Monday, December 29, 2008

Hickeys Everywhere !

That name...that slightly..kinda funny last name..."HICKEY" ...there is that famous character actor...William Hickey...
There is Cheryl Hickey the host for one of the entertainment TV shows..
There is the TV character NAME, Earl Hickey, on "My Name is Earl"

But the most famous Hickey of all....ERSEL...no not Edsel....ERSEL HICKEY !!
he was a fine rock (Rockabilly and Pop) singer of the 50's and beyond...what a nice man he was...
and he wrote the great ballad recorded by so many..."Bluebirds over the mountain"
well actually he penned many songs for many artists...Jackie Wilson did one of his songs --and the Serendipity Singers first big hit was written by Ersel
--Don't let de rain come down my roofs got a hole in it and I might drown !---

Anyway, when I was struggling to use Flash to animate...I came up with an idea to try to animate his flip side to Bluebirds..."Hangin Around" it took me 93 hours to do this.. CLICK THIS FOR THE TUNE
might be a long load time 'sorry'

When Ersel's friends saw it online...they foned him and said there is this silly animation on you--on the web....whatta ya know--Ersel emailed me --we talked on the phone at length...he approved highly of my crazyass work and even had someone link a Higher- Fi version of my Flash toon...which I found once happily by accident on the web...

Before he passed on he was nice enough to send me 2 cd's --a vinyl disk--2 autographed pictures and a tee shirt from one of his BIG gigs... and some shots from his own camera of that performance...I still have the autographed picture on my living room wall !

Thanks to Ruthita for emailing me a thread of
DOO WOP-ISHNESS that reminded me of this long lost song and my scribbled tribute to it..
most of the animations I did at CROODLOOPS have been taken down by me or my webmaster...sure glad we still have Ersel to listen to !

3 comments:

Eugene Costa said...

The new fortified Robert O. does Wolfman Jack intro'ing Elvis Ersel--classically done!

Ersel can grow on one--that little trademark "oooo", and the doo-hickey in his bouffant. Or is that a reverse DA?

Anyway, Monsieur, superb music video and tribute, and all you reading check out the other Crood Loops now.

They are a gas, gas, gas.

Ruth and Fred said...

So cool that he contacted you and was so pleased with your animation. A great song and a quirky, wonderful tribute to a 50s legend. Glad my doo-woposity brought it back to mind!
*twirls*

Thorndike Pickledish said...

Hi Hoppy ! thanks for the kind comment...Croodloops was almost taken down...many of the "FLASH" learning/voicing exercises were pulled when we needed space...BUT a few are still hanging there to stay in place...so I hope too many folks didn't go over to find the shopkeeper tardy...but thanks for the plug...your stuff is way more genius tho and I think peeps should hang out at Burbank's Tomato....

Ruthita...

Yeah, when you sent your doo wop lyrics --I first thought of my "BOP POP" at croodloops --then I thought OH YEAH --even better...Hangin Around ...I've been diggin on the tune like it was day one for the last few days..what fun --THANKS!!!!!

and Happy New Year !!