Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - "Yakety Sax"

Episode Date: November 10, 2025

Alex Schmidt and Katie Goldin explore why the song "Yakety Sax" is secretly incredibly fascinating.Visit http://sifpod.fun/ for research sources and for this week's bonus episode.Come hang out with us on the SIF Discord: https://discord.gg/wbR96nsGg5

Yackety Sacks, known for being a song. Famous for... Nobody thinks much about it, so let's have some fun. Let's find out why Yackety Sacks is secretly incredibly fascinating. Hey there, folks. Hey there, Cipelopods. Welcome to a whole new podcast episode, a podcast all about why being alive is more interesting than people think it is. My name's Alex Schmidt, and I'm not alone because I'm joined by my co-host Katie Golden.

Katie! Yes. What is your relationship to or opinion of the song Yakutti Sacks? Well, Alex, uh, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah. Good job, buddy. Yeah. You know, it is, I like it. It is like when I look at my dog and I think about what's happening in her head, I imagine it to be the Yakutty Sax song, which is 24-7.

It is a perfect comedy, anything. Yeah. I also, I'll just go ahead, because like, copyrights exist, so we won't be playing entire songs on the episode. But let's just hear a quick clip of Yakety Sax in case people don't. don't think they know it, because you have heard it if you think you haven't heard it, folks. I mean, I already sing it pitch perfect. And Katie did it perfectly. But, you know, go ahead.

You can. So that's it. So that's it. You folks know it. You've heard it. I know that it was used on the Benny Hill show. watched that television program missed me by a few years. Zach's same relationship. I knew it as the Benny Hill Show from the UK. It was a theme there was my understanding.

And I have now seen clips of the Benny Hill show, but only to research this. Yeah. All I know is it is British, I think, right? Yeah, it's British. And I understood it to be lowbrow, which it is. Okay. There's a lot of, like, physical comedy sex jokes. Ah, nice.

Yeah. And lowbrow can be good. We'll talk about the good and the bad later. There's basically three giant takeaways on the episode. One's about where the song came from. One's about Benny Hill and one's about right-wing movements that are being opposed by the playing of Yakutty Sax. Oh, yes.

Okay. If folks are excited about any of those things, those are the three big takeaways of this episode. And also thank you to Brogden Bald Mountain on the Discord. Brogden Bald Mountain suggested this topic. and it was very popular in the polls. If I had quicker video editing skills, there's a video of ICE agents chasing some guy, who's, you know, just normal unarmed guy,

and he's like, you know, running away from them, and they can't catch him. And I imagine it in my head sped up with the Yakutty Sax music over it. I think that would be very good. If no one's done that, they should, and that's a very common practice now. for people to just put yakutty sacks in that kind of clip.

Yeah. It's very funny. I mean, it's not funny. The situation is not funny, but it is fun to make fun of them when they fail to chase after someone because they have no training and they're just cosplaying as stormtroopers. Yeah, the latest one I saw was a food delivery person in Chicago with a bicycle, just easily evading them without even pedaling that fast. Maybe that's the one you're thinking of. No, that's a separate one. There's multiple ones.

So that's a separate one. The first one is just a guy escaping on foot. And I got to emphasize, these are just people. Like, they're not, you know, these are not like hardened criminals evading justice. Like, these are people who may have only said, like, hey, nuts to you, ice, and then they get chased. So, you know, it's very funny to watch that happen, yes. That fits our very short number section this week. I mentioned there's three takeaways, but we have a real fast numbers section before that.

So let's hit that. Because on every episode we lead a quick set of fascinating numbers and statistics, this week that is in a segment called, hey, stat sister, ain't that Mr. Alex on the podcast show, the sit-pot show, the way he counts ain't fair, you know. I can, like, taste Mike's Hard Lemonade when you sing that song and, you know, smell the sweat, of a bunch of college students. So thanks for that. Yeah, it's not because of the song Katie is taping in a frat house, folks.

Yeah. They swap the water out of her mug, these scamps. Todd, the Turtle, is doing a kegstand right now. Yeah, this is totally my scene. You know me. That name was submitted by Tech Jack on the Discord. Very funny pick. We have a new name for this segment every week.

Please make a Missillian making best possible. Submit yours through Discord or to siftpot. at gmail.com. And only a couple of numbers, and they kind of go with all the takeaways I mentioned, the first number is October 7th, 2025. That's, wait a minute. October 7th, 2025. That's when protesters in Portland, Oregon played yakety sacks on a speaker outside of an

ice facility. There's extra legal constitutionally violating ice facilities in many American cities right now. And this made global news. this event because the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security was trying to look imposing on like the roof of the Portland Ice Facility. And then people played yakety sacks beneath her and kind of deflated that. Yeah, like they've been trying to portray the Portland protesters as this like rampaging horde of hardened criminal, menacing, dangerous people that are just burning the city to the ground and instead in one of the one of the videos like released by

homeland security you like they like pan down to the protesters and there's like some guy in a chicken costume holding up a sign uh it's this exact group yeah the chicken costume and a couple other people yeah and i've got to get into politics because we just live this life now but like it is really just yeah things were very normal in portland and then ice and federal troops showed up and made a bunch of disruptions and now people are protesting it and it's like ah see look they're protesting it's like yeah because you came and messed with people the funny thing is that these protests I think it's a I love this strategy I think it's brilliant they make themselves as silly as possible so like they're

dressing in frog like inflatable frog costumes and other like delightful animals like unicorns. I think I saw a marmoset costume, which is like, man. Really? Like, big ups. Big ups to that. I love the obscure inflatable animal costumes. Like, good job. And it's, yeah, what biology oriented spirit Halloween do I go to to get that? Fantastic. Do every, like, do a bunch of different type of lemurs. And, you know, I just, I love it because it's peaceful, right? Like, they're, they're, showing up in these costumes and playing this music. It is a form of peaceful protest.

