The king never missed beat with vrot banana girls
ISUPPOSE it tells you a lot about me that I am still a fan of the late Elvis Presley. He was my musical hero when I was a teenager, far outshining all his contemporaries like the wussie Pat Boone, who cried when the tide washed out his love letters in the sand, or the scruffy little Tommy Steele with the bad hair and English teeth.
(I was a member of Tommy Steele’s student guard of honour when he visited Cape Town in the 1950s, but only for the free ticket to his show. It was not one of my proudest moments.)
Elvis was king and still rules my record collection. One of the things I enjoyed about Elvis’s songs was the tight rhythmic backing by his team of excellent “Doo-wah” girls.
I’ve often wondered how they learnt their lyrics. Listen carefully next time you play an Elvis song. (Well, of course you will.) They slide seamlessly from “do wop do warri-warri” into “wah di Ron Ron Ron” without missing a beat.
That must take a great deal of rehearsing. I imagine the rehearsal conductor tapping his baton sharply on his lectern and saying things like, “No, no, no Mary-Sue. I’ve explained three times that in the next bar it’s ‘woo di woo di woo’, not ‘woo di wopwop.’ Let’s take it again from the top and please concentrate.” Who writes that stuff for them? Pure inspiration. In the Elvis version of
you may have noticed the doo-wah girls use the words ‘vrot banana’; repeatedly. “Don’t wanna be be your tiger (vrot banana). Don’t wanna be your lion (vrot banana)…”
I suspect Elvis may have travelled to KwaZuluNatal to find his vrot banana girls. That’s where the best backing groups are found, especially if bananas are involved.
You think I’m joking? No ways! When Paul Simon made his Graceland disc, where did he get his backing group? That’s right: Ladysmith Black Mambazo. KZN, of course. Although I hear no vrot bananas in Simon’s compositions. I suppose Elvis took out a copyright to bananas. Oh, no doubt about it, Elvis was way ahead of his time.
Water well
Whenever I come home late after a show or meeting I pass a little knot of people gathered round the fresh-water spring in St James and filling their 5l plastic water bottles. The water gatherers are there at all times of the day and night and there’s something biblical about it. I almost expect to see a camel tethered to a nearby lamp post. I’m sure there must be a number of young entrepreneurs out there thinking of profitable ways to import Karoo spring water for sale in the city. Many a millionaire has made a fortune by recognising a gap in the market and filling it.
Here’s a gap for a school-leaving future millionaire to fill.
Last Laugh
A cattle farmer from the Free State decided to take a European holiday and ended up in Pamplona watching a bullfight. He was interested in the action for a while but then became angry at the slow pace. He stood up in his seat and shouted, “Hey come on man, play fair. How do you expect the bull to hit the blanket if you keep pulling it away?”