A Violetta Villas Valentine's Day!

To everyone who finds themselves single on Valentine's Day -- Violetta Villas feels your pain! Listen to the late, great Polska diva (1938 - 2011) cast aside boring concepts like "nuance" and "restraint" and tear the weepy Barbra Streisand ballad "Free Again" a whole new *sshole on her ultra-campy 1970 TV special. She really RAMPAGES through the song for almost five whole minutes (I especially love how Violetta punctuates the song with bitter little laughs). This posting is timely in more ways than one: Violetta's last-ever public concert was on 14 February 2011 (exactly one year ago today), after which she retired from performing and was dead by the end of the year.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Farewell Violetta Villas (10 June 1938 - 5 December 2011)

The night of John Waters's Christmas show at Royal Festival Hall, I came home to learn that the great, tempestuous Polish diva Violetta Villas (10 June 1938 – 5 December 2011) had died earlier that day at her home in the village of Lewin Klodzki aged 73. My Polish friend, work colleague and fellow Violetta fan Marta (the village where Marta is from borders Lewin Klodzki) had both texted me and Facebooked me alerting me of her death.

I first learned of the existence of Violetta Villas from the reliably excellent The Homoerratic Radio Show blog on 25 January 2011. It described her as a “Polska Yma Sumac” and provided a link to an MP3 of Villas singing an intoxicatingly strange but appealing Polka-Mambo hybrid entitled "Czterdziesci Kasztanów (Forty Chestnuts)": think Latin exotica from behind the Iron Curtain. You can listen to it here, and I recommend you do. I downloaded the song and frequently drop it into my Dr Sketchy set lists, especially towards the end when I'm drunk.

Intrigued, I started Googling Violetta Villas and hit the mother lode: Youtube was full of clips from her ultra- kitsch 1960s and 70s TV specials and film appearances. The next day at work Marta filled me in on the rest: how Villas’s promising international career (she was a celebrated Las Vegas headliner in the 1960s and appeared in some Hollywood films, including the legendarily awful 1969 musical Paint Your Wagon) was cut short by Communism, how she’s still revered in Poland now that she’s an elderly and eccentric recluse. I was so inspired that night when I blogged the latest Dr Sketchy set list, I incorporated a tribute to Villas (read it here), in which I rhapsodised:

" ... Villas is a berserk outsider artist; a wild low-budget Eastern European hybrid of Jayne Mansfield/Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita / Brigitte Bardot / Charo; a punk (her image and un-hinged performances can suggest Nina Hagen or Jayne County); and a self-parodic possessor of a camp /kitsch drag queen sensibility (is it deliberate or naive? Certainly her persona evokes the films of the Kuchar brothers and John Waters. There’s something wonderfully grotesque about how Villas deliberately buries her own natural beauty under the matted bouffant wigs and thick transvestite/ clown-like make-up)."

(Note: Marta has instructed me to point out I was wrong in claiming Violetta's hair was a wig. In spite of appearances, that wild, exploding mane of tousled blonde hair was apparently 100% Violetta's own, something she took fierce pride in. I stand corrected!)

In the English-speaking world there really haven’t been any decent, thoughtful Villas obituaries. When you Google, what you keep finding on the web is the same press release statement announcing her death and giving a brief summary of her career and accomplishments recycled over and over. Marta says that in Poland, meanwhile, Villas’s death has caused a media storm, which makes sense considering she was their super star equivalent of a Bardot, Monroe or Elizabeth Taylor. Her life was always scandalous and troubled and so, it appears, was Villas’s death. Looking at photos and Youtube clips of Villas in her heyday, she’d clearly modelled herself on Brigitte Bardot. Like Bardot, when Villas retired from show business she devoted herself to animal activism, operating an animal shelter from her home. But unlike Bardot, Villas didn’t have the wealth or resources to adequately maintain her animal sanctuary and shortly before her death the Polish authorities shut down her menagerie due to “overcrowding and insufficient care.” To further multiply the humiliation, Marta says at the same time Villas was also briefly committed to a psychiatric institution. Villas’s only family at the time of her death was her son Krzysztof, to whom she was seemingly estranged (he's apparently given interviews to the Polish media highly critical of his mother). In the initial obituaries it mentioned the cause of her death was unknown and that an autopsy had been ordered. Marta has since said the autopsy revealed nothing abnormal or suspicious about Villas’s death. She’d announced her retirement from public performing earlier this year (her last-ever concert was on Valentine’s Day 2011) and was obviously in declining health. (I’d read something about tuberculosis, but I might have misinterpreted that). It looks like Villas simply died of old age at what these days we think of as the relatively young age of 73.

