HEPCAT HERMAN HUPFELD - “When Yuba Plays the Rhumba on the Tuba”

    In the era before calling a business involved “Press one for English, press two para Espanol,” and before there was a Taco Bell on every street corner, Latino culture was considered exotic and amusing. Periodically Carmen Miranda, Desi Arnaz or some similar performer would get American hips swaying to the latest dance craze from Cuba or South America or Florida, the hell-hot low class dickhead-filled state that looks like a drooping penis (a Top 10 item: “Miami Beach Rhumba.”).

    Yes, the search for new rhythms didn’t begin when Paul Simon got into his thimble and paddled over to South Africa and then rode a dragonfly to Brazil. It didn’t start when black rap artists began to steal the white man’s shitty disco music or “sample” copyrighted music effects using the Japanese man’s Yamaha technology. 

    Herman’s novelty take on the rhumba craze not only offers up a ridiculous instrument for such frisky music, but takes an uncomplimentary view on Yuba: “His name was Yuba. He was homely, he was dumb…just a big ambitious bum…ba doopa doopa doopa…” Doopa doopa, he was homelier than an oompa loompa. 

     This wasn’t the first and wasn’t the last comical Latin number. We duly note Vic Mizzy’s “He’s a Latin from Staten Island” and Eli Basse’s “Since Chana Came Back from Havana.” Maybe these will turn up on this blog of less renown someday…instead of a few dozen more Neil Young bootlegs for the pinheads who already own ten 2TB drives full of ‘em but need them ALL. 

    Over here, the point isn’t to feed the piggies who grow obese on 1gb downloads of slop they’ll never even listen to, it’s to savor and respect unusual music and musicians. Rather than "album cover and link" from some Croatian dunce who barely knows the English word for download, the idea is to give some background on the life and times of the artists and reward the inquiring real music fans who don't settle for tapioca in their ears courtesy of James Last or Windham Hill.

    Advanced students of the Kay Kyser Kollege of Musical Knowledge may already know this tune thanks to covers by such well known names as The Mills Brothers and Spike Jones. Naturally, more obscure versions are below. First, we have the reliable but mostly UK-known Ambrose and his Orchestra, and second, amusing four part harmonies by The Revelers, who were: James Melton (tenor), Lewis James (tenor), Elliott Shaw (baritone), and Wilfred Glenn (bass). 

YUBA via AMBROSE -- no egocentric PASSWORD and no spyware-server from Putinvillle 

YUBA via THE REVELERS - no bratty chide about a PAYPAL donation.