I saw a band playing outside of a nice facility, and they were wearing, like, banana costumes. And they were not playing yakety sacks, but they were playing music. Oh, no, a clarinetist. Right. Everyone knows what a danger to society Squidward is. It's exactly like you say, like this Portland event, Christy Gnome, the U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security, was wearing sunglasses and black clothing on the roof and trying to frown impressively. But, you know, the news played the clip with its audio.

So the audio is yakety sack. Someone just put that on below her. It's so good. Because she's being silly. Like the president of the U.S. is saying, quote, when a store owner, there are very few of them left. But when a store owner rebuilds a store, they build it out of plywood, end quote, which is just completely not anything that's happening in Portland. And so the government is detached enough from reality that protesters who already want to be peaceful are just choosing comedy on top of that. Like, what else do you do?

Yeah. I mean, I think it's really important. I think it's showing how absurd this whole thing is. It's very surreal. and people. Italians are very confused, guys. I want you to know in the, like, for everyone in the U.S., this is not seen as normal by the rest of the world.

This is seen as very weird. So you're, that, the... Yeah, good. Great. So you're feeling, you're feeling right now where it's like this does not feel normal. It's like you are correct. Everyone is pretty horrified by what's going on. So you're not, yeah, you're not crazy.

it's a thank you the rest of the world for your yakutty solidarity yeah that you understand that this is weird yeah you can't be taken seriously with yakety sacks playing in the background it's impossible and the next number that is sort of inside the podcast but the next number is october 6th 2025 hey that was also a week ago yeah it's one day prior to this newsmaking portland yakutty sacks event. October 6th is when I shared our monthly topic poll with SIF listeners, and Yackety Sachs was the immediate leading choice out of more than 50 options. So people want a yakety sacks episode completely independent of politics, too. People demand it. They crave it. It's a global icon, regardless of recent anti-fascist news. Yeah, a bunch of yakety heads.

We're going to come back to fighting the global right wing, because there's just so much. to talk about beyond that. This weird, goofy sax song that you've heard is globally famous, even though it's only existed for a few decades. It's amazing. It's got bars, I would say. Like, it's a generally fun, catchy song. It is.

And yet, it's also inherently comedic somehow. The last number to get us into that is the year 1990. Mm-hmm. 1990. That is when a sax player named Boots Randolph gave an amazing interview where he said, quote, Yakety Sax will be my trademark. I'll hang my hat on it. It's kept me alive. Wow. So is Boots the, uh, is he, did he write Yakety Sax? Yeah, he and another session musician named James, nicknamed Spider Rich. Boots Randolph and James Spider Rich made this song. And the famous version you've heard is by them, unless you heard a Benny Hill House Band version from decades

later. Mega takeaway number one. Yackety Sax is a combination of Jewish-American songwriting, black American musicians, a white Appalachian survivor of the Great Depression, and European military marches. Those four different things. I mean, this is a coalition. This is a winning coalition. I feel like it's a mini history of all mid-century American music.

Because this became famous in 1963. But, yeah, it's, again, Jewish-American songwriting, black American musicians, a white Appalachian survivor of the Great Depression. And then the tunes of European military marches. That combination created Yakety Sax. Where, okay, but we're in Europe before I, before I'm, I can actually say England and Chechia, the Czech Republic. Okay. I don't know how to feel about that. It's fine. It's not a, it's not the bad thing. Yeah.

There's also sort of a mini takeaway number two here that I'll just say to mini takeaway number two. Yackety Sax is inspired by and a borderline rip-off of yak-a-y-y-y-y-hack. Okay, and I'm, okay, that's... There's a separate, also-popular novelty song called yak-a-y-yak. Okay, yes.

And we'll play a clip of it because it's also one that you've heard, but you just need to be refreshed. You might not remember the title. Here's a clip. Take out the papers and the trash. Or you don't get no... spending cash

If you don't scrub that kitchen blur You ain't gonna rock and roll no more Yackety Yack Don't know back I feel like more people know Yackety Sacks versus Yackety Yack

The way I know Yakety Yack I mean maybe I would know it anyways But yeah There was a bad I'm sorry Maybe there are some real Yackety Yack cartoon

enthusiasts out there but the cartoon I did not find good I thought it was a bad cartoon it's about a yak and his friend who was the little guy with a pineapple for a head um

yeah and the and the yak is it's like a Himalayan bovine right like for fuzzy hoofy yak yeah exactly yeah and uh yeah it doesn't really look exactly like because he's got it didn't make any sense but I

watch the intro to it because of the song, and then, you know, change a channel when the actual show would start. Because the show is bad. Oh, wow. And then as soon as the actual cartoon would start, just like change the channel because it's like, all right, I got the good part out of this. Both those titles are iconic. Both the songs are iconic. And I had just never put together in my head that one might have been inspired or ripping off the other, even though clearly.

Yeah. Lots of key sources here. Three different obituaries of saxophone. player Boots Randolph from the LA Times, the New York Times, and Canada's CBC, and a wonderful feature for Salon.com by senior culture critic Melanie McFarland, and then an essay by music producer David Lawson for a literary review called The Museum of Americana. The topic of this show, Yakety Sax, without people singing, that became a hit song in 1963 as recorded by musician Boots Randolph, who's from Appalachia. He's who I mentioned, the white Appalachian

Survivor of the Depression. And he first recorded it five years earlier in 1958 as a direct inspiration and kind of rip-off of yak-a-y-y-yak, which was a pop hit in 1958. I mean, was he real open about it? Was it like a, because it seems like with the title, you're not trying to hide it. Exactly. I, in general, feel good about his use of it. Because it turns out that this title yakety sacks expressed to the public that the saxophone is yakady in the way that the saxophone in yakity yak is yakety, right? Like it's establishing yakety as a quality that a pop fan in the 1950s would understand. Right.

