Jim Copp and Ed Brown were a musical duo who recorded and released nine albums of stories and songs for children between 1958 and 1971. Andrew James "Jim" Copp III (December 3, 1913 – April 7, 1999) wrote all of the stories and songs, and played and recorded all of the music. Ed Brown (d. 1978) designed and illustrated all of the duo's album covers. Both men performed the various characters' voices, often with the help of tape manipulation and were among the first to devise and use

multi-track recording Multitrack recording (MTR), also known as multitracking, is a method of sound recording developed in 1955 that allows for the separate recording of multiple sound sources or of sound sources recorded at different times to create a cohesive who ...

and

electronic music Electronic music broadly is a group of music genres that employ electronic musical instruments, circuitry-based music technology and software, or general-purpose electronics (such as personal computers) in its creation. It includes both music ...

for children's records. Copp and Brown's work has been compared to that of

Lewis Carroll Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (27 January 1832 – 14 January 1898), better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll, was an English author, poet, mathematician, photographer and reluctant Anglicanism, Anglican deacon. His most notable works are ''Alice ...

Edward Lear Edward Lear (12 May 1812 – 29 January 1888) was an English artist, illustrator, musician, author and poet, who is known mostly for his literary nonsense in poetry and prose and especially his limerick (poetry), limericks, a form he popularised. ...

Dr. Seuss Theodor Seuss Geisel ( ;"Seuss"
'' Pee-wee Herman.

Biography

Jim Copp's early career

Copp was born in

Los Angeles Los Angeles, often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, most populous city in the U.S. state of California, and the commercial, Financial District, Los Angeles, financial, and Culture of Los Angeles, ...

and spent time in

Alabama Alabama ( ) is a U.S. state, state in the Southeastern United States, Southeastern and Deep South, Deep Southern regions of the United States. It borders Tennessee to the north, Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia to the east, Florida and the Gu ...

and

Washington D.C. Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly known as Washington or D.C., is the capital city and federal district of the United States. The city is on the Potomac River, across from Virginia, and shares land borders with ...

His father was a prominent attorney who had hoped his son would grow up to practice law. Instead the young James Copp had a penchant for the arts and grew up playing the piano and telling stories. At age 14 he was invited to play a

Mozart Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was a prolific and influential composer of the Classical period (music), Classical period. Despite his short life, his rapid pace of composition and proficiency from an early age ...

concerto with the

Los Angeles Philharmonic The Los Angeles Philharmonic (LA Phil) is an American orchestra based in Los Angeles, California. The orchestra holds a regular concert season from October until June at the Walt Disney Concert Hall and a summer season at the Hollywood Bowl from ...

. He went on to study political science at

Stanford University Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University, is a Private university, private research university in Stanford, California, United States. It was founded in 1885 by railroad magnate Leland Stanford (the eighth ...

and then creative writing as a graduate student at

Harvard Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher lear ...

. After graduating, Copp entered a talent competition in Chicago and won a stint playing piano as a

novelty Novelty (derived from Latin word ''novus'' for "new") is the quality of being new, or following from that, of being striking, original or unusual. Novelty may be the shared experience of a new cultural phenomenon or the subjective perception of an ...

performer for the Will Osborne Orchestra in 1939, then began a career the following year as a cabaret piano comic in

New York City New York, often called New York City (NYC), is the most populous city in the United States, located at the southern tip of New York State on one of the world's largest natural harbors. The city comprises five boroughs, each coextensive w ...

under the name "James Copp the III and His Things". As a solo performer, Copp caught the attention of

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American reco ...

talent scout John Hamond, who booked him on bills with

Teddy Wilson Theodore Shaw Wilson (November 24, 1912 – July 31, 1986) was an American jazz pianist. Described by critic Scott Yanow as "the definitive Swing music, swing pianist", Wilson's piano style was gentle, elegant, and virtuosic. His style was high ...

Lena Horne Lena Mary Calhoun Horne (June 30, 1917 – May 9, 2010) was an American singer, actress, dancer and civil rights activist. Horne's career spanned more than seventy years and covered film, television and theatre. Horne joined the chorus of the C ...

