Ruth Wallis: Queen of 1950's Party Records! (Audio Documentary)

Ruth Wallis: Queen of the Party Song

In the glittering nightclubs of mid-century America, where martinis flowed and cigarette smoke curled toward chandeliers, one woman ruled the risqué with a wink and a smile. Her name was Ruth Wallis, and she was known as the Queen of the Party Song.

Born Ruth Shirley Wohl on January 5th, 1920, in Brooklyn, New York, she began her musical journey in the world of jazz and cabaret standards. Young Ruth sang with some of the biggest names in the business, touring for brief stints with the orchestras of Isham Jones and Benny Goodman. She chose her stage name in tribute to Wallis Warfield Simpson, the Duchess of Windsor, whose own life had scandalized proper society.

By the early 1940s, Wallis had found her niche in the cocktail lounge circuit, sitting at a piano, singing for dining customers in hotel lounges from city to city. It was at Boston’s Latin Quarter that her life would change forever. There she met Hy Pastman, the club’s manager. A two-week engagement became three weeks, then a diamond ring, then marriage.

The patrons at the Latin Quarter loved Ruth’s songs, especially the torch ballads she wrote herself. But they went absolutely wild over something else, something unexpected: her novelty songs with their sly double entendres. It didn’t take long for Ruth to realize where her true calling lay.

But this was 1950s America, and Ruth Wallis was singing about the unmentionable. Her songs touched on homosexuality, infidelity, and other topics considered taboo. Boston radio stations banned her music. The major record labels of the era, RCA, Columbia, Decca, wouldn’t touch performers with such ribald material. Radio stations feared losing their FCC licenses if they played her records. Most record stores refused to stock them.

So in 1952, Ruth Wallis did what any enterprising artist would do: she started her own record label, Wallis Original Recordings. She released ten-inch LPs filled with a mixture of previously recorded material, standards from her Latin Quarter shows, and newly recorded pieces. She sang and played piano, accompanied by New York’s finest studio musicians, including the Ray Charles Singers and the Mac Ceppos Orchestra.

She did manage one mainstream hit. In late 1953, her song about Arthur Godfrey’s public firing of Julius La Rosa reached number twenty-five on the charts. The record sold 100,000 copies in its first ten days. But Wallis knew where her bread was really buttered, and it wasn’t in the mainstream.

When she arrived in Australia for a tour in 1958, customs agents seized her records. But instead of ending her career, the controversy only drew larger crowds. Her suppressed records sold at an extreme premium, fetching eight dollars apiece. She became a regular headliner in Las Vegas nightclubs and lounges throughout the 1960s, and performed around the world: San Francisco, Hong Kong, Melbourne, Johannesburg, London.

Her signature song was about Davy, who had the cutest little dinghy in the Navy. Other titles that could be mentioned in polite company included “The Hawaiian Lei Song,” “Hopalong Chastity,” and “A Man, a Mink, and a Million Pink and Purple Pills.” Many of her other titles, well, they couldn’t be printed in a family newspaper.

Ruth Wallis retired in the 1970s after a final concert in Australia. She wanted to spend more time with her husband and two children, though she continued working on material for Broadway shows. Her marriage to Hy Pastman ended in divorce, but the two later reconciled. He died in 1987.

In the decades that followed, Dr. Demento occasionally featured her music on his show, keeping her legacy alive for a new generation. In 2003, some of her most famous songs were collected into an Off-Broadway production called “BOOBS! The Musical: The World According to Ruth Wallis.” Opening at the Triad Theater in New York City on May 19th, the show ran nearly 300 performances and had subsequent runs in New Orleans and Wichita.

In March 2007, the National Archives of Australia honored Wallis by including her memorabilia in a permanent exhibition in Canberra called “Memory of a Nation.”

Ruth Wallis died on December 22nd, 2007, at her home in South Killingly, Connecticut, from complications of Alzheimer’s disease. She was eighty-seven years old.

She sang songs that couldn’t be played on the radio, sold records that stores wouldn’t stock, and performed material that made customs agents blush. But night after night, in nightclubs around the world, audiences lined up to hear the Queen of the Party Song do what she did best: make them laugh, make them gasp, and remind them that sometimes the most interesting stories are the ones polite society tries to ignore.

Travel Back in Time to the 1920s and 1930s!

Heigh-ho, everybody, heigh-ho! Kitty and I just released this special bonus episode of our weekly radio show and podcast – Jack Norton’s Old-Time Radio Show. Uff-da, this is a good ol’ good ‘un! Here’s some info on the program…

Travel back to the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s as vaudeville blues and ragtime hokum musician Jack Norton spins his favorite 78 rpm records from his collection. From early hot jazz to jug band blues, hillbilly hits to novelty swing, Jack’s love for vintage tunes shines through with every tune he drops on the turntable. Sit back, relax, and let the soothing retro vibes of the good old days soothe your weary soul.

If the good Lord’s willin’ and the creek don’t rise, new episodes drop every Tuesday.

Wanna request a tune or need advice answered with a song? Email me at: hello@jacknortonmusic.com

Cheers,
Jack

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