And how did the coasters, like the guys who did the yakity yak, how do they feel about it? And they seem good with it, too. And also, basically nobody knows. The Coasters is the name of the band that made Yackety Yack. It's the guys singing about a child and being told by their parents don't talk back. They're a black American R&B group. And then the song was written by a Jewish-American songwriting duo. And so a whole huge group of people made Yackety Yackety Yack together.

And that led to Yackety Sax. So you've got. yeah mixtures of cultures creating the world's greatest song basically creating a lot of the world's greatest songs and then also on the side yak-a-y-y-y-y-k because it turns out yackety-y-y-y-k is by a songwriting duo that everyone's heard a whole bunch the songwriters are jerry leber and mike stoller also mike stoller is the piano player in yackety-y-y-y-ach but they they wrote hits for a bunch of musicians. Libra and Stoller wrote a song called Kansas City that was a hit for Little Richard and then an R&B staple for The Beatles as a cover. They eventually put it on an album in

1964 after playing it live for years in Germany and the UK. Another Libran Stoller hit is the song Hound Dog. That was a hit for the black musician Big Mama Thornton, who sold half a million singles and topped the R&B charts for 14 weeks. And she thought that was a hit. And then And then Elvis Presley sold more than 10 million copies after her and topped the pop chart, country chart, and R&B chart simultaneously. I mean, I know this was a sort of kind of trend where there would be a song that was done. I mean, obviously the Jewish Americans, but then performed by a black artist, and then later it would get performed by a white artist, and then that would get it sort of national attention

or like even more popular attention, probably because of the. cultural issues at the time, I would assume. Yeah, that was part of it. And the good news with that Kansas City song is that Little Richard sold a lot more copies. The Beatles recorded it as they were finding their way, doing their own thing. Either way, the other good news is that Lieber and Stoller grew up in and around the black communities of East Coast cities and had a positive relationship with the

black community as people. That's always good. Yeah. Yeah, it's part of how they could write for black artists well. Right. Mike Stoller was from Queens, New York, arguably the most diverse borough of New York City then and now. And he also had anti-racist parents. They made a point of sending him to integrated summer camps.

That's where he discovered jazz and R&B. And then Jerry Lieber was from Baltimore. His family's black neighbors befriended them, hired him as a delivery boy for a black-owned grocery store. And also the Polish and Irish and Catholic kids. in Baltimore, discriminated against Lieber in a way tied to being anti-black. Lieber later recalled being told as a child that every Jewish person is a, quote, N-word turned inside out. Oh, for God.

And quote, and I edited it, yeah. Yeah, I mean. So these were Jewish-American people with solid and positive black community connections. And then when they met in L.A., they bonded over both Jewish culture and black culture all at once. I'm unfortunate enough to be aware of online neo-Nazi culture currently, and that kind of sentiment, the idea that, like, Jewish people and black people are conspiring together to take down the white Anglo-Saxon man is like a part of neo-Nazi KKK far-right conspiracy theories. Right, yeah. It's still a thing. I mean, it's disgusting, but that's, yeah, it's been around for a while.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And so the Jewish community and the black community in America, in a very united way, created a lot of music, including yak-a-y-y-hack. And Lieber and Stoller formed their own indie record label called Spark Records, and because they were such huge hitmakers, Atlantic Records, backed them. And then they created many songs for many musicians, and one group was a group called The Coasters. They were named that because they were L.A. R&B musicians willing to move to New York City to work specifically with Libre and Stollers, like West Coast to East Coast, Coasters. Right.

Right. Got it. And on Yackety Yack, it was four musicians. It was Carl Gardner, Billy Guy, Will Dub Jones, and Cornell Gunter. their only number one hit was yackety yak, and then also the other key musician on it is the sax player. He was a bandleader and music producer who was also a top session musician in New York, Curtis Montgomery, best known by the nickname King Curtis. He was especially known for big exciting hooks and riffs like on yakety yak, but also playing for amazing songs. His biggest session credit is a tenor sax part on Aretha Franklin's version of respect.

It's the same guy. So I never played like a reed instrument in high school, but I played like a wind instrument. I played both flute and French horn. Wow. Anti-reed, anti-wood. Wow. I know, right? I know.

I guess pro-tree? Never mind. It's good. But my mouth would get so freaking tired. And I know that like with the reed players, it's like this assimilation. thing because you have to like have a specific umbosure like the position of your mouth has to be really specific you have to have these like muscles yeah breath control or required to do something like yackety yak or yakety sacks uh on the sax phone just seems like completely bonkers yeah yeah

and that was the other kind of thing going on here when boots randolph proceeds to make yakity sacks in reference to yackety yack is it's not just a yackety timbre of sax. It's almost sort of a promise that the saxophone will be really, really technically skilled and excellent, you know? Yeah. Because it's very, very hard to play the saxophone like it is on these wacky songs. It's a silly song with incredible musicianship. The most funny song probably requires the most talented saxophone players. Yeah, if you want to do cartoon music, you have to be amazing at your musician job. And so, yeah, so all these Jewish and black musicians make yak-a-y-y-y-y-k.

And then meanwhile, another musician is one of the top band leaders and session players in Nashville. His name's Boots Randolph, the guy who said it kept him alive, making yak-hity sex. Why did he say that just in terms of his financial situation? Pretty much. Like, he wasn't starving when he made this song. but music did save him and his family from starving. His given name is Homer Lewis Randolph III. Apparently, he doesn't know why he was nicknamed Boots.

It was just a different name than his dad, Homer, the second. But he was born in 1927 in the Appalachians in Western Kentucky. And, you know, when he's two years old, the Great Depression begins. Global stock markets collapse. Seems like a rough time to be in Appalachia. Truly. And so his music love. family says, hey, in the 1930s in this desperately poor depression area, there are local

music contests where the prize is food. We're going to win the contests to not starve. God. Yeah. What a motivation. Yeah, like almost a century later, Randolph tells an interviewer, quote, there were times when we didn't have much to eat, but we always had music. It was standard for us to come home from one of those contests with the car loaded down with cans of corn and peas, boxes, macaroni, bacon, bread, and so forth, end quote. I mean, on one hand, it's messed up that you have to be good at music to, like, eat. Yes.