Art Tatum Arthur Tatum Jr. (, October 13, 1909 – November 5, 1956) was an American jazz pianist who is widely regarded as one of the greatest ever. From early in his career, fellow musicians acclaimed Tatum's technical ability as extraordinary. Tatum a ...

Billie Holiday Billie Holiday (born Eleanora Fagan; April 7, 1915 – July 17, 1959) was an American jazz and swing music singer. Nicknamed "Lady Day" by her friend and music partner, Lester Young, Holiday made significant contributions to jazz music and pop ...

and others at the

Café Society Café society was the description of the "Beautiful People" and " Bright Young Things" who gathered in fashionable cafés and restaurants in New York, Paris and London beginning in the late 19th century. Maury Henry Biddle Paul is credited wi ...

. In 1941 Copp made his first album, ''James Copp 3'', a three-disc

78 RPM A phonograph record (also known as a gramophone record, especially in British English) or a vinyl record (for later varieties only) is an analog sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove. The g ...

folio recorded at Reeves Sound Studios and released by Liberty Music Shops in

. The album's six tracks featured Copp's piano-playing and comedic nonsense storytelling, adapted from his nightclub act, and the album's jacket pictured a photo of Copp's upper body superimposed over a collection of Copp's own doodles. Many of Copp's early bits riff off of children's nursery rhymes, like " Mary Had a Little Lamb", "

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star" is an English lullaby. The lyrics are from an early-19th-century English poem written by Jane Taylor, "The Star". The poem, which is in couplet form, was first published in 1806 in '' Rhymes for the Nursery'', a c ...

" and "Fuzzy-Wuzzy was a Bear", but intermingled with expletives and references to graphic violence. In 1941, one of Copp's comedy narratives was performed by comic Doodles Weaver for a Soundie movie short, "Arabella and the Water Tank." Copp and Weaver would work on comedy scripts for radio and club routines off and on for the next several years, until Doodles moved to California in 1946, to join Spike Jones and his City Slickers. Evidently none of this material was performed publicly. Copp's show business career was interrupted by

World War II World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the wo ...

when he was shipped off to Europe in 1942. He commanded an intelligence unit for the

Normandy Invasion Operation Overlord was the codename for the Battle of Normandy, the Allied operation that launched the successful liberation of German-occupied Western Europe during World War II. The operation was launched on 6 June 1944 ( D-Day) with the ...

. After the war he returned to work in New York, but grew tired of working the nightclub circuit, and so moved back to Los Angeles where he wrote and illustrated the society column " Skylarking with James Copp" for the ''

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' is an American Newspaper#Daily, daily newspaper that began publishing in Los Angeles, California, in 1881. Based in the Greater Los Angeles city of El Segundo, California, El Segundo since 2018, it is the List of new ...

''. During the 1950s Copp reworked some of his nightclub routines for a younger audience and recorded them on a

wire recorder Wire recording, also known as magnetic wire recording, was the first magnetic recording technology, an analog type of audio storage. It recorded sound signals on a thin steel wire using varying levels of magnetization. The first crude magne ...

. He sent sample recordings to

Capitol Records Capitol Records, LLC (known legally as Capitol Records, Inc. until 2007), and simply known as Capitol, is an American record label owned by Universal Music Group through its Capitol Music Group imprint. It was founded as the first West Coast-base ...

. Capitol's executives liked the material, but wanted them to be performed by

Jerry Lewis Jerry Lewis (born Joseph Levitch; March 16, 1926 – August 20, 2017) was an American comedian, actor, singer, filmmaker and humanitarian, with a career spanning seven decades in film, stage, television and radio. Famously nicknamed as "Th ...

because he was a

celebrity Celebrity is a condition of fame and broad public recognition of a person or group due to the attention given to them by mass media. The word is also used to refer to famous individuals. A person may attain celebrity status by having great w ...

and would therefore sell more records. Copp agreed to let them have one story called '"The Noisy Eater", which Capitol had Lewis record and the company issued it on 78 and 45 rpm records in 1955. After the record achieved moderate success, Capitol wanted to buy the rest of Jim Copp's recordings, but having been paid relatively little for "The Noisy Eater", Copp refused to sell his material to them. Instead he decided to have a go at producing his own material, and the wire-recorded demos he'd sent to Capitol ended up as the material for his first long-playing children's album.

