The Blues Room
Artist Archives - May 1999

Scat singer, guitarist, pianist and hipster comedian, Gaillard rose to prominence in the bebop era but his career continued into the nineties.

The son of a cruise-liner steward, Gaillard's first stage act involved him simultaneously tap dancing and playing guitar. In 1937 he began a six-year partnership with bassist Slam Stewart who sang and bowed his instrument in unison. Appearing regularly on radio, Slim and Slam also had hit singles with 'Flat Foot Floogie,' 'Cement Mixer,' 'A-Reet-a-Voutie,' and other songs using Gaillard's personal variant on jive talk which he called 'vout.' The sheet music of 'Floogie' was among the items buried in a time capsule at the New York World's Fair in 1939.

Throughout the forties, Gaillard led his own small group with a residency at Billy Berg's Hollywood nightclub which was patronized by the movie elite and where he made several 'soundies' (short films of songs akin to the modern music video). He made cameo appearances in such films as Hellzapoppin' (pictured at right, with Slam Stewart) and Star Spangled Rhythm (1942). Among his best recordings from this era was 'Slim's Jam,' which featured Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. This track was reissued in 1983 by Gaillard himself on Roots of Vouty (Putti-Putti). A cult hero to the emerging beat generation, Gaillard's club act was described in Jack Kerouac's novel, On the Road. His children's song 'Down at the Station' was said to have inspired the Thomas the Tank Enginge books of the Rev. W. Awdry.

In 1953, he appeared with Billie Holiday and Coleman Hawkins in the first of Norman Granz's 'Jazz at the Philharmonic' presentations and later toured with Stan Kenton. In the fifties and sixties, Gaillard worked in cabaret as vocalist, comedian and master of ceremonies before moving into acting in various television drama series. These included Charlie's Angels, Mission Impossible, and Roots - the Next Generation.

He retired to his California fruit farm, but was persuaded to return to the stage by Gillespie in 1982, the year he added hand-clapping to his son-in-law Marvin Gaye's album Midnight Love. For a while Gaillard made London his base, performing his forties material to European audiences and appearing in the film Absolute Beginners (1986).

References:
Page 294, The Faber Companion to 20th-Century Popular Music, by Phil Hardy & Dave Laing. Copyright 1990. Published by Faber and Faber.
The Shack by Nick Russo