And then I think there's no other hand. There's just the one hand. It's messed up. And it's also part of, like you mentioned, especially with Elvis Presley, playing Big Mama Thornton's song and getting more attention. When Boots Randolph is playing music connected to the black community, it's partly to remain alive, and that partly makes me feel okay about it. Yeah.

Like, he just wants to live. I mean, yeah, he doesn't seem. He's not profiteering, like, some cigar-chomping record executive. Right. So far, he's not as problematic as Elvis, you know, because, like, all that pomade is really bad for the environment, so. Like, I try to take a tour of Graceland and it's still being cleaned up by guys in hazmat suits. Like, oh, don't stay away, stay away.

It's not okay yet. All that hairspray and pommage is like that, that Elvis caused the hole in the ozone. Like that colonel who was Elvis's handler at Impresario is some sort of the movie annihilation monster. He's mutated and chasing me around. Yeah, like in the substance. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So anyway, Boots Randolph, he learns every instrument he can get his hands on, which includes

the trombone, the ukulele, and the vibraphone. His go-to is the sax. He basically gets his high school diploma to get it. And when he finishes that, the U.S. is in World War II. Randolph uses his amazing music skills that he, you know, just drilled through the Depression to win a spot in the U.S. Army band. Wow. which is paying work and military service all at once.

He's in that till 1946 when they wrap it up or wrap up his service in World War II. So what does like what is sort of the thing that when you're in World War II and you're in the Army band, are you actually like going out and fighting or is it mostly you are doing band stuff in order to keep morale up? Great question. In the Second World War, it's keeping morale up. It's not like Civil War buglers charging with the guys. Right. Yeah.

I always felt like that would suck to have to, like, everyone's got, like, a weapon and you've got a bugle. Or you're a drummer in the army and, like, everyone's got muskets. And it's like, I got some sick beats. Anyways, here I go. And some of those old bugles, the horn points backwards behind you because theoretically you were running in front of the guys with the guns. Yeah. So, uh, seems foolish. That sounds bad. I would not want to be a bugler in a war. I don't want to be in a war, period, but yeah.

Yeah. And so then after he wraps up that job and is even more skilled at music, Randolph returns to the Upland South, moves to Nashville. And quickly in Nashville becomes one of the top country music session players. Eventually, he was in an elite group of session guys that were nicknamed the A team. because just whoever was the most important singer or other famous musician, they would get the A team for their record. And then he says, now that I have a solid paying job doing session music, can I also explore recording some music under my own name and build myself? He and James Spider-Ritch decide to collaborate on a song in 1958. They look at the pop charts and the top song is yak-a-y-y-y-k. And they say, okay, that's our prompts. what is a yakutty piece of music for Boots Randolph.

And so the result is the main melody of Yakutty Sax in the brassy style of King Curtis, played by the also different talented sax player Boots Randolph. So do they actually, like, I'm realizing that I haven't really listened hard enough to them back and forth over and over to kind of see if, like, are they actually borrowing, like, musical phrases from Yakety Yak or is it mostly just the vibes?

They don't quite borrow Yakety Yak's musical phrases. They write a similar but new melody and then they also patted out Yakety Sax by borrowing two military marches. Okay. To just fill in the rest of the song. So it's really not at all plagiarism. It's just using it as inspiration. Yeah, I'm good with it.

It's interpolation of old march music and then inspiration from new pop music. And it's like a lot of, especially modern rap and hip hop or something where there's so much sampling. Like, it's fine. There's two samples of marches in this. And one of them is so obvious, I think most people hear it. And the other is so hard to detect. I'll play the samples of it, but I still have a hard time hearing it and you might not pick it out. Okay.

Let me see. Let's see. So let's start with the difficult one. The difficult one is a couple bars of. a march that's called The Girl I Left Behind The Girl I Left Behind is an English folk song that became popular British Navy military music

for when a ship is leaving on a long voyage or coming back. So here's a clip of a British Navy choir singing a bit of the melody. Again, this will be hard to detect, but here we go. I know some since I crossed the hill a metal and more than man.

Such heavy thoughts my heart of fills its So that's that. I've heard that before. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-a. Yeah, it's out there. But I can see that, yeah. And let's hear the part that's supposed to sound like that of Boots Randolph's Yakety-Sex. Here we go. I see it. It's kind of it.

I actually do see that. Yeah. We hear it. I see it with my ears. Yeah, right. It's not exactly the same, but it's, yeah, there's like a similar thing going on. I don't have, I don't know music theory, so I can't say why, but it's like, yeah, it's there. And then the other one is more obvious because it's become famous circus music.

And it's also the topic of our bonus show. It's a song that's titled Entry of the Gladiators or Entrance of the Gladiators. or entrance of the gladiators. It's by the Czech composer Julius Fuchick. Julius. And I also heard people pronouncing it Julius when I looked it up.

But either way, Julius Fuchick, he wrote this in 1897. Here's a clip of the march that you will recognize, even though you don't know the name entry of the gladiators. Here it is.

Everyone knows. How's this song? It's the poodles on balls trotting out in front of the circus song. Yeah. It's so famous from circuses. It kind of sticks out in Yakety Sax. Here it is in Boots Randolph's Yakety Sax. Yeah.

And so they just kind of wrote a melody that feels like Yakety Jack. and then padded out the song to be song length with pieces of classical music. Yeah. I have no complaints. Yeah. And then they recorded this immediately in 1958 to try to make Randolph's name a bit. And Randolph was also signed to a huge record label. RCA seems to come up a lot on the history of technology and culture in the U.S.

It's not a big company now. But didn't we just talk about the RCA building? Yeah, on lunch atop a skyscraper, yeah. That was the tall skyscraper that people had lunch on. So, like, people in that building probably did paperwork about the 1958 yak-a-sacs. Wow. All connected, Alex. You've got to follow the money all the way to the top.