Copp and Brown

Jim Copp met the artist Ed Brown at a society party in Los Angeles and the two men began a lifelong friendship. Brown, a graduate of the

University of South Carolina The University of South Carolina (USC, SC, or Carolina) is a Public university, public research university in Columbia, South Carolina, United States. Founded in 1801 as South Carolina College, It is the flagship of the University of South Car ...

, was a linguist and graphic designer, and Copp shared with him an idea for a children's album that would incorporate Copp's own numerous musical talents with Brown's talent for design. For this first record, Copp played all of the instruments, performed all of the voices and contributed some of the artwork while Brown handled the album's overall design and marketing. The album ''Jim Copp Tales'' featured a picture wheel that listeners could turn to see Copp's own doodles that illustrated each story. Copp used the nickname "Jim" instead of his cabaret name, in case the project fell flat, but the album did well. The record received wide exposure on radio and TV, as well as bids for exclusive distribution by a department store chains I. Magnin,

Neiman-Marcus Neiman Marcus is an American department store chain founded in 1907 in Dallas, Texas by Herbert Marcus, his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman, and her husband Abraham Lincoln Neiman. It has been owned by Saks Global, a spin-off of the Hudson ...

Bloomingdale's Bloomingdale's Inc. is an American luxury department store chain founded in 1861 by Joseph Bloomingdale and Lyman Bloomingdale. It was acquired by Federated Department Stores in 1930, which purchased the Macy's department store chain in 1994, ...

and

FAO Schwarz FAO Schwarz is an American toy brand and Toy store, retail chain. The company is known for its high-end toys, life-sized stuffed animals, Interactivity, interactive experiences, Product placement, brand integrations, and games. FAO Schwarz clai ...

. Copp and Brown soon traveled the U.S., touring to retail outlets with their luggage stuffed with records. After the success of ''Jim Copp Tales'', Copp and Brown engaged in a laborious routine of annually self-producing albums and releasing them on their own label Playhouse Records. A record's creation began with Copp sitting at home writing songs and stories, while Ed Brown worked on the jacket design at his own house. Copp and Brown would record all of the sound effects, speeches, songs, and stories in segments, often in multiple takes until satisfied with the results. Copp recorded instruments in different rooms at his parents' house: voices were taped in the kitchen, the

piano A piano is a keyboard instrument that produces sound when its keys are depressed, activating an Action (music), action mechanism where hammers strike String (music), strings. Modern pianos have a row of 88 black and white keys, tuned to a c ...

in the living room, the celeste in a bedroom, the

pump organ The pump organ or reed organ is a type of organ that uses free reed aerophone, free reeds to generate sound, with air passing over vibrating thin metal strips mounted in a frame. Types include the pressure-based harmonium, the suction reed organ ...

in the bathroom, and

sound effects A sound effect (or audio effect) is an artificially created or enhanced sound, or sound process used to emphasize artistic or other content of films, television shows, live performance, animation, video games, music, or other media. In m ...

in the bathtub. The entire recording was done with one microphone and three

monaural Monaural sound or monophonic sound (often shortened to mono) is sound intended to be heard as if it were emanating from one position. This contrasts with stereophonic sound or ''stereo'', which uses two separate audio channels to reproduce so ...

Ampex Ampex Data Systems Corporation is an American electronics company founded in 1944 by Alexander M. Poniatoff as a spin-off of Dalmo-Victor. The name ''AMPEX'' is an acronym, created by its founder, which stands for Alexander M. Poniatoff Excell ...

tape recorder An audio tape recorder, also known as a tape deck, tape player or tape machine or simply a tape recorder, is a sound recording and reproduction device that records and plays back sounds usually using magnetic tape for storage. In its present ...

s, with which Copp devised his own

overdub Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more a ...

bing technique by ping-ponging between the tape decks to build up layers of sound. This recording method allowed the duo to create whole classrooms and housefuls of different voices—as many as 90 on a single track. Many of the records featured innovative layouts that encouraged the participation of young listeners: ''Schoolmates'' had shifting pictures on its back cover; ''Gumdrop Follies'' popped out into a toy theater play set involving the characters from the various albums; the pair of Glup Family LPs unfolded into boardgames that followed the records' narratives. Copp and Brown's records usually came out in October with the two men supporting the release with a national tour that lasted through the holiday season. Their tours took them to

Hawaii Hawaii ( ; ) is an island U.S. state, state of the United States, in the Pacific Ocean about southwest of the U.S. mainland. One of the two Non-contiguous United States, non-contiguous U.S. states (along with Alaska), it is the only sta ...

and their record sales earned them enough to buy property there for winter retreats in

Honolulu Honolulu ( ; ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Hawaii, located in the Pacific Ocean. It is the county seat of the Consolidated city-county, consolidated City and County of Honol ...