It would be nice to think Villas had found some serenity in her later years after a stormy life of great success followed by profound personal and professional disappointments. Sadly, that doesn’t appear to be the case. It’s a cliché, but the music of Violetta Villas will live on and surely cult status beckons for this outrageously original artist. The world is a duller place without her!

/ A very young, unpolished but utterly magnetic Violetta Villas at embryonic stage: still with puppy fat, darker hair, possibly pre-nose job. Adorable /



/ Sex kitten Villas in the late 1960s. I love the Jayne Mansfield squeals she emits at the beginning of the song, and the wild costume changes (leopard print bathing suit, Little Bo Peep; towards the end she appears to be wearing the rubber mini skirt and thigh boots of a dominatrix) /



/ Villas tearing apart "Strangers in the Night" ... accompanied by a troupe of mimes in face paint. Watch for the climactic moment when she smashes her Champagne glass /



/ Violetta Villas at her absolute zenith in 1970, singing in Russian in the 1971 Polish film Dzieciol. Wow ... just wow. This is majestic. Let's remember Violetta Villas this way! /

DJ Set List for Gail and Jasja's Leaving Party 15 April 2011

/ Gail and Jasja (aka Sparkle Moore and Cad van Swankster, the proprietors of London's most chi chi vintage clothing emporium The Girl Can't Help It) were given a raucous and boozy send-off at their farewell party at Ryan’s in Stoke Newington on 15 April 2011 /

/ (Gail and Jasja were married on 1 April 2011. The sugar couple from the top of their wedding cake looks eerily like them -- down to the fine details of Jasja's tattoos!) /

In the 1990s Gail was the hostess / promoter of sleazily atmospheric club nights like More than Vegas and Blue Martini – clubs that plunged Soho back to its seedy neon-lit 1950s golden age. I discovered More than Vegas early on when I first arrived in London and it was instrumental in making me the twisted fuck I am today!

I didn’t take as many photos as I should have at the party (how could I not have photographed Ms Mansfield?!). I was DJ’ing for the first half of the night, which was a bit chaotic (technical problems a-go go!) and afterwards drank a helluva lot to de-stress. (Did I mention it was a boozy night?). Gail and Jasja have re-located to San Diego and will be much-missed by their friends in London. (Jasja would definitely want me to point out The Girl Can't Help It is staying put at Alfie's Antique Market and is in the safe hands of Laurie Vanian).

It was an honour to be asked by Gail to be one of the DJ's at their leaving-do. Going to More than Vegas in the early 90s was definitely a factor in making me want to pursue DJ'ing, and the More than Vegas resident DJs like Jake Vegas and (especially) the sublime Ms Mansfield were certainly an inspiration.

/ The Way They Were: Ms Mansfield and Jake Vegas in the old days at More than Vegas at The St Moritz on Wardour Street /

/ Gail and Mari in the nineties /

Gail's only musical stipulation was she wanted lots of Eartha Kitt, Jayne Mansfield and Violetta Villas so I definitely played more than one track by each (well, except for Violetta as I only have one song by her!). Playing at least one song by the original Sparkle Moore, the great female rockabilly chanteuse Gail swiped her name from, was also compulsory.

/ Me DJ'ing at Gail and Jasja's leaving party. Can I just say in my own defence, it was very hot in that corner and I'd been running up and down the stairs earlier ... /

I was the first DJ on and the whole audio situation was very much cobbled together at the last minute and very stressful (and I was pounding back beer to combat the stress), so my set wasn't as smooth and flowing as I would have liked. But anyway, here it is ...

Woh! Woh! Yea! Yea! The Dynamos
Vesuvius - The Revels
Rock-A-Bop - Sparkle Moore
Boss - The Rumblers
Sweet Little Pussycat - Andre Williams
St Louis Blues - Eartha Kitt
Esquerita and The Voola - Esquerita
The Whip - The Originals
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Beaver Shot - The Periscopes
Chatta Nooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
She Wants to Mambo - Johnny Thunders and Patti Paladin
Bossa Nova Baby - Elvis Presley
Heartbreak Hotel - Ann-Margret
Beat Girl - Adam Faith
Crawlin' - The Untouchables
Fever - Timi Yuro
Peter Gunn Twist - The Jesters
Comin' Home - The Delmonas
I Was Born to Cry - Dion
Summertime - Little Esther
You're My Thrill - Chet Baker
Willow Weep for Me - The Whistling Artistry of Muzzy Marcellino
Little Things Mean a Lot - Jayne Mansfield
Dragon Walk - The Noble Men
I Love the Life I Live - Esquerita
Czterdziesci Kasztanów (Forty Chestnuts) - Violetta Villas

See more photos from Gail and Jasja's leaving party here

See photos from Gail and Jasja's last-ever yard sale here

(Looking at this set list in retrospect, am sure I've left some songs off ... I definitely played Eartha Kitt's version of "Mack the Knife" in there somewhere. I DJ'd for at least 90-minutes, so there must have been more songs than that! Ah, well. They're lost in the mists of time now).

