As an Ohio musical chauvanist, I have a soft spot in my heart for Phil Ochs. Here he is in 1967 at the Bitter End in New York, singing his song “The War is Over”.

If only.

Notice Phil’s very, very loose rhythm. This made Van Dyke Parks’ job on the lush A&M recordings a very difficult one. Like a lot of solo performers, Phil had his own idiosyncratic sense of time.

The ‘Mound City’ in question is St. Louis, jazz kazooist Red McKenzie’s hometown. Between 1923 and 1936 he led a musical moveable feast called the Mound City Blue Blowers that often contained some of the best names in jazz, including:

• Eddie Lang
• Eddit Condon
• Gene Krupa
• Jack Teagarden
• Coleman Hawkins
• Frankie Trumbauer

While McKenzie wasn’t a virtuoso solist on the kazoo, he was a very fine singer whose recorded legacy has held up very well. You can hear 50 of his tracks at the excelent site redhotjazz.com.