Ah, the internet. The World Wide Web. The interwebs.
A font of information. A font of a lot of crap, too. A window to the bigger world. Lots of hilarity. And porn. Love it or hate it, the internet is part of our daily life, and provides us all with endless amounts of clickbait, memes and images, should we desire to avail ourselves of it. Some of those images spark a curiosity to know more. Some make us wonder , “WTF?”. Some make us giggle and some make us remember a time in our long-ago past, or show us a long-ago past we never knew.
One of my favorite amusements, made easier by the magic of the internet, is finding old pictures, particularly vintage advertisements, vintage cookbooks with horrible photography and cringe-y photos of fashions of the past. Years ago I discovered a blog/website by the author James Lileks, called The Institute of Official Cheer ( www.lileks.com) that contained a wonderful compilation of terrible vintage recipes and their equally terrible food photography . The compilation was titled, The Gallery of Regrettable Food. Now this gem is available in book form ( which I of course own). You can get it on Amazon. I recommend doing so.
On a similar note, I recently came across a website called Pocket-lint.com , which had a post titled “55 of the Worst Album Cover Art of All Time”. While the claim “of all time” might be a bit hyperbolic, the images therein were certainly pretty awful in general. A great deal of them were from the 50s and 60s. A few from the 80s. Most of them suffered from a combination of bad concept art, low budget photography, horrendous clothing choices and often an unfortunate lack of attractiveness in the person on the cover, including lack of basic dental hygiene in some cases. Which sounds really terrible to say, but it’s true.
One of the images shown that piqued my interest was this one:
Presumably this was an album cover ( hence it’s inclusion), and I assumed, by the title, that it contained Christian songs, sung by Uncle Les and Aunt Nancy…and Randy? I assume they all sang. Maybe only Randy sang the songs? Nobody knows. There was no other information provided on Pocket-lint.com , but judging by Uncle Les’ leisure suit, and Randy’s plaid trousers and early-1970s-era-Dick Cavett-style hair parted on the side, I had initially thought this album was made in the very early 1970s. Nancy’s cat-eye glasses were a little late 60s style, but I knew women who still wore those in the early 1970s and I’m sure Aunt Nancy had more important things to do than being a zeitgeist of fashion.
My curiosity was furthered by the fact that an actual record album was made of this trio—were they famous amongst the Christian Fellowship set? The album “features” Randy, which seems to indicate that people would know who Randy was, and would be jazzed to get a record album of his stylings of Christian hymns. Was it really, though, a record album of songs? It could have been just recordings of them talking about Jesus, I suppose, and how you should get to know Him, but when I went to Discogs, I learned that not only is it an LP, but yes it does contain songs. Eight songs to be exact ( one is titled Christian Cowboy.) Also, surprisingly, according to Discogs, the album was released in 1979, which is much later than I would have guessed, judging by the clothes they are wearing, but I suppose the picture that was used for the cover art may have been a photo that was taken years before. I also learned the album was pressed by Artist’s Recording Company, which, according to Discogs, was a record pressing plant and recording studio in Cincinnati, Ohio. Located in the Lockland area, the studio opened in 1951 and stopped in the early 1990s. The pressing facility started in December 1968 and folded in October 1985. The plant did jobs for many small, regional labels like King Bluegrass, Pine Tree, Melody, Central, and Vetco. Ah, once again, the MAGIC of the internet!
Sadly, this album appears to be their only release and Discogs had none for sale. Bummer!
More on Randy: he’s creepy. Maybe it’s the hair, or that he has no chin. Many people find puppets and ventriloquist dummies creepy nowadays, mostly because of horror films in pop culture that have portrayed dolls and dummies alive and horrific, but once upon a time, ventriloquy ( which is the correct term) was an extremely popular form of performance stagecraft in the 19th century and early 20th century. Perhaps one of the most famous ventriloquists in the US was Edgar Bergen ( born Edgar Berrgren who, today I learned, was the father of actress Candice Bergen– mind blown!), and his wildly popular dummy, Charlie McCarthy. Side note, the fear of ventriloquist dummies ( or ventriloquial figure, if you want to be proper) is called automatonophobia. According to doctors who deal with these kinds of phobias,…” it’s common for people to feel uncomfortable in the presence of human replicas. While many figures, mannequins, or robots resemble humans, we inherently have the awareness that they are not real, which often feels chilling or unsettling.”
Getting back to Randy and his best pals, Uncle Les and Aunt Nancy…..although I am unsure who “voiced” Randy ( the assumption would be Les), I did think it somewhat weird that they have Randy posed with his arm around Nancy’s shoulders and Les holding his hand, like he’s just a regular old normal real dude, or even like he is their child, which seemed to up the creep factor even more, but then I looked at other images of ventriloquists and their figures and I saw that they all do that when being photographed with their figure. It’s somewhat freaky. Google it. I dare you.
Since the album was marketed as a children’s album, it becomes obvious Randy’s purpose was to help Uncle Les and Aunt Nancy teach children basic Christian values. In fact, I learned that this is called Puppet Ministry, and is still used today in many church congregations for Sunday School and Bible Studies classes. There are dozens of Puppet Ministry websites that include ideas and downloadable scripts, even resources where to buy puppets. It sort of makes me feel a little bad for getting a laugh at the Wheelers and Randy, since they were just wholesome church folks doing the Lord’s work in the best way they knew how.
It still doesn’t really explain the album. They must have been the rock stars of their church!
Further internet searches about Lester and Nancy Wheeler didn’t turn up much more information other than an obituary I found online from 2014 for Nancy that gave some clues. She was born Nancy Ann Robinette on May 3, 1940 in Flint, Michigan and married Lester Wheeler in 1973. The obituary states that “Together “Uncle Les and Aunt Nancy” traveled the country as Children’s Evangelists in Puppet Ministries”, which might explain the album, if they traveled the country, they must have been popular and well-known. She was 74 when she died in 2014. Lester preceded her in death in 2000 ( though I did not find an obit for him). They had two sons. She also worked for the Kearsley School District for 30 years at an elementary school, not surprisingly. No mention is made of what became of Randy. Is he moldering away in some closet of one of their sons’ homes, or have one of their grandchildren or great-grandchildren taken up ventriloquy? Has he been long ago turned into wood chips in some landfill? The world may never know. Also, if Nancy was born in 1940 and that album was from 1979, she’s only 39 years old in that cover photo. 39. Take a moment to consider that. And if the photo was indeed taken a few years earlier, she’d be even younger than that. Did the water in Flint, Michigan have weird aging properties?
I tried to do a Google search about what usually happens to ventriloquial figures after their person? operator? dies or retires but I didn’t find much about that, with the exception of famous dummies, like Charlie McCarthy, who was donated to the Smithsonian. I am also curious if Lester was already an accomplished ventriloquist when he joined the Puppet Ministries or did he learn later in life specifically because he became part of Puppet Ministries? It’s the classic chicken-or-the-egg question.
Whatever Randy’s fate, he can rest easy knowing he did important work and is now “internet-famous”, even if he is sorta creepy.