The top of 30 rack. Yeah. So RCA, they made a smart decision to take Chad Atkins, who was maybe the top of the top. Nashville session musician and an amazing guitarist. They also made him a record executive, and then he signed people like Boots Randolph, but RCAI just could not sell many copies of Yakety Sax. And then in 1961, when Randolph's contract ended, he signed with a small label called Monument Records, correctly predicting that they would just promote his work more because they didn't have anybody else. And he put out a exactly the same, basically,

recording of Yakety Sax with them that made the pop charts. It had at number 35 on the pop charts as this wacky saxophone piece. Wow. Amazing. I mean, it's, the wackiness is infectious. It really is. And it's really joyful. And it's also like actually technically challenging. And if you find video, there's only a few clips out there. But if you find video of Randolph playing it, he's completely stonefaced and serious. He's not showboating or something. Because it's very hard to play a saxophone like this. It's very impressive stuff. Yeah. I mean, like, pinch your lips and imagine there's like a piece of wood there and then you got blow on it until the sound comes out. That's how his saxophone works.

Right. Look it up. Read a book. That's not easy. And then like the last last music history element is other March music stuff because one spark for all of jazz in the United States was the Spanish American War. The Spanish American War was in 1898. there were sort of a Caribbean theater and a Pacific theater of the U.S. becoming the new colonizer of Spanish colonies. And after the U.S. forces were done attacking Cuba, especially, and partly having brass march bands to motivate the troops, they sent the troops back to ports like New Orleans, but just kind of dumped a lot of the brass instruments because they were heavy and they didn't need them for the military band anymore. And that became a lot of the instrument supply for the invention of jazz by black Americans in New Orleans. Wow. So they're just like, they're like, yeah, we don't need these instruments anymore. And people are like, I'll take that. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. It was a lot of guys who also probably weren't very good at their instrument in the military marching band were just like, this was only a work tool. I don't care about music.

Right. And then left it behind, you know. And so then a lot of things like saxophones became jazz instruments. Whoa. Wait, so they actually had, like, saxophones in, like, I've only known saxophones to be, like, a jazz thing. There was, like, a pre-jazz era for saxophones. Yeah, they were invented in the 1840s by a Belgian inventor named Adolf Sax. That's why it's called the saxophone. No, really? Adolf Sachs? Oh, my God. Yeah, his nickname was Adolf. It was Antoine Joseph Saxx. Okay, we'll go with Antoine. So it's the saxophone. We'll go with Antoine because of the Hitler thing. But like...

Sure, that's good thing. It's actually the saxophone. It's like by a guy named Antoine Sacks. And I'm having trouble like because it's always very funny. It's always very funny to me the joke that it's like, it's like, here's the trumpet invented by John Trumpet or whatever, right? You know, like, here's the toaster invented by John Trumpet or whatever. Toaster. I am

shocked that there was actually an Antoine Sax who invented it and he's just like, well, put my name Antoine Joseph Saxx. At a phone at the end of it and then we've got we got ourselves an instrument.

Yeah, along with the sousaphone after John Philip Susa, much less famously the saxophone is named after Antoine Joseph Sacks. Well, I knew about the Susophone. I knew about the Sousa phone. I knew about the Sousa phone being named after John Philip Sousa

But yeah, I had no idea that the saxophone was just named after some guy named Mr. Sacks. Yeah, and it means that like more than a hundred years of music history created Yacchity Sacks. Yeah, like 1800s, a European march and brass people. And then they help lead to a lot of different American music and then a combo of Jewish songwriters and black musicians and a guy from Kentucky trying to survive the Depression add up to Yacety Sacks. I find it a very significant song now. It's not just funny. So what were saxes, like what kind of music were saxes used in before jazz? Like, polka military marches?

Yeah, they're sort of a new kind of clarinet. Like another interesting clarinet. The clarinet didn't go obsolete or anything. So, yeah, everything either big bands, not jazz big bands, but like either large orchestral brassy bands or marching or anything else. People use saxophones. Apparently, ICE is going after clarinetists now. Dangerous, dangerous clarinetists.

And speaking of them, we have two other big takeaways for the episode. But we've done a mega takeaway in all our numbers. Let's take a quick break. And then return with Benny Hill and the fight against the right way. Break. We're back, and our last two takeaways are both particularly British. British. Hello, Britain.

Oi. They're, of course, about this extremely American song, Yakety Sax. Start with takeaway number three. Yackety Sax accidentally became the soundtrack of popular sexist British comedy. Nice. Women, am I right? And this is mostly the Benny Hill show, but other. stuff too. Women, am I right?

Da-da-da-da-da-da. Women love shopping from shoes. Yeah, it's like mostly comedy where men just ogle women all the time, and they're not totally main characters or protagonists. Look at that woman, and she has, she has legs and a butt. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Yeah, and positive elements to this, too, but it's broadly the story of the Benny Hill show. Key sources are clips, I'll link of that. Also, recent reporting from The Guardian, Encyclopedia, Britannica, resources about the UK television channel ITV,

and then a very pro-Benny Hill fan blog called Nostalgia Central, which was helpful in that way. So, Yakety Sachs is almost not known by its name today. It's often just called the Benny Hill theme, or the theme music of the Benny Hill show. And there's also a UK survey from 2015, and the survey asked British TV viewers, to pick the all-time greatest TV theme from the long history of ITV. Americans probably don't know. ITV was the first major UK TV channel outside of the BBC's legal monopoly, and it was for-profit with some government control.

It started airing back in 1954, and in their entire history from 1954 to 2015, they made shows like Downton Abbey that are on other channels in the U.S. Of all the theme songs from all that time, people picked the Benny Hill theme, Yackety Sax. I mean, it's iconic, right? It really works. And it perfectly fits his comedy, which is not just sexism. I was maybe too hard on it at the top of the takeaway.

