Tag: Sandy Becker

Byron’s TV Listings, Jan. 4

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Laura the Explorer | “Just a quokka-tastic moment! 🦘📸 Who ...

Happy New Year, boys ‘n’ girls! Byron the Quokka here… in a kind of paradise of bicycles. I’m here to bring you a sample of Quokka University TV .

8:30 a.m.   Ch. 15   ICED TEA WITH WILMA–Talk, talk, talk

Join Wilma Zavoody as she babbles and cackles with guests you’ve never heard of and will never see again! Today: Professor Dylan McMillan, who makes mud pies and tries to get his students to eat them. You’ll be surprised how often he succeeds!

8:36 a.m.   Ch. 26   TALES FROM THE BUSTED COCCYX—Historical romance

Magnus Spagnus (Robert Shaw) operates an 18th century inn where very strange things happen! Today: The ghost of a sadistic highwayman (Bela Lugosi) haunts the luxury bedroom on the second floor. He also plays Yahtzee. Just in time for Britain’s Imperial Yahtzee champion (Joan Collins) to challenge him to a match.

9:00 a.m.  Ch. 06  HAMBONE! THE RETURN–Philosophy

Sandy Becker played Hambone in the 1960s. Now the torch is passed–to Janice Ksheev, latest in a long line of Hambone imitators. Watch her dance her way through dangers that would demoralize an ordinary man. And absorb the wisdom of Hambone (“Wet wood burns the best,” and other wise sayings).

Well, that’s that. I’m so happy that they’re bringing Hambone back to TV. I was running out of Cisco Kid reruns.Here’s a video cut to whet your appetite.

Byron the Quokka, signing off (don’t want to miss Hambone)!

Have I Lost My Marbles?

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Nah, I’m all right–I just felt like hearing this: That Happy Feeling, by Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra, from way back when. As one of the theme songs for Sandy Becker’s show, it was a staple of my childhood. I’m glad I’ve not forgotten it.

Taking a Break

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What does Afrikaan Beat, by Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra, have to do with today’s up-to-the-minute nooze?

Absolutely nothing! That’s why I’m posting it.

I’ve been scanning nooze sites while Patty dumps all the boner ads out of our spam folder (are there really that many people obsessed with “hardness issues”? We need to think about something else). And enough is enough. I can’t digest any more nooze today.

Afrikaan Beat came out in 1962. We heard it as theme music on The Sandy Becker Show (appealing both to little kids and young teens like me) and on the jukebox at the YMCA. It is a souvenir from normal times. Back when we didn’t have to worry about Far Left Crazy taking over our country while we slept one night.

This is all I’m going to say about today’s nooze:

If you little tinpot tyrants, wherever you are, intend to withhold from us our God-given rights, enshrined in law, for as long as you can get away with it–well, we’ll just have to take them back. However we do it, it won’t be good for you.

We don’t want your “new normal.” We don’t want anything you’re selling us. Just go away.

 

Memory Lane: Bert Kaempfert’s ‘Afrikaan Beat’

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I first heard this as theme music for The Sandy Becker Show, but it was smoking hot in 1962 and soon wound up on all the juke boxes. Do they still have juke boxes?

Kaempfert had hits galore, and not one of them about drugs, fornication, shooting people, or anything else they sing about today. He wasn’t South African, as I thought at the time, but German. Internationally popular, though, and heavily influenced, at one phase of his career, by South African music. Who can blame him? That’s pretty cool music.

Anyway, I thought you might enjoy something harmless and wholesome for a change–like Afrikaan Beat.

Just for Fun: Sandy Becker’s Christmas Carol

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This blast from the past comes from I don’t know what year, exactly–late 1950s, early 60s. Nor do I know if the puppet play ever actually came off. Anyway, here’s Clive Clive introducing the star of Sandy Becker’s Christmas carol, the inimitable Geba Geba.

Sandy not only performed these puppets; he created and hand-crafted them himself. This was kids’ TV way back when, and it was wonderful. Becker had a wild imagination, and you never knew what he was going to come up with next.

Geba Geba as Scrooge–if only I could’ve seen it!

Memory Lane: Sandy Becker

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Growing up in the New York media market in the 1950s and 60s, you just can’t imagine it without Sandy Becker on TV. Which he was, from 1955 through 1968, mostly on WNEW.

This guy was a volcano of talent: nobody like him, anymore, to entertain little kids and young teens. Original puppets? Sandy not only performed them; he made them. Far-out characters? Sandy played them: Norton Nork, Hambone, the Big Professor, and the inscrutable Dr. Gesundheit. He also did cartoons.

Much of his show was live, and, alas, little of it was recorded. Much of it was ad-libbed. And you also heard a lot of Bert Kaempfert music: the theme for his daytime show, heard in this video, was That Happy Feeling. When he was on at night, it was Afrikaan Beat.

Kids’ TV in this era was overrun with talent. Along with Sandy, we had the immortal Soupy Sales and the incredible Chuck McCann, who gained national recognition by winning an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter… and his “Hi, guy! One shot and I’m good for the whole day!” deodorant commercials. Remember those? The protagonist was an ordinary gtuy who had to share a medicine cabinet with McCann’s weird character. But I digress.

Well, I can’t hear any of Bert Kaempfert’s music without thinking of Sandy Becker–gone, but lovingly remembered by probably millions of people who were kids then.

Let me see if I can get you just a tiny Hambone clip or something…