Who's the Dummy?

Christian music is world full of weirdness: tons of utterly peculiar releases, as we have seen earlier with L'il Markie. But nothing can prepare you for the bizarre sub-genre of Christian ventriloquism.

I've never been able to get my head around the idea of a puppet singing on a record. Sure, there's an art of sorts to keeping your lips from moving while you've got your hand up a doll's arse but what might work as a novelty on the live stage is a bit lost when you don't actually need the dummy. It's just a fool in a studio putting on a stupid voice.

There are loads of them though: the utterly scary Geraldine and Ricky; Don and Seymour; the Christian Astronauts (honestly - get Googling) and the biggest and most prolific of them all Little Marcy.

Marcy Tigner studied piano and trombone as a child, eventually releasing two trombone LPs under her own name. The committed Cristian was determined to exploit her art to praise God, but apparently there's not a huge market for God bothering trombonists. Undeterred, she hooked up with a small wooden doll, which she christened Little Marcy and, with the gift of her unusual, child-like singing voice, over three decades released around three dozen dopey, odd or downright disturbing albums. This unusual act has been fascinating, inspiring and repelling audiences since the 1960s; the pair appeared on radio programs such as Marcy Tigner's Hymntime and Sing with Marcy, there's a TV special with Smokey the Bear (and, naturellement, an accompanying album) and at least two Little Marcy films.

For more on the Little Marcy phenomenon, check out the exhaustive archives of http://users.vianet.ca/grizelda/marcy/index.html

But, for now, here's Little Marcy singing Devil, Devil, Go Away


http://rapidshare.com/files/265380185/Devil_Devil_Go_Away.mp3