Valentine's Day 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ Slick it back: Chet. Oh, Chet /

For the Valentine’s-themed Dr Sketchy at The Old Queen's Head I’d intended to use Chet Baker as my template and base the whole night around lush, romantic, lingering 1950s Cool Jazz. Even the most cursory glance at my set list shows I didn’t remotely stick to that idea! It would have felt too slow, downbeat and same-y if I had, but in honour of Valentine’s Day there are definite pockets of elegant swirling 50s make-out music amongst the more usual sleaze and kitsch musical selections.

/ A young Nico in her fashion model days circa 1964 /

I played three versions of Rodgers and Hart’s “My Funny Valentine”: the 1954 Chet Baker vocal, the 1952 Chet Baker instrumental and German angel of death chanteuse Nico’s striking 1985 interpretation. In 1964 when pre-Velvet Underground Nico was still a fashion model and occasional actress aspiring to be a singer, she scored a residency at The Blue Angel cabaret lounge on 55th Street in New York. Billed as “That Girl from La Dolce Vita!” she sang jazz standards backed by a trio of piano, bass and drums. One of her songs was “My Funny Valentine.” By then the song was already synonymous with the exquisite but corrupt James Dean of jazz Chet Baker: his version, whether sung or played on his trumpet, was so hushed, so brooding and desolate it was almost eerie. To me Baker and Nico (as an impressionable teenager I had crushes on both) always seemed like psychic twins: so beautiful and talented, so heroin-ravaged and doomed. They both exuded tragedy and ruined glamour. In his definitive Nico biography (The Life and Lies of an Icon, 1993) Richard Witts quotes Nico recalling:

“I first heard (My Funny Valentine) played by the jazz man Chet Baker. He played his trumpet and then he sang it. I thought this was very clever, like a beautiful magical trick. Do you know that Chet Baker introduced me to heroin? (Unsurprisingly, the journalist interviewing Nico asked her to clarify what she meant: did she actually shoot up with Baker?) No, no. I mean I first saw heroin. He first showed it to me. I was about 24 or so, in New York when I first started to sing – he was around. Of course everyone thinks I started when I was a baby. They know nothing. Chet Baker was so handsome, such a beauty, but he was in love with drugs too much to be in love with me. “

Young man with a horn: Chet Baker

/ Below: Baker in 1959 /



Fast forward two decades: Chet Baker died on 13 May 1988, falling to his death from a hotel window in Amsterdam; Nico would be dead by 18 July 1988, dying of a cerebral haemorrhage after falling off her bike in Ibiza. On her last album (1985’s Camera Obscura) Nico played homage to Chet Baker and her stint at The Blue Angel by recording a stunningly bleak rendition of “My Funny Valentine.” Witts notes in his biography that Nico sings it in Baker’s key of C minor – the lowest she ever sang. Death, heroin, high cheekbones, doom and gloom: hope everyone had a happy Valentine’s Day!



