Here's To You, Mrs. Miller

Have you ever heard of the fabulous Mrs. Elva Miller (1907-97)? In the mid 1960s she had a brief period of fame for singing all sorts of well-known pop songs and absolutely making them her own. She sings like no one else I have ever heard.

She was discovered around 1960 through a self-financed single she made. She was featured on Garry Owens' radio show after that (he produced Laugh-In in the late 60s) and was signed to Capitol Records in 1965.

She had a brief period of popularity due to her singing being so - unique. At first of course the poor lady thought she was being heralded for her good diction, but to her credit, once she realized that her fame was for other reasons, she went along with the joke and deliberately missed the beat. But as the Wikipedia article says, "she was capable of skipping beats and missing cues all by herself," too.

She put out several albums, which include her interpretation of Beatles songs like "A Hard Day's Night" and "Yellow Submarine." She did quite a version of "Downtown," the 1966 Petula Clark hit. And a stunning version of "These Boots Are Made For Walking."

There are some good clips over at YouTube. It was very hard to choose which ones to present here. Seriously, Mrs. Miller is amazing. Here is her unique interpretation of "A Hard Day's Night":



And here's "Let's Hang On," originally sung by Frankie Valli:



Album cover is from Frank's Vinyl Museum.

The Pull'N Clean Queen

From now on, this is how I plan to clean the oven:

1. Put on plaid vintage dress and gold plastic crown.

2. Make sure I have a pink oven. If not, order one! I can give orders, I am the Queen:

Fetch me a pink oven at once, minions! Better redo the whole kitchen in pink, while you're at it. And make it snappy, I have some regal poses to strike!

Yes, Your Majesty, coming right up.

Oh, and also I'd like a cappuccino and some Crown Jewels as long as you're going out. I like amethysts and pink diamonds, don't forget.

3. Once that's all been sorted out, I will pull out the Pull Out Thingie on the oven, raise my sponge and smile.

That's it, that's all you've got to do.

[From Vintage Ad Browser.]

Next time, I'm going to make fun of an album cover, I think. Or a postcard. Why should advertisements have all the fun?

My New Pencil Pal

Back in the day, this was all you needed to be popular in grade school. Apparently. And it does look sort of fun, but aren't these children a little old for toy pencil sharpeners? And where is the teacher while this is going on? I know that most of my grade school teachers would not have stood for all this pencil-sharpening fun.

This does not look like an open classroom, which is the only place I can imagine a scene like this. But my open classroom (4th grade, circa 1971) had no desks, because that wasn't groovy. You had to move around the room doing whatever you felt like doing and fill in a contract at the end of each week saying what you did. I played Monopoly mostly. Didn't need a pencil for that.

Actually, I would have loved a Snoopy pencil sharpener. I can tell you one thing though: I would have kept it at home. Because my friends would have laughed their heads off and teased me for the rest of the year for lugging a TOY to school.

I did have a piggy bank that looked exactly like this pencil sharpener - still have it, except the rubber plug at the bottom, which was where you got your money out eventually, has disintegrated, thus rendering it useless as a financial tool.

I would also like to know why the hero of the ad has short sleeves in the beginning and long sleeves after that - it looks like the same shirt otherwise. Did he have some sort of tailoring mishap involving the pencil sharpener? Yeah, I have no idea what that means either.

Many thanks to Comic Book Ads for this one, which is probably from the early 1970s.