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This fellow is typical of the kind of precocious creative types who wound up joining Spike Jones and the City Slickers. Eddie Metcalfe had his own radio show in Pennsylvania when he was still a child. Meaning he must have been something of a loudmouth, and meaning that he was a perfect match for the type of entertainment Jones would be concocting by the mid-'40s. Between 1941 and 1946, Metcalfe worked in the bands of Tommy Tucker and Leighton Noble before joining the City Slickers in 1948. Band legend has it that Jones discovered Metcalfe on a golf course in Florida, but doing what? Performing? Playing golf? Either could have been relevant to a Jones event, as Metcalfe would soon find out in his role as a straight man. "Although I sang straight vocals, there was a lot of hell raised behind me," he recalled with classic understatement. This would include trumpeter George Rock spitting at him while he sang.
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