My partner, Jason, turned me on to the 1960’s New York girl group—The Cake. Mr. Peacock is mesmerized every time he watches their 1967 performance from the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour (see video above)—singing “You Can Have Him.” The Cake girls step out from a pink sherbet colored Dali-esque set; immediately Chelsea Lee (blond hair) & Barbara Morillo (dark brunette) start singing and grooving, while seventeen year old, Jeanette Jacobs, stands completely still—like a Japanime deer frozen in the headlights.
The Cake recorded two albums, between 1966-1968, of R&B standards and their own original material. Jeanette Jacobs sadly passed away in 1980, at age 30.Here’s another video (above) of The Cake performing "Mockingbird" in 1967 on the television special, Popendipity. Again, heavy-eyed Jeanette Jacobs, barely moves, while Chelsea and Barbara slide around on the floor. Who knows…maybe this was their schtick to have Jeanette just stand there—I guess we’ll never know? What do you think?
5 comments:
Hmmm... Jeanette's lack of emotion/energy is intriguing. Was it a gimmick though up by their producer, or perhaps it was medically induced... Either way, I'm interested to learn more!
Love it!
You can't take your eyes off of her...or at least I can't. You're completely right about the Japanime deer.
I think it was probably initiated by stagefright (or drugs...or both)...and someone had the genius idea to make it into a gimmick.
This is so great! I really am intrigued by the way she just stands there. I could not be standing next to two fabulous dancers and remain so stoic and unaffected by their own catchy beat.
Maybe she just wasn't that into it:)
Either way the first video made me laugh out loud. For a second, I thought it was a SNL sketch.
Very cool, defintely she was the very first "shoegazer", almost goth actually. Velvet Underground was the first full band of "shoegazers", but this girl from Cake is now declared the grandmother of Shoegaze.
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