Al Duvall - Coroner & Knives
Author: Mikey I. McClelland
Release Date: January 2005
Label: Boontling
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The biography for Al Duvall reads simply:
"Born June 31, 1877 in Pahrump, West Virginia, Algernon Otmer Duvall began his musical career on the vaudeville stage... He fought in a bicycle squadron in Ypres during World War I, where he received a crippling dose of the Hun's mustard. Returning home, he made ends meet working at a sausage factory in Harrington, Delaware... He took up the banjo in 1991..."
It goes on, of course, but none of the period details are that striking being mostly your everyday references to pleurisy and Quinsy Balsam.
It was returned to the vaudeville stage I first chanced upon Al Duvall, though I imagine the slim, glowing set at Pete's Candy Store in Brooklyn, New York was a far cry from the rusty saloons of Pahrump, WV where Duvall first rose to variety show prominence. In Brooklyn, Duvall took his place in a lineup for The Jenny Vaudeville Show, a once-a-month occurrence at Williamsburg-staple Pete's, and hosted by Williamsburg Spelling Bee starlet, the one and only Jenisfamous.
And the plain-clothed, suspenders-clad Duvall might be little more than another comedic novelty act if it weren't for an over-abundance of biting wit and his sheer devotion to presently mastering the voice of era past. It's good, honest stuff that Duvall brings to the stage. Once you've gotten past the novelty of it, the writing alone is deep enough to get lost in, and the less-than-glamorous image comes complete with all the amateurish grit you'd expect from a vaudeville-trained, banjo-pickin' satirist.
Coroner & Knives opens with the soft tap of a needle to vinyl and the tellings of a tall tale, indeed. Along the banks of the mighty Ohio River a woman is with child, the father is a ship-bound cook, and only scandal can come of it when the mailman opens all her letters. Duvall be-cries, "What's become of decency in Saxonberg, Ohio?" And if that's not modesty enough, Duvall hurries into "The Trashman's Daughter," a laughable account of dating just as low as you can go, with a flourish of a lyrical finish, finishing, "I bring home the bacon... to a pigsty every night!"
It's all good fun filling in the pieces of missing Americana (c. 1880-1925), and you can't help wonder what (if anything) about it is irony when the source is one smartly dressed and wholly devoted, era-appointed persona. Seriously, Duvall takes his craft dead seriously. This is not to say the whole mess is unintended tongue-in-cheek humor, no. Just: if Al Duvall wants to be a 129-year old vaudeville star, I'm not going to tell the man he's only funny cause he's out of place. He's funny because Greenpoint really is the end of the pickle, the summer there is just as sour as he says, and I want my mug of peels and foot-long coney, dammit!
Cue the kazoo!
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