Known for his wildly unconventional style among jazz singers, Slim Gaillard emerged as a cult favorite by inventing his private slang “vout,” a playful twist on hipster speech built from made-up syllables such as “oreenie” and “oroonie.” His humorous stage presence, relaxed demeanor, and delightfully absurd tunes turned him into a crowd favorite along the West Coast from the late 1930s into the early 1950s, while several of his numbers, among them “Flat Foot Floogie” and “Cement Mixer,” achieved real commercial success. Although he rarely ventured beyond his chosen idiom, Gaillard executed it with skill, and his gifts as a vocalist, a guitarist in the Charlie Christian mold, and a boogie-woogie pianist often received less attention than the whimsical character of his work.
Born Bulee Gaillard, most likely on January 4, 1916, in Detroit, Michigan—though some records list January 1 and he occasionally maintained that Santa Clara, Cuba, was his birthplace—Gaillard accompanied his father, a cruise-ship steward, on voyages until the man once left him behind on Crete. He spent most of his youth in Detroit, where he tried professional boxing, worked as an undertaker, and ran bootleg liquor for the Purple Gang during the 1930s. He also perfected a simultaneous guitar-and-tap-dance routine before heading to New York for vaudeville work. In 1936 he joined bassist Slam Stewart to form Slim & Slam; two years later the duo scored a major success with “Flat Foot Floogie,” prompting swift covers by Benny Goodman and Fats Waller. Slim & Slam continued issuing similar novelties such as “Tutti Frutti” and “Laughin’ in Rhythm,” moved their act to Hollywood, and appeared in the 1941 film Hellzapoppin before parting when both entered military service in 1942, Gaillard joining the Air Force.
After his discharge in 1944, Gaillard made Los Angeles his base and became a regular attraction at Billy Berg’s Hollywood Boulevard club. Partnering with bassist Bam Brown, he regained national attention in 1945 with the hit “Cement Mixer” and recorded prolifically that year, often with a quartet that included Brown, pianist Dodo Marmarosa, and drummer Zutty Singleton. A late-1945 session with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie produced the notable track “Slim’s Jam.” His popularity crested in the second half of the 1940s; he appeared in several films, recorded for Verve through 1951, and enjoyed further success with 1948’s “Down by the Station,” which later became a children’s nursery rhyme, and 1951’s “Yep Roc Heresay,” a spoken recitation of a Middle Eastern restaurant menu that one station banned for alleged suggestiveness. Between 1951 and 1953 he performed regularly in New York and took part in Norman Granz’s Jazz at the Philharmonic; a few years afterward Jack Kerouac mentioned him in On the Road.
By the mid-1950s Gaillard’s audience had begun to shrink. He toured extensively with Stan Kenton and cut a 1958 album for Dot before largely stepping away from music in the 1960s. During that period he managed a San Diego motel, purchased an orchard near Tacoma, Washington, and divided time between club work in Los Angeles and occasional acting roles on series such as Marcus Welby, M.D., Charlie’s Angels, Mission: Impossible, Medical Center, and Along Came Bronson. He rejoined Slam Stewart at the 1970 Monterey Jazz Festival, appeared in the 1979 miniseries Roots: The Next Generation, and was persuaded by Dizzy Gillespie to resume performing in 1982. Traveling to the United Kingdom, he made his first recordings since 1958 for Hep; the label released them as Anytime, Anyplace, Anywhere. Gaillard then played festivals and toured Europe widely, settling in London in 1983. He had a role in the 1986 cult film Absolute Beginners and was profiled in the 1989 BBC series The World of Slim Gaillard. He died of cancer on February 26, 1991.
