Aba Daba Honeymoon - Irving Kaufman (1940)

"Aba Daba Honeymoon"

In 1946 and 1947, Irving Kaufman recorded numbers to be broadcast on the radio show Music Hall Varieties.

Two dozen songs were pressed for the NBC-produced Thesaurus Orthacoustic, a radio transcription label, and distributed to stations.

Identified as a baritone (after decades of being called a tenor), he is accompanied by the Music Hall Varieties Orchestra, which used original arrangements.

The songs were popular ones from 1900 to 1920. Few were actually recorded by the young Kaufman.

Titles include "For Me And My Gal," "By the Beautiful Sea," "Alexander's Ragtime Band" (recorded on July 3, 1946, and pressed on Record 1362), "Bedelia," "Under The Bamboo Tree," "My Wife's Gone To The Country," and "Oh You Beautiful Doll."

Because he was in top vocal form and the best available recording technology was used, Kaufman himself told Quentin Riggs that he would be happy if future generations judged him on these Thesaurus recordings.

Promotional literature for the radio show states, "Kaufman is well-remembered for a five year coast-to-coast network stint as 'Lazy Dan, The Minstrel Man' and his many characterizations on top network and local programs. He is a master dialectician specializing in Irish, Jewish, Scotch, Negro, Italian and Chinese."

He continued making the occasional 78 rpm recording until 1947, the last being "The Curse of an Aching Heart" coupled with "Think It Over Mary" (originally issued on the Sterling label, also issued on the Bennett label). Around this time he also recorded for Sterling some Yiddish comedy songs like "Moe the Schmo Makes Love" and "Moe the Schmo Takes a Rhumba Lesson."

As recording studios relied less on him, he worked more on radio, sometimes accompanied by his wife Belle Brooks on organ or piano.

He continued performing on radio, in Broadway stage productions (including Kurt Weill's Street Scene in 1947), and in nightclubs until a heart attack in 1949 put a stop to these professional activities.

In August 1974 he recorded in his California home eight songs for a two-album set that reissued some of his old recordings, which means Kaufman's recording career spanned six decades, from 1914 to 1974. Titled Reminisce With Irving Kaufman, the lp was only briefly available.

He died in Indio, California, a month before his 86th birthday.

Way down in the congo land
Live a happy chimpanzee
She loved a monkey with a long tail
Lordy how she loved him
Each night he would find her there
Swingin' in the coconut tree
And the monkey gay
At the break of day
Like to hear he chimpie say

Aba daba daba daba daba daba dab
Said the chimpie to the monk
Daba daba daba daba daba daba dab
Said the monkey to the chimp
All night long they'd chatter away
All day long they were happy and gay
Swingin' and singin' in their
Honky tonky way