Decline and revival

Copp and Brown stopped making new records in 1971 when Copp's father died and his sister decided to sell the family house. Copp moved in with Ed Brown, whose home was carpeted and deemed unfit for recording. Jim Copp lost interest in making records and sold his recording equipment. Playhouse Records closed its doors when Ed Brown fell ill with pancreatic cancer and died in 1978. Though the records were no longer marketed to stores, Copp continued to vend them by mail during the 1980s. It wasn't until Jim Copp was contacted in the early 1990s by videographer/fan Ted Leyhe, that he considered re-releasing the albums. Leyhe and Copp repackaged each of the albums on cassette in 1993 and issued two CDs of some of Copp and Brown's most popular songs and skits. These CDs also contain previously unreleased material and liner notes by Henry Kaiser. Additionally, Leyhe produced a documentary video about Jim Copp's life. Jim Copp died in 1999 at the age of 85 after complications from

emphysema Emphysema is any air-filled enlargement in the body's tissues. Most commonly emphysema refers to the permanent enlargement of air spaces (alveoli) in the lungs, and is also known as pulmonary emphysema. Emphysema is a lower respiratory tract di ...

. Ted Leyhe continues to run Playhouse Records with his wife Laura, keeping the entire Copp and Brown catalogue in print. In 2008

Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , , "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vocalize it as ...

published three of Copp's tales as the book ''Jim Copp, Will You Tell Me a Story?'' illustrated by lifelong Copp and Brown fan, Lindsay DuPont.

Discography

As James Copp 3

* "The Birdie"/"Agnes Mouthwash and Friends" (Liberty Music Shops L-323) * "Peaches and Myrtle"/"The Rapids" (Liberty Music Shops L-324) * "Portrait of a Monster"/"Mystery of the Revolving Tree Trunk" (Liberty Music Shops L-325) All three 78s were issued as a 3-disc album circa 1941.

Performed by Jerry Lewis

* "The Noisy Eater" (Capitol 3120, 1955)

The original Copp and Brown LPs

As Jim Copp

* ''Jim Copp Tales'' (Playhouse 101, 1958)

As Jim Copp and Ed Brown

* ''Fable Forest'' (Playhouse 202, 1959) * ''Thimble Corner'' (Playhouse 303, 1960) * ''East Of Flumdiddle'' (Playhouse 404, 1961) * ''A Fidgetty Frolic'' (Playhouse 505, 1962) * ''A Journey To San Francisco With The Glups'' (Playhouse 606, 1963) * ''Gumdrop Follies'' (Playhouse 707, 1965) * ''Schoolmates'' (Playhouse 808, 1968) * ''The Sea Of Glup'' (Playhouse 909, 1971) All nine of the original LPs were rereleased on cassette when the Leyhes acquired Playhouse Records in 1993. In the early 2000s, the LPs began to be reissued gradually on

compact disc The compact disc (CD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format co-developed by Philips and Sony to store and play digital audio recordings. It employs the Compact Disc Digital Audio (CD-DA) standard and was capable of hol ...

with the complete catalogue available as of December 2013.

CD collections

* ''Agnes Mouthwash And Friends'' (1993) * ''Flibbertigibbets On Parade'' (1994)

Books

*''Jim Copp, Will You Tell Me a Story? Three Uncommonly Clever Tales.'' Illustrated by Lindsay duPont. Includes audio CD of original recordings. (Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 2008).

Video

* ''Skylarking: The Life and Times of Jim Copp''

External links

Playhouse Records website

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Copp, Jim And Brown, Ed American musical duos 20th-century American illustrators American children's musical groups American comedy musical groups 20th-century American pianists 20th-century American comedians 20th-century American male artists