Das Ich Dich Wiederseh (Taking a Chance on Love) - Marlene Dietrich
Les Amour Perdues - Serge Gainsbourg
The Man I Love - Hildegard Knef
Someone to Watch Over Me - Jimmy Scott
If I Should Lose You - George Shearing
Hurt - Timi Yuro
Life is But a Dream - The Harptones
Sleep Walk - Henri Rene & His Orchestra
Don't Do It - April Stevens
Little Things Mean a Lot - Jayne Mansfield
Directly from My Heart - Little Richard
Stop Cryin' - Little Esther
Your Love is Mine - Ike and Tina Turner
Imagination - The Quotations
Tight Skirt, Tight Sweater - The Versatones
Night Scene - The Rumblers
I Fell in Love - Mamie van Doren
Bewildered - Shirley & Lee
Sea of Love - The Earls of Suave
Love is the Greatest Thing - Mae West
Ebb Tide - Al Anthony
I Fall in Love Too Easily - Angel Torsen
Blues for Beatniks - John Barry (Beat Girl soundtrack)
Dansero - Don Baker Trio
The Point of No Return - Diana Dors
It's Only Make Believe - Billy Fury
Kiss Me - Dolores Gray
Cherry Pink - Bill Black Combo
Jezabel - Edith Piaf
Makin' Out - Jody Reynolds
Teach Me Tonight - Wanda Jackson
Pop Slop - Bela Sanders
That's What I Like - Ann-Margret
Make Love to Me - June Christy
That's a Pretty Good Love - Big Maybelle
You Can't Stop Her - Bobby Marchan & The Clowns
Crybaby - The Scarlets
Revellion - The Revels
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
Jungle Drums - Earl Bostick
Beat Girl - Adam Faith (Beat Girl soundtrack)
When Your Lover Has Gone - Chet Baker
Killer - Sparkle Moore (screaming version)
Take It Off - The Genteels
Let's Go Sexin' - James Intveld
Hot Licks - The Rendells
Men - Lizabeth Scott
Last Night - Lula Reed
My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker (vocal)
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - Eartha Kitt
My Funny Valentine - Nico
My Funny Valentine - Chet Baker (instrumental)
Cry Me a River - Dinah Washington
I'm Through with Love - Marilyn Monroe
I'm a Fool to Want You - Billie Holiday
I Put a Spell on You - Nina Simone
I've Been in Love Before - Marlene Dietrich
No Good Lover - Mickey & Sylvia
Moi je joue - Brigitte Bardot
Uptown to Harlem - Johnny Thunders & Patti Paladin
Hanky Panky - Nancy Sit
Czterdziesci Kasztanów (Forty Chestnuts) - Violetta Villas

/ Speaking of Violetta Villas -- here's another treasure un-earthed by the sublime Polski sex kitten on Youtube (the title translates as "There is No Love without Jealousy"). I love the little Jayne Mansfield-esque coos and squeals she makes at the beginning /

19 January 2011 Dr Sketchy Set List

/ Sweater Girl: A sultry, hair-hopping young Violetta Villas working the projectile bullet bra look /

The second Dr Sketchy of the New Year: It was great to be back at The Royal Vauxhall Tavern where the sound system is loud and powerful, and I’m finally getting to grips with setting up the decks myself and working the stage lights (seriously, all the buttons in the DJ booth looks like the control panels of a helicopter!). And I didn’t once turn on the dry ice machine by mistake this time, which definitely represents progress. The only screw-up was the wrong music got played for our burlesque performer Annette Betty’s performance. I was told to play track one and I did, but it turned out it was the wrong song (there was more than one song burnt onto the CD). Fortunately, Betty is such a consummate pro that when she realised it was the wrong music, she just did the routine meant for that song, it looked spectacular and no one was any the wiser!

Annette Betty's Showreel:


As per usual, the emphasis musically was on creating a vibe somewhere between desperate vintage sleaze and punk lounge. Midway along the set list you may you notice a glut of sex-wracked female singers like Sparkle Moore, Ann-Margret and Mamie van Doren wailing about how they’re desperate for a man/boy/daddy, etc -- that was background music for our male model Luke’s pose.

Beaver Shot - The Periscopes
Baby, Scratch My Back - Slim Harpo
Intoxica - The Centurions
Bikini with No Top on the Top - Mamie van Doren & June Wilkinson
Vesuvius - The Revels
The Deacon Moves In - Little Esther
The Whip - The Originals
Fujiyama Mama - Annisteen Allen
Bewildered - Shirley & Lee
My Daddy Rocks Me - Mae West
Baby Come Back - Esquerita
Where Yo Is? Fat Daddy Holmes
Stop Talking, Start Walking - Annie Laurie
Hot Licks - The Rendells
Unitar Rock - Willie Joe & His Unitar
Honky Tonk - The Bill Black Combo
Harbour Lights - Dinah Washington
A Cheat - The Earls of Suave
Fever - Nancy Sit
Mack the Knife - Ann-Margret
Trash Can - Ken Williams
Suey - Jayne Mansfield
Blockade - The Rumblers
Crawfish - Johnny Thunders & Patti Paladin
Tall Cool One - The Wailers
Dansero - The Don Baker Trio
Tuxedo Junction - The Bill Black Combo
Tico Tico Samba - Don Swan & His Orchestra
Tiger - Sparkle Moore
Big Man - Carl Matthews
Jim Dandy - Ann-Margret
Daddy Daddy - Ella Mae Morse
I Need a Man - Barbara Pittman
Oh Honey - Gloria Wood
Seperate the Men from the Boys - Mamie van Doren
I Want a Boy - Connie Russell
Tony's Got Hot Nuts - Faye Richmonde
Her Love Rubbed Off - Carl Perkins
No Good Lover - Mickey & Sylvia
Chicken Grabber - The Nite Hawks
Boss - The Rumblers
Champagne Taste - Eartha Kitt
Lonely Hours - Sarah Vaughan
Harlem Nocturne - Martin Denny
Blondie's Strip - John Barry (Beat Girl soundtrack)
Do It Again - April Stevens
You're My Thrill - Chet Baker (instrumental)
Love Me or Leave Me - Lena Horne
Blues in My Heart - The John Buzon Trio
The Flirt - Shirley & Lee
Little Girl - John & Jackie
Intoxica - The Revels
That Makes It - Jayne Mansfield
Don't You Feel My Leg - Blue Lu Barker
Honey Rock - Barney Kessel
Kiss - Marilyn Monroe
Willow Weep for Me - The Whistling Artistry of Muzzy Marcellino
A Guy Who Takes His Time - Marlene Dietrich
Chattanooga Choo Choo - Denise Darcel
The Girl Can't Help It - Little Richard
Torture Rock - Rockin' Belmarx

