Rufe Davis was an American actor, singer and “imitator of sounds.” He was best known for his “rural” comedic radio act, “Rufe Davis and the Radio Rubes” during the 1930s, for being a co-star along with Hoot Gibson, John Wayne, Gene Autry and Roy Rogers in dozens of Hollywood B-Westerns and for his role as “Floyd Smoot,” the train conductor of the “Hooterville Cannonball” on the 60s CBS TV comedy series, Petticoat Junction.

Davis’ rendition of “The Old Sow Song” was his musical calling card for obvious reasons and something that those of us of a certain age might remember from a popular 60s kiddie record made by Mel Blanc and others called Bozo And His Pals (which is where I first heard it—and loved it—as a tyke), although it was originally released as a 78rpm record many years before that. The same song was also given away as a cardboard record in cereal boxes. His version of the song was probably what kept the song alive in the 60s and 70s, and even beyond, but there was another famous version that we’ll get to in due course.

Maybe you heard “The Old Sow Song” from one of your grandparents singing it to you? They might’ve heard it in a vaudeville theater. It might also be something that was passed down from long before that, an actual working class English folk song. I’ve also seen it described as a Yorkshire farmer’s song. It’s claimed by Scotland and Ireland, too. One of the earliest recorded versions was one done in 1928 by Albert Richardson. It was also recorded by Cyril Smith and Rudy Vallee, as well as by opera singer Anna Russell. Novelty songsmith Leslie Sarony did his hit version of “The Old Sow Song” in 1934. Apparently John Ritter performed the song on Three’s Company but sadly I could find no clip of this. According to YouTube comments, Hee-Haw featured more than one rendition of “The Old Sow Song.”

Perhaps many of you learned “The Old Sow Song” at summer camp or grade school, where I am guessing it can still be heard to this day, since children’s songs with farting noises never truly die. This evergreen sing-a-long is up there with “Bingo was his name-o” and “John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt” but neither of them has blowing raspberries as an integral part of the song. Can you imagine what the sheet music must’ve looked like?

I’m truly delighted that a vintage visual representation of “The Old Sow Song” exists. I don’t have an exact year for the clip, but it’s described as a “talkie” or “soundie” in the descriptions of the various uploads which might indicate that this was an early sound film, and yet there is a Hitler reference, so I think it might be a bit later than the uploaders think. Maybe an early kinescope?

I high recommend taking any—and all—drugs that you have handy before hitting play. If Rufe Davis’s face doesn’t turn green and if time doesn’t seem to bend like taffy and come to a complete standstill while you watch this, then you clearly haven’t taken enough drugs. So take more.
 

 
After the jump, the Doctor Who connection!

 
Christian Poincheval is a charmingly eccentric Frenchman with an innovative new product that I cannot believe has not already been mass produced. Poincheval claims he has invented a pill that actually perfumes your flatulence to smell of roses, violets, chocolate, or ginger—there’s even a version for farty cats and dogs!

We were at table with friends after a copious meal when we nearly asphyxiated ourselves with our smelly farts. The gas wasn’t that great for our table neighbours. So something had to be done about this. You can disguise the sound of a fart but not the stench.

I can’t find a lot of credible reviews of Poincheval’s Pilule Pet (one reviewer claimed they reduced her gassyness so much that it was impossible to truly test for smell), and to be honest, his whole vibe doesn’t exactly scream “scientific innovator,” but for about $35 you can get some weird old French guy’s novelty fart pills—a value at twice the price—and that should frankly be seen as a bargain. (I just feel like he’s living the sort of life that deserves patronage.)
 

 
A recent profile of Poincheval confirmed his bohemian credentials; he moved to Paris as a teen, where he met his wife Évelyne, with whom he formed a fairly successful nine-piece “gypsy jazz” band that played all over France. Évelyne and Christian still play music sometimes, but the couple has mostly retired to a small town in rural France, where Christian creates whimsical sculptures and invents from his modest cottage. Poincheval is a bit of a French celebrity, first gaining attention for inventing a toilet paper with news articles printed on it. His projects are all sort of thematically irreverent and charmingly childish, and I think the fart pills (whether they work or not), fall into a sort of Duchampian absurdist tradition.

Below you can hear Poincheval sing the song he wrote for his fart pills! 
 

 
Via This is Why I’m Broke

 
In ye olde Middle Ages it was commonly believed that storing farts in a jar could ward off the plagues like the Black Death. Many a yokel kept farts in a sealed stone jar—only to be opened and the noxious contents inhaled once plague appeared in the village or neighborhood. The theory was similar to the homeopathic belief that “like cures like,” and it was thought the more noxious, creamy and nasty the fart, the more powerful and curative its properties. For this reason, many health-conscious types stocked up on jars of pungent goat, pig and cow fart.

