don't call me madam
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 | Spots complete track from UTC 5 "Bourbon 100 Proof" 1:28, 181 KB (28.8 Real Audio encoding) What if Ray Bourbon did a commercial? Well, here's your answer. The track shows off Ray's amazing rapid-fire delivery. |
Throughout
the 1930’s, Ray would settle into routines that would be the mainstay
of his work for the next thirty years. Although he had a house in California,
Ray spent most of his time on the road, traveling from one spot to another,
appearing wherever the work would take him, from Miami to Chicago, Kansas
City, Salt Lake City, and points between. Although Don Romesburg, who
researched a thesis on Ray’s life, found considerable documentation
for Ray’s appearances all over the country, Ray’s appearances
in Europe and Asia, discussed at length in his memoirs, have yet to be
confirmed.
About
1934, Ray would meet Bob Wright and "Chet" Forrest. At Auby's
Lagoon, a popular nightspot in Miami, Chet was working as an accompanist
and was called on to play for Ray during an audition. Ray hired Chet as
an accompanist and took the neophyte pair on a wild cross-country trip
in the Spring and Summer of 1935, eventually helping them find work at
Paramount, the big break the young songwriters were looking for. It was
the beginning of an eventful and rocky friendship that would last until
the end of Ray's life.
Bob
and Chet wrote songs for Victoria Spivy and Ray during this period, but
Bob is quick to point out that their contribution to Ray's act paled in
comparison to what Ray would eventually do with what they had written.
"Our material became diminished by the brilliance of his improvisations,"
Bob said, as Ray used the songs as a springboard for his own unique looniness.
Songwriter Bart Howard ("In Other Words" aka "Fly Me to
the Moon") would succeed Chet as Ray's accompanist.
From
1935 through the early forties, Ray would record with Bob and Chet, Howard,
and other musicians in a series of sides released under various small
labels such as "Bourbana", "Liberty Music Shop" and
"Imperial" (not related to the R&B label of the fifties).
Like other “blue” party records of the period, they were sold
at Ray’s shows, through mail order, and “under the counter”
by discrete record dealers. A surprising number of Ray’s records
were pirated under anonymous labels and many were pressed in small quantities
for use in jukeboxes in adult establishments such as bars and nightclubs.
| The Fortune Teller complete track from UTC 8 "Around the World in 80 Ways" 3:16, 403 KB (28.8 encoding) Ray looks at the stars and planets and makes a few astrological predictions just for you. |
Ray,
again performing in drag at times by the early 40’s, became a big
draw on the West Coast, headlining at Finnochio's in San Francisco, perhaps
the most well-known drag club of the pre-Stonewall period. He ran a club,
the Rendezvous, in Los Angeles, where he starred in his own revue, Don’t
Call Me Madam. The future "grandfather" of the Gay rights
movement, Harry Hay, recalled working for Ray in his nightclub on the
Sunset Strip. In The Trouble With Harry Hay , his biographer notes that
Hay worked as a "shill", a "covert" member of the
audience that would provide lines for Ray to bounce improvisations off
of. Several sources indicate that Ray’s shows on the West Coast
were regularly attended by a number of celebrities of the day, including
Bob Hope and Bing Crosby who reportedly often referred to “being
at Bourbon’s” the night before in their radio programs.
 |
| Ray and sailors from the cover of his album "Around the World in 80 Ways" (UTC 8). |
Ray
was one of the few female impersonators of the era to take his work beyond
nightclubs, producing his own revues in legitimate theatres to avoid the
police crackdowns on adult establishments and to bring his career closer
to respectability. His Insults of 1944 and This Is It
were featured at the Playtime Theatre in Los Angeles. He even took Don’t
Call Me Madam: A Midnight Revue in Time to a sold out crowds at Carnegie
Hall. Robert Sylvester, writing in the New York Daily News noted,
“…you could hardly claw your way thru a mob of very spectacular
characters who bought out Carnegie Hall. They turned out, one and all
for the gayest recital of the season … Even Bourbon, who at one
point wore a costume which made one think of Spivy riding side-saddle,
admonished the audience at intermission. “Go out and gossip on the
stairs … Don’t go in the street. They watch this joint closely.””
Although
Ray’s shows were popular in their own right, his comedy was too
risqué for a more mainstream audience. Ray did have opportunities
to work on the legitimate stage through his friend, Mae West. West, who
likely came to know Ray when she moved to Hollywood in the 1930’s,
cast him in her 1944 production Catherine Was Great. (Ray recorded
one of the show’s numbers, “Strong, Sold, and Sensational”
on his own label.) Appearing in New York’s Shubert Theater and in
Baltimore, Pittsburgh, St. Louis and other cities, the show garnered good
reviews for Ray’s small part as Florian, a “swishy”
court tailor. West also hired Ray for her revival tour of Diamond
Lil, which ran in Montclair, Denver, and Central City, Colorado,
among other cities, from 1948 through 1950. Ray was featured in the part
of “Ray” as a “pansy shoplifter” in a part written
especially for him.
01.15.05/rand@coolcatdaddy.com
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