REAL ART THEME
SONG EXPLAINED
The Nairobi Trio

You know, at this point, I'm not one hundred percent sure how I first encountered jazz artist Dick Hyman's tune "Solfeggio," which I've been using for nearly three years as Real Art's theme song. I think that I first found it on the Ernie Kovacs tribute site from which I link the song here, or maybe I first heard it years ago in a history of radio and television class when we were covering Kovacs. I just don't recall. But that's not as important as why I picked the song: in addition to being cool, quirky, and just plain weird, it was originally performed on Kovacs' brilliant old TV shows by three people in gorilla suits, the Nairobi Trio.

From Wikipedia:

The Nairobi Trio was a skit Ernie Kovacs performed several times for his TV shows. It combined many existing concepts and visuals in a new and novel way, and is probably the first comedy bit people think about when Kovacs' name is mentioned.

People in gorilla suits have always been a comedy staple. The notion of well-known or predictable music pieces gone awry has long been practiced by artists as diverse as Stan Freberg, Spike Jones or P.D.Q. Bach. The "slow burn" of one character annoying another resulting in eventual retaliation was not new. But the combination of all those ingredients, combined with impeccable timing, produced a very unique and memorable result.

It was a live-action version of a child's animatronic wind-up music box, performed to the tune "Solfeggio." Allegedly, when Kovacs first heard a recording of the tune, he immediately came up with a mental image of what would become The Nairobi Trio: three gorillas (wearing derby hats and long overcoats) mechanically miming to the music like wind-up toys. In the middle sat the "head gorilla," always played by Kovacs (with a cigar, of course), conducting with a baton or (sometimes) a banana. To the viewer's left another gorilla stood, holding two oversized timpani mallets. (The identity of this ape varied, but among Kovacs' celebrity friends both Jack Lemmon and Frank Sinatra are known to have performed in the skit.) And seated at screen right at a piano was a female simian (often Kovacs' wife, Edie Adams), robotically thumping up and down on the keys.

Click here for the rest.

As longtime Real Art readers know, I think gorilla suits are kickass, almost as funny as rubber chickens. Of course, I've explained most of this before. What makes this explanation different is that I managed to dig up some actual video of the Nairobi Trio doing their thing. And, yeah, it's pretty darned funny.

You'd really be a fool to not go check it out right now.


A Nairobi Trio screen-capture from the Ernie Kovacs show

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