/ Below: astonishing Polish diva Violetta Villas /

An artist who I didn’t play, but who’s become something of an obsession recently is the demented Polish diva Violetta Villas. I first read about her on the reliably excellent The Homoerratic Radio Show blog, was intrigued and did some Googling – and uncovered a treasure trove! Violetta Villas (nee Violetta Élise Cieślak, born 1938) is a real find and surely a cult figure (and kitsch gay icon?) in waiting. In the 1960s Villas was an international singing sensation, acted in Hollywood films and headlined at casinos like The Dunes in Las Vegas, where she did duets with the key superstars of the era: Frank Sinatra, Paul Anka, Barbra Streisand, Charles Aznavour, Sammy Davis, Jr., Eartha Kitt, Dean Martin. (Please God let there be footage somewhere of Villas and Kitt duetting!) But (outside of Poland) Villas seems almost completely forgotten today. Because of her astonishing operatic vocal range Villas is routinely and understandably described as the Polski Yma Sumac (she’s also been called "the singing toast of the continent", "a voice like French champagne” and my personal favorite, "the voice of the atomic age": Vallas certainly is explosive) – but that only hints at her strange allure. Judging by some of the clips on Youtube, Villas is a berserk outsider artist; a wild low-budget Eastern European hybrid of Jayne Mansfield/Anita Ekberg in La Dolce Vita / Brigitte Bardot / Charo; a punk (her image and un-hinged performances can suggest Nina Hagen or Jayne County); and a self-parodic possessor of a camp /kitsch drag queen sensibility (is it deliberate or naive? Certainly her persona evokes the films of the Kuchar brothers and John Waters. There’s something wonderfully grotesque about how Villas deliberately buries her own natural beauty under the matted bouffant wigs and thick transvestite/ clown-like make-up).

/ The divine Violetta at her make-up table: "the natural look?" Bollocks to that! /

/ This jaw-dropping video represents Violetta Villas (a vision in red chiffon) in full-throttle sex kitten mode. It’s from a 1971 Polish film called Dzieciol. The song she’s singing is “Oczy czarne”: I’ve been reliably informed it’s Russian, not Polish and it translates as something like “Black Eyes” or “Dark Eyes." Note: this essential video keeps getting deleted from YouTube. I'll replace it as frequently as I can! /


Wait! It gets even better. I work with a Polish woman called Marta and she’s been filling me in on what Violetta Villas is up to today. It turns out Villas actually lives in Marta’s village! According to Marta, Villas lives in a mansion with a menagerie of something like 70 dogs and 40 cats. Villas seems to have taken Brigitte Bardot as a role model: certainly in her youth Villas obviously styled herself to look like Bardot (or a parody of Bardot?), and now she’s an animal rights activist, too. Marta is obviously based in London now but visits Poland frequently; she says she hasn’t seen Villas in several years but every time she does, even when Villas is just going out to buy groceries, she’s always the diva, dolled up with her signature thick showgirl false eye lashes and long tousled bouffant wigs (or extensions or weave, whatever she’s got going on up there: it doesn’t look organic to any human scalp). I imagine the 72-year old Villas now as an Eastern European hybrid of Baby Jane Hudson / Barbara Cartland / Zsa Zsa Gabor – which may sound cruel, but I mean it with affection. Like many a show business diva, apparently over the years Villas has had issues with drugs, alcohol and romantic and career disappointments. Let's hope she's found serenity back in Poland surrounded by her pets.

Viva, Violetta Villas!

/ A tired and emotional Violetta Villas - perhaps after a few too many glasses of Polski Wodka? /

To end with, a lovely softcore clip of burlesque legend Blaze Starr having a bubble bath. I love how she inspects herself in the mirror afterwards, and how straight out of the tub her cotton candy bouffant hair and thick make-up are immaculate .