But what is the Benny Hill show? Who is Benny Hill? What's going on? The British comedian Alfred Hawthorne Hill was a sketch comedian. Alfred Hawthorne. Yeah, his name is. is Alfred Hawthorne Hill. He picked the stage name Benny because he loved the American radio comedian Jack Benny. His actual name doesn't turn into Benny. He's not like Benjamin Hill or something.

Benny's a little bit more of a comedy feel to it than Alfred Hawthorne. Alfred Hawthorne sounds like an admiral. So yeah, it was a good choice. But he was born way back in 1924. And he contributed writing and acting to various BBC radio shows and later television shows in the 1940s, then got his own TV comedy show in 1955. And it wasn't until 1969 that they tried Yakety Sax in one sketch. So he made more than a decade of TV comedy without Yakety Sax as a theme or anything, partly because it didn't exist when he started. I mean, a quick Google search, seems to indicate his style of comedy is like pulling a face. He was huge on pulling a face and props and things that can be wonderful.

And also a lot of the faces were about a lady being hot. And there'd be like a prop erection going on and stuff. Like when I looked up clips of this, it really was the stereotype I'd heard. I'd heard it was all just horny Pratt Falls. And it's a lot of that. It really is. Like a woman in a bikini walks and he goes like, a wuga. and his crotch explodes?

Is that sort of like the... Yeah, like when I saw it was a hospital sketch and when the nurse was hot, a guy's like IV stand it all started evaporating and steaming and exploding and his hat flew off. It was fully just the stereotypes of Benny Hill's jokes.

Yeah. It's so out of date now that that actually does sound a little bit funny because it's like... Right. It's so stupid that it kind of like goes all the way around. down back to being funny.

Yes, and my take on Benny Hill, which folks can disagree with if they want to, is basically that he is exactly the sexist stereotype, but also two other things that are easy to forget, that are more positive within that. One is that he was far from the only person in British comedy doing this stuff. He's just the one that Americans have heard of partly because, like, PBS and stuff will just air Benny Hill repeats. If folks don't know lowbrow British comedy, if they only know the most amazing stuff, they might not know about stuff like the carry-on film franchise that dominated the 1950s into the 70s, also a bunch of TV spinoffs of it, which is this exact same kind of comedy. Even Monty Python, I feel like when there are ladies in Monty Python, it's either one of the guys playing an objectively unattractive woman or an actress like Carol Cleveland or Connie Booth playing a specifically hot one.

And they're kind of doing that dichotomy, too, even them. Like, this was all over British comedy and Benny Hill is one example. Yeah, it's the, I am, I think, I feel like I am familiar with this sort of thing. Yeah. And then the other thing I feel about Benny Hill is that he worked very, very, very hard to turn old-fashioned British music hall comedy into multimedia comedy in a way that made it funnier for what it is. Again, he was born in 1924. He's from a different era. And his grandfather snuck him into adults-only music hall shows that he shouldn't have been at as a kid, which had a bunch of sex jokes and a bunch of raunchy, ribald stuff going on.

And then Hill made a point of using the new medium of television and editing to speed up the editing, or you do a bunch of cuts in a fun way. And, like, for what that comedy is, he was an extremely devoted craftsman. of making it television. He painstakingly would go frame by frame of like a fake erection and make sure that it was as funny as possible. I sound like I'm kidding, but yes. Like apparently he never married, had no children, died alone in a small Spartan apartment,

even though he had money. Like all he wanted to do was work around the clock to make this. Like what it is, you know? He was a fake erection artist. If he was French, he'd be in a little artist Garrett living on gruel to make the erection jokes. He really, really wanted to make as many people happy as possible. He just did it in a way that's dated and sexist. Yeah.

Well, you know, hey, there's... It's weird to think about. There's worse things, I guess, in the world than someone obsessively doing dated sexist comedy. he had like a monastic commitment to it it's so weird you think he's going to go out after the show and just drink champagne and carouse but no he was like got to get to sleep so I can make the next sex joke show if I make can make a modern analogy this feels very much like people who spend hundreds of hours perfecting boob jiggle physics in computer games these days like never underestimate right never underestimate the power of a horny nerd when it comes to being obsessive. It's really like that. Yeah, that was his art and he did it as well as he could. All right.

And so the other thing about his extreme datedness is that he comes from long enough ago that it's kind of brass band March music almost more than jazz, you know, and then wacky jazz comes in later. But people forget that he built an entire comedy career before what's perceived as the Benny Hill theme was available. And I'll play a couple of just audio examples of the wacky music over fast-paced action in his shows. Here's an example from the beginning of the second ever episode of the Benny Hill show.

That's one example. And the other example here is just it's from the end of an episode in season eight. years later and when yakutty, sacks existed as a song. I'm imagining that ripping sound is like a lady's blouse coming off. Not sexist. It's a man with a trombone pulling the toupee off another man's head with the slide. Ah, okay. So that's pretty good.

You know, it's just physical jokes. It's fine. Physical comedy. Benny Hill was working in the exact genre of yakety sacks and then countless musicians in another country across the ocean made yakety sacks and then these things merged, you know? It's really fascinating to me that he just was doing the aesthetic of yakety sacks kind of more aggressively and tenaciously than anyone else and then adopted it.

Yeah, I mean, you know, like because it does work really well with the sort of sped up footage. It's great. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And like musical audiences lacked the extra comedy of speeding up footage and tightly cutting and editing it to be paced exactly that way. And Benny Hill spent his life providing that to audiences. He tried really hard. This guy would be the king of TikTok because you've got everything. You've got sexism. You've got editing skills. And you've got extremely frenetic music. Really? He makes that and then also makes the really cozy aesthetic. Get ready with me while I make the Benny Hill show today. And it's all that very calm ukulele as he's like showing how he installs his fake erection prop.

