"The Shoes of the Fisherman's Wife are Some Jiveass Slippers"

There are plenty of silly-cum-profound song titles out there. You could make a long list that ultimately would be very tiresome. But this particular one, by strange-name master Charles Mingus (he was a bassist too), has a particular lunacy all its own.

Until searching Wikipedia just now, I presumed that the title sprung fully-formed from the head of Mr Mingus (his surname really ought to be spelt ‘Menzies’). But it turns out, and obviously it’s not coincidence, that there was a book released in 1963, 9 years before Mingus’s, called “The Shoes of the Fisherman”. There was a movie too, starring the Mighty (Anthony) Quinn. The book’s got a priesty-looking person on the cover, so it’s a religious thing. How the slippers fit in, I’ll never know.

Oh, other compositions by Charles Mingus include: “All The Things You Could Be By Now if Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother”, “Oh Lord Don't Let Them Drop That Atomic Bomb on Me”, “She's Just Miss Popular Hybird”, “Pithecanthropus Erectus” and my personal favourite, “Don't Be Afraid, the Clown's Afraid Too” – on the same album as the present selection. Oh those wacky bassists.

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