executive Stud Sinners
by Monte Rappe
Dragon Editions (1966)

Somehow I think Executive Stud Sinners is still the official employee handbook at AIG.


Transvestite
by Harry Guggenheim
Nite Time Book No. 111 (1964)

I actually read this one cover-to-cover. It's about a man (which I am) named Tom (as I am) who's a Technical Writer (like I was for 18 years) who just happens to like dressing in women's clothing (OK, that's where the parallel ends)(honest!). This is a good read, because not only does it have the sexual pecadillos angle going for it, but our protagonist is a tech writer for the government so, Cold War Paranoia being what it is, Commies try to blackmail him into spying for them or telling Uncle Sam all about his love of nylon stockings and frilly black lace undies. And I'm convinced that this relatively well-written novel was written by none other than Ed Wood, Jr., the notorious cross-dresser, hack writer and infamous director of cult "bad" movies like Glen or Glenda, Plan Nine From Outer Space and Bride of the Monster.


Ed Wood, Jr.: Truth is stranger than Pulp Fiction

"He was a man - and yet he had desires that a man should not have! He tried to resist the compulsion, but it was no use. There was something about the feel of a woman's clothing against his male body that drove him out of his mind with the unbearable ecstasy. And there was that one night when he knew he'd have to go all the way..."

C'mon, that's pure Ed Wood!

And speaking of blackmailing Commies, they'll always try to trap ya, whether you're a cross-dressing government tech writer or a sex-crazed GI...


Commie Sex Trap
by Roger Blake
A Boudoir Original Edition (Art Enterprises, Inc., 1963)

The Higher Education Sin Trilogy


College for Sinners
by Andrew Shaw
Nightstand Books (1960)


Passion Ph.D.
by J. X. Williams
Ember Books (1964)

OK, the authorship of Tranvestite may be open to speculation, but according to the authors of Sin-a-Rama, J. X. Williams was one of a half dozen pseudonyms employed by...Edward D. Wood, Jr.! Wood wrote a number of sleaze sex paperbacks in the '60s for various publishers in order to pay his rent, bar tabs and finance his madcap film projects. According to his pal John Gilmore in Laid Bare: A Memoir of Wrecked Lives on the Hollywood Death Trip (Amok Books), Wood churned out "book after book at a pace like dribbling a basketball." Some of his other pseudonyms include David L. Westermier, Emil Moreau, Jason Nichols, N. V. Jason, Dick Trent, John Quinn and, in feminine voice, Kathleen Everett.


Alumnus of Sin
by Dean Hudson
Evening Reader (1964)

About the cover: Why the hell is Mr. Mortarboard drinking whiskey from a martini glass? Is that what they taught the over-educated back then?

***

OK, so you graduated from College for Sinners, got your Passion Ph.D., and go to your alumni lust reunions. Now what do you do? You get a boring job in the real world. But come Happy Hour, it's time for...


Office Party
by Dean Hudson
A Leisure Book (Corinth Publishing, 1965)

"The meek ran wanton and the wanton ran berserk!"

Before the Internet and e-mail and cubicles, people interacted more with their co-workers, as this masterpiece by Dean Hudson (author of Alumnus of Sin and a pseudonym of Evan Hunter/Salvador Lombino) makes clear. "The co-sinners and flesh feasters were going out of their cottonpicking minds. For it was time to unleash passions and inhibitions at the Office Party and to hell with the consequences. For after it was all over, life would go on - as sinful and shameful as lustful orgies had ever made it!"

Wow - gives new meaning to the expression, "I gave at the office!

Now if only I could find this companion volume:



Cheap Stories
"All the best parts from the worst books"

On a related note, these books inspired me to dig out and listen to my cassette tape Cheap Stories ("The best parts of the worst books") by Wheaton, MD-based Dave Nuttycombe and the Travesty/Teen Comedy Party lads. (I think you can still get this tape by sending $10 check or money order payable to West Production Services, Inc., P.O. Box 2810, Merrifield, VA 22116). It features the best parts of the worst "adult" novels of the '40s, '50s, and '60s, read to the accompaniment of smokey bongo jazz. Includes readings from Out For Kicks, Shabby Street, Nautipuss, The Bigamists, Virgin In Blue Jeans, Commie Sex Trap, and more. Winner of the Best Humor Award from the Washington Post's Vic Sussman, who said, "Cheap Stories is one of the funniest tapes I've heard in years...A must for all true lovers of American popular culture." I remember I sent a color copy of the cover of Nude Man in Jazz Town to Dave Nuttycombe years ago after he told me he considered it the Holy Grail of these naughty nightstand books.



Related links:
Robert Bonfils Paperback Cover Art

Related audio:
Cheap Stories: All the Best Parts from the Worst Books
by Dave Nuttycombe of Teen Comedy Party/Travesty-Brand Fine Products

Related readings:
Sin-a-rama: Sleaze Sex Paperbacks of the Sixties
Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback
Young Lusty Sluts: A Pictorial History of Erotic Pulp Fiction
Bad Girls of Pulp Fiction