The Jimmy Heap Show featuring Ken Idaho - Laugh Potion

The Jimmy Heap Show featuring Ken Idaho - Laugh Potion

released on LP (no date given)

When I was sifting through the boxes of records at the most recent local library sale, I noticed an album cover with illustrations and the words "sex to sexty" on it. Then I saw a few others like it and grabbed those too. I figured they had to be worth checking out and there was something familiar sounding about "sex to sexty", but I couldn't recall what it was. Besides, I already went through a few other boxes and didn't find anything remotely interesting, just the usual boring pop and easy listening records everyone used to own along with Firestone Christmas albums. I finally found some potentially worthwhile stuff with these albums. Overall, it was not a great night at the library sale. I found just a few other good records and checked out.

I listened to most of the stuff on these LPs and I was laughing a lot although this stuff is a bit beneath my sensibilities. I learned that Jimmy Heap was a band leader who wrote and performed country and western music. He seems to be most remembered for writing a hit song called "The Wild Side of Life". Then apparently while out in Las Vegas, Jimmy Heap thought that he needed to add comedy to his act. He found a guy named Ken Idaho who not only could play the violin and saxophone, he was also a comic who specialized in raunchy or bawdy comedy routines. (Ken Idaho's real name is Ken Alderhold.) The comedy act became a hit and Heap and Idaho teamed up with a humor magazine called Sex to Sexty and released several albums on Heap's label Fame Records (which Heap started in the mid 1950s after leaving Capitol Records). Sex to Sexty was vaguely familiar. I think I may have sneaked a peak at an old issue or two at some used merchandise shop when I was a kid. Sex to Sexty often put out issues from 1965 to 1983 and I'm sure you can guess what subject the magazine focused on. (There is even a book released that has all of the covers from the magazine.)

Read more at these sources about Jimmy Heap, Ken Idaho, and Sex to Sexty which most of the info came from and used in the above paragraph:

Vintage Sleaze
Jimmy Heap interview with Ray Campi
Answers.com biography of Jimmy Heap

This particular LP may or may not have been the first one put out by Heap, Idaho, and Sex to Sexty. I am going by the catalog number and it is the lowest one of these albums I have. Three of the tracks are renditions of three popular tunes and the other one is a routine with Heap and Idaho about the game of golf. This one, as is the case with all of these albums I have, is a party album with "adults only" type of humor including double entendres and dick jokes. In other words, it delivers entertainment and we don't have enough of it in our lives, right.

The band members credited on the back cover:

Jimmy Heap - "leader", guitar
Bill Glendening - bass
Butter Ball Harris - steel guitar
Ken Idaho - violin and saxophone
Ken Frazier - guitar
Butch Keith - trumpet
Lee Roy Eichler - drums

Tracklisting:  (link coming back soon)

Side 1

1. Henry the VIII {6:33}

2. Golf Game {7:33}

Side 2

1. See the Big Man Cry {5:02}

2. Love Potion No. 9 {8:44}