Yeah, like having a macho while they put a big fake penis on him. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, Benny Hill really found Yakety Sax after living the Yakety Sachs life. And this still is part of British culture in a way that has not been erased. either. The last story here is the Guardian covered a incident at the 2012 Summer Olympics in London, you know, Britain. And sports writer Marina Hyde points out that the women's beach volleyball events at the 2012 Summer Olympics, beach volleyball in general, the international and Olympic version, they don't let the women wear as much clothing as the men for no reason. And there's kind of a loose objectification going on for no reason. Wild. I wonder.

why that is. And it's not like sprinting or something where they need to be race cars. Like they're just, and sand hitting the ball. But also it's like a rule. It's not even like a preference of like I want to be free and liberated. Like some of them want to wear not bikini type clothes. And they're like, no, no, no. Cannot wear baggy clothes.

Yeah, it's a completely bizarre rule. And Hyde writes that when London put on a. Olympic beach rally ball. In the modern year of 2012, they put that on with a quote, warm up act consisting of 10 women in swimwear, bumping and grinding to bog standard R&B, end quote. And then she says, in between play, there are guys who need to rake and level out the sand, so it's still the rule appropriate playing surface. And instead of playing normal pump-up sports music, they played intentionally comedic music, in particular yackety sex. It's still part of the hot women is funny trend in British comedy.

It hasn't gone away. Yeah. I mean, I feel like this is kind of a theme with like women's sports is that there is, there seems to be sort of this attitude of sexualizing it as a way to make it seem frivolous. So did you see, did you see all the. Like, because like this happens to the, the WNBA where some guy, probably multiple people kept Crypto guys kept throwing dildos onto the, uh, I saw that. Yeah.

And it's like. Fundamental disrespect. Yeah. You know, you can kind of dismiss it as just like, well, it's just, it's just a funny joke. But when it becomes just a thing that happens every single time, it's like, it's meant to degrade. It's, it's meant to sort of degrade them say this is frivolous and silly. and I don't, you know, I do not respect this sport. Yeah.

Yeah. And so Yackety Sachs should not be used as a tool for that. I don't like it. Because especially in Britain, it's, it's completely culturally silly. Or hear me out. We equalize things in the other direction. The men, you wear fewer clothes and oiled themselves up. And after they're all oiled and they're trying to get a hold on the ball and it keeps

slipping through their oiled hands. then you play acety sacks It is the right song for that That makes sense, yeah You see where I'm going with this, right? You understand? Yeah. Oh, completely, yeah, yeah.

I'm very sex positive. I just think we need to have it has to be irrespective of gender that we do funny, sexy Olympic things With a lot, like the original Olympics We're very sexy and all men. Yeah, and ancient Greek men. Yeah, hey.

I'm making a face of the camera. Hey now, he's making the face that you make when you're talking about ancient Greek men. Speaking of British comedy, wink, wink, say no more, say no more. Yacchity Sax to ancient Greek Olympic wrestling sped up would be, I don't know, fun. Yeah. Level of the playing field. And speaking of fun, our last takeaway is Britain using yakety sacks for something better because takeaway number four. Britain helped turn yakety-saxe into a unique musical condiment in 2020's fights against corruption and fascism.

A musical condiment. Yeah, and I got that phrase from a music expert here who's quoted by Melanie McFarland and Salon, because it's this wonderful idea that the thing that was done to Christy Gnome, it probably really, really came from and was inspired by an even more amazing incident in 2022 at the end of Boris Johnson being the U.K. Prime Minister. Boris Johnson wildly right-wing and racist and also the fascist basic principles of like trying to undermine truth and ignore norms in the way that they do. And the weird fascist hair. They all have weird hair.

And I need to write a book on this. But like Trump, Boris Johnson, Argentina's like, Miele. Miele, yeah. Yeah, yeah. All the weird hair stuff. Yeah, none of them have barbers. It's tough. Well, they do, but, like, they think they know better.

This is my theory, is that they're such narcissists. They think they know better than the hairstylist and the barber. And so, like, the barber is like, are you sure this is what you want? And they're like, of course, because I'm an expert on everything, including hair. So just do what I want. And then the bar, like, okay, you know? That's my theory. Right.

And then Johnson-Rubile hands them a bowl. Like, you know what to do. Yeah. One moment. Let me finish my pudding. Licks it clean. All right, there you go. Now do my hair.

Yeah. And so I'm going to play a clip. This is the audio of a basically news field piece, like one of those reporters in the field talking to camera. It's a reporter outside the British Houses of Parliament

in London trying to describe in a very serious fashion the end of Boris Johnson's time as prime minister. Here we go. We keep the basic functions of government going. That's really important. There are, for example, no ministers in D.Dathie at the moment.

That needs to be sorted out. He's also reporting for Sky News, which, like a few years before that time was owned by the Murdox. It's relatively right-wing still, apparently. And they're trying to act like, well, you know, another normal prime minister is ending. But people set up big speakers and played yakutie sacks to celebrate the end of this horrible guy being in charge. Incredible. It's fantastic. So that was all over the news.

I love it. Yeah. And the other really weird thing about it is that idea might have been sparked by a tweet posted by the actor Hugh Grant. Hugh Grant. Yeah. Like from Notting Hill and stuff. Like the famous Hugh Grant. He's so charmingly affable.

Right, right. Right. Also very bold of him. Usually he's kind of shrinking at a way that's handsome. But very flustered in a sexy sort of way. Too sexy. Too sexy. The listeners.

Oh, no. Yeah, so Hugh has, like, found his way into the political sphere, mostly because around 2009 or 2010, Rupert Murdoch's media companies hacked his phone, along with a lot of other people. Right, right. To steal his information and try to report evilly on him. Yeah. Yeah, I remember that. And he was in a legal battle for the following, about a decade and a half.

In 2024, he collected an undisclosed settlement from Murdox companies. In the process, he started tweeting at all. His username is at hacked off you in reference to the hacking. His bio link is about the hacking. He's only on Twitter because of the hacking. But then he posts other positive stuff. And in July 2022, he tagged an anti-Brexit activist named, Steve Bray, who he's apparently friends with. And the news was saying Johnson was about to be out.

