The Naked City – Celebrating Two Great Nonagenarians!

Longevity in a music, movie, showbiz or arts oriented career is nearly always looked upon favourably. There are of course exceptions and few will be holding their breath that Rolf Harris or Gary Glitter ever turn 90. On the other hand last week we lost two remarkable ‘performers’, both in their 90s and each leaving behind a truly remarkable legacy.

The first of them, saxophonist Big Jay McNeely was well known to Australian audiences having toured here on numerous occasions from the late 80s onwards. His most recent performance was at the Meredith Music Festival in Victoria in 2012, where aged 85, he wowed an audience, the majority well less than half his age.

When we think of the roots of rock’n’roll and r&b we are usually directed to the American South and cities like Memphis and New Orleans. But it was from the vibrant LA jazz and jump scene of the late 40s and early 50s that Big Jay emerged with his unique honking sax and wild stage antics. Here was an artist who had his first hit record, Deacon’s Hop in 1949 but was still gigging a few weeks before his death last week aged 91.

There are many amazing stories about Big Jay’s early days in LA, of police raiding his shows because he was supposedly corrupting young white audiences and the time he left the venue whilst still playing and boarded a bus outside, returning to the venue only when the journey was completed.

One of my favourite memories of his Australian shows was the time he played at the old Klub Kakadu in Oxford Street and decided to take one of his famous walks, playing the Pied Piper as he led a group of enthusiastic punters down the stairs and onto busy Oxford Street. He almost boarded a passing bus (again!) but quickly detoured into a nearby sex shop where he sparked near chaos as his blasting sax echoed throughout the clandestine world of peep shows and smutty mags. Cubicle doors suddenly flew open as embarrassed patrons scurried for the door, hotly followed by an extremely irate owner who almost had to psychically remove the crazed honking hepcat.

Whilst not as well known in this country Alan Irwin Abel, who died last week aged 94 was a truly remarkable American, the king of hoaxers and when it came to the comedic art, up there with the very greatest. Together with his wife Jeanne he orchestrated some of the most incredible hoaxes on the American public from the 1950s onwards. Whist he never profited from any of his serial lampoons his reward was always to demonstrate the absurdity of popular culture and the gullibility of the media.

It was SINA, (The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals), that established Abel’s credentials as a master hoaxer, in the late 1950s. The aim of the group was to cover up the genitalia of most animals with slogans such as “a nude horse is a rude horse.” As absurd as it seemed thousands of Americans embraced it, local chapters were formed and it wasn’t until nearly four years later that the hoax was eventually exposed.

Long before there was fake news and alternative facts, Alan Abel was advertising “Euthanasia Cruises”, a school for beggars in New York and the health benefits of eating your own hair. With a variety of disguises he appeared on numerous talk shows and together with a group of willing actors perpetrated some of the most elaborate ruses you could imagine.

Ironically in 1979 he went to extraordinary lengths to fake his own death, the only time the New York Times has had to retract an obituary. This time around they ran an obituary that was titled:

“Alan Abel, Hoaxer Extraordinaire, Is (on Good Authority) Dead at 94”