It will probably not be surprising to regular readers of the Vinyl Cave that along with all the other random records picked up out of curiosity I occasionally buy comedy albums. They are still plentiful in the bargain bins since many were big sellers when new, and the demand for even rare ones is usually low. While the jokes may at times be out of date, particularly for those satirizing political topics or news of the day, these artifacts offer a window into the social mores of their eras (and a way to learn a bit of history for those so inclined). There are also many spoken word LPs that are not comedy — poetry, story records for kids, historic lectures, religious sermons, and about anything else you can think of, really. "Anything else" is perhaps the most appropriate category for "How Are Things in Your Town?" by Ken Nordine.
The voice of Iowa native Nordine, who died in 2019, was familiar to many during the second half of the 20th century and well into the current one. Based in Chicago for most of his life, he was a regular on the airwaves, recording countless commercial voiceovers and other more artistically inclined work, as well as hosting Word Jazz for public radio station WBEZ for four decades. Word Jazz in many ways was one of the gateways to today's explosion of storytelling on stages around the nation and in podcast form.
The genesis of the radio program was in a series of LPs recorded in the 1950s and early 1960s for, of all places, staid Dot Records, home of Lawrence Welk, Billy Vaughn and other providers of mellow sounds. That connection likely happened because Nordine provided the voiceover for "The Shifting Whispering Sands," a top 5 Billboard hit for Billy Vaughn in 1955. Starting with Word Jazz in 1957, Nordine and Dot followed it up over the next few years with Son of Word Jazz, Next! and Word Jazz, Vol. II. (There's also a disc of Great American Songbook material done as poetry, Love Words.)
Part of why I picked up "How Are Things in Your Town?" is because I was pleased to see a Nordine record on Dot's exact opposite, ultra-hipster enclave Blue Thumb Records. Ironically, it turns out this double album is not 1970s material but a compilation drawn from those Dot albums, chosen and sequenced by jazz producer Michael Cuscuna.
Nordine's standard method of operation mixed music and sound effects with his spoken word pieces, which range from humorous to quite pointed commentary about society's ills. His writing can be somewhat chilling, particularly in pieces written like the internal dialogue of a wandering, freaking out mind. About the only thing I have heard to compare it to is some of the more outre 1950s work of another Midwestern-born humorist, Jean Shepherd (best known today as the adult voice of Ralphie in A Christmas Story; the movie was adapted from Shepherd's collection In God We Trust: All Others Pay Cash). Nordine is sometimes lumped in with the beat poets since the Word Jazz albums are of the same era, but that's not really an apt comparison for his writing style.
The Blue Thumb album's title is drawn from a piece titled "Flibberty Jib," which is as good a place as any to start for those who would like to hear what Nordine was up to; the track can be heard on YouTube. It's from the first Word Jazz album, with music provided by the Fred Katz Jazz Group. From what I can tell on Discogs, that album is the only one of the quartet that's been reissued on LP in its original form over the years, making this Blue Thumb comp both a handy sampler and also one of the only places to get much of this material on LP other than tracking down the originals. (Blue Thumb BTS-33, 1971)