And Grant tweeted, quote, glad you have your speakers back. Do you by any chance have the Benny Hill music to hand? End quote. Wow. Wow. Either because Grant contacted that guy or other people were inspired. Nobody could report from Parliament in the newsy way without yakety sax playing. Amazing. Incredible. It's inspiring. Yeah. And so that is, either directly or indirectly the inspiration for stuff like taking down Christy Gnome in the United States like this. And, you know, it's a hope that stuff like Yakety Sax can help with this. Melanie McFarland interviews music experts about exactly why Yakety Sax could have that purpose. And she talked to Jason King, chair of New York

University's Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music. He said that the Benny Hill context and the circus cultural context of the one snippet boost the humor. But, The Yakutty Sax is fundamentally funny because of the saxophone's timbre and the melody's big musical slides and timing jumps. Quote, it's just a perfect storm for that song to be considered something that has become like a musical condiment, like hot sauce. You just put it on and it makes anything funnier. That's how I think about music is it being like hot sauce. No, it's a good metaphor. I like it.

Or like tequila. da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da da yeah uh have you seen the clip of like someone putting that on top of like trump giving a speech about antifa where it's like uh oh yeah because the way he he always hits antifa yeah he always hits antifa really hard he's like antifa anyways uh right yeah and we're and we're dealing with a lot of politicians who like we're and reality and facts cannot impact what they're doing. So we need to pivot to stuff like this, basically. What else are you going to do? High silliness. During World War II, there's a lot of songs that were used to mock the Nazis, right?

Like, you know, anyone who's played a bard in D&D knows that vicious mockery is actually quite effective. I mean, obviously it's not the only thing, but like it's just a nonviolent form of protest that I think really hits hard because humiliating people who are acting like authoritarian's right it gets them they're very sensitive about that because they want to seem powerful and important and then if you're like just being like yeah man sure great like yeah you're really fighting the war in Portland like I'm a frog playing the yakety sax music congratulations oh yeah it's fantastic a thousand percent yeah so yeah

Yeah, if your politics actively helps people, you're harder to mock because what's to mock. Right. Yeah. If your politics doesn't help people, you might hear old boots Randolph coming around the corner, you know? Yeah. I mean, it's like, I feel like, you know, normal kind people might react funny, funny, right? Like if someone's playing acity sax in background, whereas like the more, the more like angry you would get at that would be probably kind of a, there's potentially a stick placed in. the butt of that person.

It's sort of a anatomical condiment, let's say. Yeah. Folks, that's the main episode for this week. Welcome to the outro with fun features for you, such as help remembering this episode, with a run back through the big takeaways. Mega takeaway number one.

Yackety Sax is a combination of Jewish-American songwriting, black American musicians, a white Appalachian survivor of the Great Depression, and European military marches. MIDI takeaway number two, Yakety Sax is inspired by and positively ripping off the song Yakety Yak. Takeaway number three, Yakety Sax accidentally became the soundtrack of popular sexist

British comedy, from Benny Hill to the 2012 Summer Olympics. Takeaway number four, Britain helped turn Yakety Sax into a unique musical condiment in 2020's fights against corruption and fascism. And then, a short number section and more numbers in the takeaways, especially about our listeners selecting this wonderful topic of. of the song Yakety Sax, without the latest U.S. news being top of mind necessarily. Those are the takeaways. Also, I said that's the main episode because there's more secretly incredibly fascinating

stuff available to you right now if you support this show at maximum fun.org. Members are the reason this podcast exists, so members get a bonus show every week where we explore one obviously incredibly fascinating story related to the the main episode. This week's bonus topic is the song Entry of the Gladiators by composer Yulius Foochick, aka the main famous circus music. Visit sifpod.fod.fund for that bonus show, for a library of more than 22 dozen other secretly incredibly fascinating bonus shows, and a catalog of all sorts of max fun bonus shows.

It's special audio. It's just for members. Thank you to everybody who backs this podcast operation. Additional fun things, check out our research sources on this episode. page at maximum fun.org. Key sources this week include a lot of obituaries of the saxophone player Boots Randolph from the Los Angeles Times, the New York Times, and Canada's Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Also a wonderful feature for Salon.com by senior culture critic Melanie McFarland,

an interview by Terry Gross for her radio show Fresh Air, an essay by music producer David Lawson for the Museum of Americana Literary Review. also reporting for the Guardian by journalists like Marina Hyde and Graeme Virtue, and then tons of clips of music. If you want to hear full songs or re-listen to songs, we've got a lot of them for you. That page also features resources such as native-land.ca. I'm using those to acknowledge that I recorded this in Lenape Hoking, the traditional land of the Muncie Lenape people and the Wapinger people,

as well as the Mohican people, Skadigoke people, and others. Also, Katie taped this in the country of Italy. And I want to acknowledge that in my location, in many other locations in the Americas and elsewhere, native people are very much still here. That feels worth doing on each episode and join the free SIF Discord, where we're sharing stories and resources about native people in life. There is a link in this episode's description to join the Discord. We're also talking about this episode on the Discord, and hey, would you like a tip on another episode? Because each week I'm finding is something randomly incredibly fascinating by running all the past number numbers through a random number generator. This week's pick is episode 114. That's about the

topic of eels. Fun fact, so-called electric eels are very electric, but not eels. So I recommend that episode. I also recommend my co-host Katie Golden's weekly podcast Creature Feature about animals, science, and more. Our theme music is unbroken, unshaven by the Budo's band. Our show logo is by artist Burton Durand. Special thanks to Chris Sousa for audio mastering on this episode. Extra, extra special thanks go to our members. And thank you to all our listeners. I'm thrilled to say we will be back next week with more secretly incredibly fascinating. So how about that?

Talk to you then. Maximum Fun A worker-owned network Of artists' own shows Supported directly By you