vaudeville just sounded super competitive
to pull a crowd night after night with the punters having plenty to choose from in essentially a single medium open to entertainers. to make a name for yourself above the rest you had to be extraordinarily talented and practised, like chaplin, keaton and fields
nice find
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cumquat may will not be commenting further on the allegations, Wed 7 Jun 2023, 5:57,
Reply)
yeah I always imagined it as a tough business
Like jazz band musicians in them days, you had to be good. Know all the standards, sight read fluently. Recordings were done in one shot and woe to you if you fucked up.
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simbosan is too tired, Wed 7 Jun 2023, 7:23,
Reply)
Amazing
Speaking as a juggler (I can Mill's Mess three clubs on singles and cascade five balls, if that means anything) that was... mostly OK. By modern standards pretty pedestrian, but by the standards of back then, great. But...
The routine with the cigar boxes right at the end is fucking fantastic. I can do stuff with balls, clubs (and therefore also knives and fire), contact juggle, club swing, hat juggle, trick balance and so on, but the thing I've never, ever been able to master is the stop-go-stop rhythm of cigar box juggling. It is HARD, partly because it's so different from everything else. And he NAILS it. I do remember in one of the (too many) books I have on juggling, Fields is specifically name-checked as one of the all-time greats of that under-appreciated style.
(, Thu 8 Jun 2023, 9:00, Reply)