The Mysterious Stripper

Anybody need a great blog headline writer?  Step right up, ladies and gentlemen.  Four chairs, no waiting.

Where was I?  Ah, yes.  In our previous post about Tom Waits and the Small Change cover, we mentioned Our Host's report that the red-headed stripper pictured was rumored (emphasis there) to be that cross between Valley Girl and Vampirella, Elvira, back when she was Cassandra Peterson.

Commenter "Edward" replied to the post that the Lady in Question might actually be an acquaintance of Waits who opened the show for his "live" album of 19 and 75, Nighthawks at the Diner.

Her name variously reported as "Dewana," "Deewanna," "Dewanna," and even "Dwana," she's described as a "classic old tassle-twirler," and an "old-time burlesque queen," who Waits apparently met during his wanderings through the Hollywood underworld.  One person mentioned in a near-Dylansque non sequiter that "her husband was a taxi driver."

"Edward" also noted, "...if you look at the original LP cover (I know, I know, but believe me such things did exist) you can see her face well enough to see that she's probably a bit more well-worn than Cassandra Petersen would have looked, even without makeup, in the mid-70's."

I'm leaning towards "Edward's" theory, as the timing is right, and there seems to be a better connection between Dewanna, however her name is spelled, than Elvira and Tom Waits. The Elvira claim smacks of the sort of urban myth that gets repeated on the Web until it's taken as gospel.  The first reference I can find to the Elvira/Small Change connection is a 2002 USEnet post, and most of the few citations offered on various sites, including Wikipedia, point back to a 2006 music article.  In neither case do the original authors offer any proof, simply writing the claim as fact.

Who knows?  We'll have to wait for the next cassette from Tom.  I was thinking of doing a side-by-side photo analysis of the red-headed stripper and one of the nude shots of Cassandra Peterson available on the Web, paying ah, special attention to secondary sex characteristics, but Jailbait Jones violently objected when I floated the idea.

***

UPDATE: And the Lady Herself adds to the mystery...

Q: Did you keep in touch with Tom Waits after you got photographed with him for the cover of Small Change?

CP: That's such a mystery to me. I mean, I see the cover and I go, "That looks like me." But I do not have one recollection of doing it. Then again, I don't have a single recollection of the '70s. I went straight from the '60s to the '80s. Isn't that sad?

Q: Were you hit on the head or were the drugs that good?

CP: Who knows. I was a Playboy model — for the club, the modeling agency and the magazine. I did a million things: music videos, album covers, romance novels where the guy with the long hair is leaning over the girl draped across the bed, movie one sheets. Ever see Raggedy Man? I'm on the poster. Not in the movie.

***

Actually, if you go check out posters of Raggedy Man, the woman pictured is another good-looking redhead, Sissy Spacek, who did faintly resemble Peterson.  Maybe it's Sissy Spacek on Small Change!

More on the Nighthawks at the Diner sessions and the mysterious "Deewanna" here.

Most-Played Artist on TTRH: George Jones Deposed

Even though we're only midway through Season 3 of Theme Time Radio Hour, and the scramble for top slot could certainly change again, it's worth noting that with the airing of the "Work" episode on the 7th, Tom Waits officially became the "most-played" artist on TTRH, slippin' past George Jones, who had led the pack at the close of Season 2.

Given that Tom is still continuing to mail cassettes of commentary ("Thanks for the marmalade") to Our Host, he may also hold the record for being the most-referred-to artist, too.

According to "Absolutely Sweet Marie" over at the Expecting Rain TTRH forum, Waits has now been played 10 times, with George Jones and Dinah Washington tied for 2nd, with nine airplays each. Personally, I'm pulling for Dinah. You can read the full list here...

To your left (or above, dependent on how this ends up formatting), is the cover of Small Change, Waits' album of 19 and 76. Mr. D. played I Can't Wait to Get Off Work (and See My Baby on Montgomery Avenue) from that album towards the close of the "Work" show mentioning, in one of his patented asides, that the stripper pictured behind Waits was rumored to be Cassandra Peterson, better-known as Elvira, Mistress of the Dark and later Mistress of All Media.

Elvira's life could easily fill a Dreamtime podcast by itself. In her Cassandra persona, she was listed in the Guinness World Book of Records at age 17 for being the youngest showgirl in Las Vegas history; hung out with Elvis Presley; became the lead singer of an Italian rock band, had a bit part in a Fellini movie, did improv comedy; auditioned for the role of Ginger for the third Gilligan's Island TV movie (howza 'bout that for a Dreamtime connection) appeared in a half-dozen sit-coms including Happy Days; and eventually became Elvira.

It seems to be generally accepted on the Web that the "stripper" is Peterson/Elvira, although as Mr. D. was careful to mention it is a rumor -- or at least I coudn't find anything that even resembled an "official" citation. It's probably worth noting that the cover isn't mentioned in Peterson's biography at the official Elvira site. On the other hand, neither are Peterson's nude layouts for various men's magazines of the `70s and `80s.

