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Featured Review > Jonathan Eig > Ken Nordine
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In the early 1960s, the Fuller Paint Company asked Ken Nordine to record a series of commercials.
They told him to be creative and do whatever hewanted, so long as he mentioned the name of
the company. It turned out the people at Fuller were talking a big chance, because telling Ken
Nordine to be creative was like telling Jerry Garcia to enjoy himself. He did not need encouragement.
So Nordine wrote: "The Fuller Paint Company invites you to stare with your ears at lavender." Then,
with groovy music playing in the background, he read in his famously resonant voice: "Lavender, keeper of
dark colors and black, blue blood, lady of the soft edges, tell us all- or tell me - where day goes with
night and what they do there and what it means. The question falls on your lavender lap and your
answer is a lavender laugh..."
These commercials, in 10 different colors, were aired on radio stations around the country. The ads
were so popular, in fact, that radio stations received requests to play them. Nordine, giddy with
delight, went back to the studio and recorded a couple dozen more, including "Ecru," "Puce," "Russet"
and "Sepia." Some of his songs, such as "Muddy" and "Flesh," were not technically colors, but
nobody noticed, it being the '60s and all.
"Some people think the only color flesh should be is the color their flesh happens to be," Nordine wrote.
"But you and I know that the proper color flesh should be is the color that it is." The whole weird affair
might have been long ago forgotten, except that a couple of Nordine's colorful spots appeared on a recent
CD collection called "Incredibly Strange Music, Volume II."&Nbsp; College radio stations picked up on the
colors and a small following grew. Soon, Asphodel Records decided to re-release all 34 shades.
Reviewers, pardon the pun, were purple with praise; and sales, it really should go without saying, were rosey.
Today, after 50 years in the business, Nordine is being recognized as an American original. His new
rainbow coalition of fans has helped expand his audience from minuscule to merely small. Old fans
like Studs Terkel and Ed Paschke have paid tribute. Jerry Garcia had him on stage to perform with
the Grateful Dead and asked him to record on the Dead's label. The Museum of Television and Radio in
New York is collecting and cataloging his tapes. The Knitting Factory, one of New York's hottest
jazz clubs, has scheduled a rare live performance, which will likely result in a recording. All in
all, Nordine says, it's a pretty good time to be a minor, invisible legend.
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