Moving on quite a few centuries, and we find this history-steeped tradition has not died, nay, but has been reinvented as Send a Jart—a novel way to send farts in a container to people we don’t like.

Send a fart in a jar. ‘Cause you can.

Know someone who’s been a total assberry lately? Let ‘em know with a sealed fart in a jar. When they open the jar to read the note inside, they’ll unleash the almighty stench of our signature Ass Air© .

Boom. You win.

 

Jart: ‘Cause you can.
 
Yes, for just ten bucks you can send a jar filled with the scent of “Hungover Frat Boy,” “Competitive Eater” or the evil “8hr Trucker Fart.” “Each fart made of 100% real odor”—well, it would be kinda strange if it was made of anything else but odor… and each jar is made of “100% real glass.”

Sending malodorous missives isn’t new—Farts by Mail offer a similar service supplying mail order farts for $8.99 a pop:

Each fart comes with a greeting card with a custom message, heinous odor, and hilarious fart sound!

Mail sometimes sticks, but no one expects a fart!

 

Farts by Mail: Farts just like dad used to make.

It keeps people employed, right?

More of this shit after the jump…

 
It is with blurry hindsight that we mourn theatre culture long since passed, fabricating memories of a show business that was simultaneously more passionate, yet also more genteel. Obviously, this is total bullshit, and nothing so soundly refutes that myth as the career of Joseph Pujol, or “Le Pétomane.” At a young age, Pujol discovered an unusual gastric talent, enabling him to draw air into his body and fart on command. After his service in the French Army, Pujol perfected his talent as a baker before eventually taking his singular act to the stage in Marseilles in 1887.

He was a hit, eventually moving to Paris later that year and playing the Moulin Rouge in 1892. His stage name, Le Pétomane, translates to “fartomaniac,” and his talents were admired by no less than Edward, Prince of Wales; King Leopold II of the Belgians and Sigmund Freud. He accompanied music, impersonated cannons, “blew out” candles from yards away, lit his farts on fire and even played an ocarina with the aid of a rubber hose. Pujold became famous.
 

 
Above, you can hear Pujol’s 1904 recording. It’s…er…  impressive, to be sure, but now—now my darlings, we have a brief clip of an actual Pétomane performance! The clip below was recorded by Thomas freaking Edison at the 1900 World’s Fair in Paris. At the time, Edison was working on a kinetophonolfactograph—colloquially known as “smell-o-vision,” and what better candidate for this new technology than Le Pétomane? The audio alone doesn’t do him justice—the man had a presence on stage. I suppose those farts had a certain nobility one must observe in body language. Still, there are reasons smell-o-vision never really caught on. There’s only so much gaseous nobility you can take.

This might be begging for a soundtrack…
 

 
A man has denied trying to film up a woman’s skirt, claiming he may have been trying to light a fart.

Brian Whitehead entered a bar in Bristol, England, where he was seen to place a “mystery object under a woman’s clothing as she stood at the bar.”

Whitehead claims to have no memory of the incident, but told police:

“Maybe I was trying to light a fart. It could have been a joke.

“Maybe someone says ‘I bet you a fiver if you light her fart’.”

He was later arrested after he being identified on the bar’s CCTV footage.

At his trial, where Whitehead denies a charge of “committing an act outraging public decency, by placing a camera under a skirt in September last year,” Bar manager Alexander McEvoy Williams, said he was “shocked” when he saw Whitehead’s actions, as the Bristol Post reports:

...Williams told the jury he had been collecting glasses outside the Wetherspoon’s bar when he came back inside and saw a man standing close behind a woman who was chatting at the bar.

He said: “As I approached from outside I saw the male with a black object in his hand. As I drew closer I saw it to be some sort of electronic device with a screen and buttons, either a camera or a mobile phone. I saw the male place the device under the woman’s skirt as she was leant forward, looking at something on the bar. When I saw what happened I initially was so shocked I couldn’t believe what I had just seen. I put the glasses down and I asked the woman if she had seen anything, and she said ‘no’.”

Mr Williams said he went to check the bar’s CCTV to be absolutely sure of what occurred. He said: “I couldn’t believe it, it was so blatant. Another manager has seen it and he said ‘Did you just see that?’

“The CCTV confirmed what we had just seen.”

A picture of Whitehead was displayed at the bar, and when he returned and was recognized, he was arrested. Despite the CCTV evidence to the contrary, Whitehead denies his actions were lewd, insisting he had been drunk. He also denied using a camera or having a sexual motive.

“I don’t remember it clearly. I don’t know what I was doing. I believe I had a Clipper cigarette lighter, a black one. I think it was still in my hand after just having a cigarette,” Whitehead told the court.

It’s unlikely this story will blow over…
 
H/T Popbitch, via the Bristol Post

 
WTF? Where did this come from? Who paid for the production? What is this???

Via the Scat blog (no really)