Who knows? Maybe Tom will enlighten Our Host and he'll pass the true git onto his listening audience.

Although I've told the story before, articles are fleeting here at Dreamtime, so I'll mention again how I once rescued Tom Waits from imminent arrest by a rent-a-cop.

My initial college career - such as it was, and it wasn't much - was interrupted by the draft in the early `70s, and consequently I started college several years later than most of my peers. I eventually graduated from the University of Southern Maine in the late `70s; then known as the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham, or sometimes as Pogo U., which may be why the name was changed by the College Fathers.

In any case, although I was less than full of school spirit, I did haphazardly participate in several activities and organizations, including the college paper; a group that put on cult films; and another group that brought music acts to the school. During that time I helped produce USM concerts for such `70s period acts as Loggins and Messina; Phoebe Snow; and Maria Muldaur.

Out of the dozen or so acts that I dealt with, Maria was one of the nicest, a fact that I'd remind her of when I interviewed her for a web site column I was writing at the time (the web site and I parted ways, but you can still read the interview here). Maria was still at the height of her Midnight at the Oasis fame in those days, and Tom Waits, who was promoting his Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night album, was her opening act.

I didn't have all that much conversation with Waits, who I had never heard of at the time, which was around 1974 or `75. But I did go out and buy his album the next day. But off-stage he was a strange, scruffy, boho-type character wearing a cheap Salvation Army suit and with not the best personal hygiene. In fact, he reeked.

Getting ready to go on, Waits decided he wanted to bring a beer on-stage. Some security guy stopped him, and I had to intercede when the argument began to get heated. While I had the rent-a-cop distracted, Waits hid several cans of beer in his suit jacket, walked out on stage, sat down at the piano, reached inside his jacket, pulled out a beer, popped the top, put it on the piano, turned to the backstage, and gave the security guard the finger. I spent the rest of Waits' set talking the security guy out of stopping the show, noting that he'd be taking his life into his own hands if he tried to pull Waits off-stage in front of an audience of several thousand. Either from luck or recognizing that discretion might be the better part of valor, Waits departed from the other side of the stage at the end of his set.

When I told that story to Maria, some thirty-odd years in the future, and mentioned that I remembered Waits had smelled a little, ah, ripe, she began to laugh. "My God," she said. "I haven't thought of that tour in years. You're right, Tom was pretty pungent. We used to have to make excuses not to sit at the same table with him. We were saying, 'My God, doesn't this guy ever bathe?'"

Tom Waits - (Looking For) The Heart of Saturday Night

Our Saturday song, still following in the steps of TTRH "Days of the Week" is Tom Waits' (Looking for) the Heart of Saturday Night. We're all grateful that Our Host has better taste than to pick something like Saturday Night's Alright (for Fightin').

I have a Tom Waits story for Dreamtime readers/listeners. My initial college career - such as it was, and it wasn't much - was interrupted by the draft in the early `70s, and consequently I started college several years later than most of my peers. I eventually graduated from the University of Southern Maine in the late `70s; then known as the University of Maine at Portland-Gorham, or sometimes as Pogo U., which may be why the name was changed by the College Fathers.

In any case, although I was less than full of school spirit, I did haphazardly participate in several activities and organizations, including the college paper; a group that put on cult films; and another group that brought music acts to the school. During that time I helped produce USM concerts for such `70s period acts as Loggins and Messina; Phoebe Snow; and Maria Muldaur.

Out of the dozen or so acts that I dealt with, Maria was one of the nicest, a fact that I'd remind her of when I interviewed her for a web site column I was writing earlier this year (the web site and I parted ways, but you can still read the interview here). Maria was still at the height of her Midnight at the Oasis fame in those days, and Tom Waits, who had just recently released his Looking for the Heart of Saturday Night album, was her opening act.

I didn't have all that much conversation with Waits, who I had never heard of at the time, and who seemed a strange, scruffy, boho-type character wearing a cheap Salvation Army suit and with not the best personal hygiene. Getting ready to go on, Waits decided he wanted to bring a beer on-stage. Some security guy stopped him, and I had to intercede when the argument began to get heated. While I had the rent-a-cop distracted, Waits hid several cans of beer in his suit jacket, walked out on stage, sat down at the piano, reached inside his jacket, pulled out a beer, popped the top, put it on the piano, turned to the backstage, and gave the security guard the finger. I spent the rest of Waits' set keeping the security guy from stopping the show.

When I told that story to Maria, thirty-odd years in the future, and mentioned that I remembered Waits had smelled a little, ah, ripe, she began to laugh. "My God," she said. "I haven't thought of that in years. You're right, Tom was pretty pungent. We were saying, 'My God, doesn't this guy ever bathe?'"