Shop ‘Til You Drop at the Trav S.D. Store!

As we come upon Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday may we suggest the following Trav S.D. products?:

Our most recent book, an account of a historic troupe of little people and its founder Ike Rose, published by Vaudevisuals Press: Rose’s Royal Midgets and Other Little People in Vaudeville. 

Released in Fall 2019, this Archeophone CD for which I co-wrote the liner notes: Joe Weber and Lew Fields: The Mike and Meyer Files . Weber and Fields are not just the grandaddys of all comedy teams (influencing everyone from the Marx Brothers to to Laurel and Hardy to Abbott and Costello to the Three Stooges), but they were also two of the most important Broadway impresarios at the time when what we think of as Broadway was still being created, Their classic routines are now available to listen to, and I tell you they’re still funny. I’ll direct you to the official website now so you can learn more. And of course there’s my Weber and Fields blogpost here…but don’t go thinking you’ll have done your due diligence by reading that. The content in the liner notes is far more extensive, quite different, and the collaborative work of myself, Fields’ scholar Marc Fields, and Archeophone’s chief bottle washer Richard Martin. Not to mention the direct experience of the team themselves on the CDs. Place your order now! I said NOW! Go here. 

Oh! And by the way, I also wrote the liner notes to these Archeophone Records:

Nat M. Wills: The Famous Tramp Comedian and:

Van and Schenck: Pennant Winning Battery of Songland. Buy these too! You won’t regret it!

And let us not forget my two books:

No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous is my first book and has been critically praised by just about every publication that matters: The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, Publishers Weekly, etc etc etc. I was on NPR.  It’s in schools and libraries all over the country. It has been cited in tons of books, including Richard Zoglin’s recent Bob Hope biography.  Bette Midler put it on her short list of favorite books  and the late great David Rakoff, Liza Minnelli, Marilyn Manson, and composer/performer Michael Feinstein, are among its other celebrity fans. What’s it about? It’s about VAUDEVILLE, ya stoop! More info and a place to buy it are here. 

My 2013 opus Chain of Fools: Silent Comedy and Its Legacies from Silent Comedy to Youtube takes you on a journey from the earliest days of silent comedy through the careers of giants like Charlie Chaplin, Buster Keaton, Harold Lloyd and Laurel and Hardy…to slapstick artists of the sound era like Red Skelton, Abbott and Costello and The Three Stooges…all the way to the present day. Jason Zinoman of The New York Times called it an “excellent history” and gave it some love here.

Order Chain of Fools here today!

Lastly there’s always a gift for the users of Travalanche! You can help underwrite Travalanche by giving to my Patreon campaign here. You could sign up for a dollar a month! Your generosity will help extend the period during which I am able to make this content available to the public for free. I assure you, at some point, without sufficient support, it won’t be. Show your appreciation here and I’ll return the favor by sending you amazing surprise video clips throughout the year. I look forward to giving thanks for your giving on the day of thanks. Are ya giving? Thanks! Here again, my Patreon.