Max Fleming is an American vocalist of the Big Band era. His best-known recording, "Doodle-de-Do," is very obscure.

 

The album cover for Fleming's planned 2006 comeback album, Max Fleming Duets.

 

Early life

 

Not much is known about the early biography of Max Fleming, due to his obscurity, and to the fact that Fleming himself has given wildly contradictory accounts of his origins. Legal documents and early press clippings seem to confirm that he was born in Brooklyn, New York during the first decade of the twentieth century. His father, a bookie, encouraged him to become President of the United States, but Fleming had his heart set on a career in show business. At the age of fifteen, he toured the Gas-Sun vaudeville circuit as one of The Seven Poppinjays. George Jessel, who frequently appeared on a bill with the Poppinjays, recalled their act as "fantastically bad."

 

By 1926, Fleming's fortunes had somewhat risen; that year, he played the Orpheum circuit as part of the duo Coughing and Fleming. Audience response was positive, owing mainly to the velvety tenor and matinee-idol looks of Fleming's partner, Valencio Coughing. Fleming bitterly resented Coughing's dominance of their act's attention, and the pair briefly split when Coughing refused to reverse the billing to Fleming and Coughing. Only the chance to play the Palace could change Fleming's mind, and this opportunity presented itself in 1931. Fleming agreed to retain second billing, but only on the grounds that his name be printed in larger type than Coughing's. ("Because you may be on top, but I'm bigger than you'll ever be," Fleming supposedly told Coughing during the negotiations.)

 

Their engagement at the Palace was a success, but the Coughing phenomenon continued to overshadow his partner. "Valencio Coughing is a major star in the making, just as sure as you are reading this," wrote Alexander Woollcott. "He is handsome, brilliant, and devastating, a new kind of genius for a new kind of America. Bravo, friends -- the Messiah of Happiness has arrived on his white horse to save this tired old world from its gloom, to joyously whisk humanity away to the ecstatic shores of heavenly wonder. Coughing's partner, Mac Floman, performs adequately."

 

Enraged, Fleming told the Morning World that Woollcott was "stupid like a horse," and that "any dame that prefers him to me is probably infested with rats." Their partnership over, Fleming struck out as a solo act, back to the open-air dressing rooms and rickety orange-crate stages he was playing as a Poppinjay. In 1934, while Max Fleming was singing "I Want a Girl Just Like the Girl That Married Dear Old Dad" in Nacogdoches, Texas, Valencio Coughing was fatally shot on a nightclub dancefloor by the gangster Hecky "Smalls" Ravelli, jealous over Coughing's flirtation with winsome moll Clarice Bottoms. From Nacogdoches, Fleming wired a telegram to "Smalls" Ravelli: "Thank you sir. The thought of Val lying bleeding on the floor has warmed many a cold night." Sending the telegram cost Fleming an entire week's pay.

 

 

"Doodle-de-Do"

 

The Thirties were difficult for Max Fleming, and for the world. One night, during a two-week booking at a Denver nightclub called The Low Point, Fleming staggered in a drunken stupor to the piano in his hotel's bar and wrote his first song, "Doodle-de-Do." "I had never written a song before," Fleming wrote in his unpublished memoir Happy Times If Not for All the Schmucks, "but it just poured out of my soul, like vomit." Convinced he had created a work of genius, Fleming sang the song onstage the next night. It caused a riot. The persistent, catchy refrain of the song ("Doodle-de-do, doodle-de-do, doodle-de-ay, doodle-de-ay") struck a chord with audiences mired in the despondency of the Depression, and on the basis of its success, Fleming's star began to rise. "The song unfurls like a bittersweet frosting over the cake of this troubled age," wrote an unnamed reviewer in the San Francisco Chronicle. "The next time someone asks me how things are, I, for one, shall respond, 'Doodle-de-Do.'"

 

Fleming recorded the song in 1938 for Bender-Prone Recrods in New Jersey, but he characteristically had a dispute with producer Cleveland Bender which resulted in the termination of their contract. The recording sat unreleased until 1941, when it was included on Doodle-de-Do, an LP Fleming released on Jack Bercury's Salamanda label. The album included several new tracks, all written by Fleming, and all variations on "Doodle-de-Do." The record enjoyed some marginal success, but Fleming's temper continued to dog his career. He eventually found steady work in Las Vegas, where tourists seduced by the tawdry glamour of the strip enjoyed singing along with Fleming's signature number. This, too, sat badly with the singer, who was known to yell at his audiences, "Stop singing along! Let a professional sing! You pay to hear me! I don't pay to hear you!"

 

 

Feud with Frank Sinatra

 

Throughout the Forties, Max Fleming made scathing public statements about Frank Sinatra. Claiming to have "invented singing," Fleming often told his audiences that Sinatra was a "hack," "no-talent," "skinny kid," and "horse fetishist," whose success rightfully belonged to Fleming. When Louella Parsons asked Sinatra for a response, Sinatra intimated that he had no idea who Max Fleming was and was not aware of the comments. As usual, being ignored was even less tolerable to Fleming than being scorned. The night after Parsons published Sinatra's comments, Fleming appeared at the Vegas Jewel, and sang "Doodle-de-Do" with new lyrics: "Doodle-de-do, doodle-de-do, doodle-de-ay, Sinatra sucks eggs." Later that night, in his hotel room, Fleming was confronted by several large men who demanded that he stop maligning Sinatra. The next night, Fleming sang, "Doodle-de-do, doodle-de-do, doodle-de-ay, I'm not afraid of Sinatra's goons." Upon returning to his room, Fleming was beaten severely, and spent a substantial part of 1948 in a full-body cast. During these difficult months, he recorded a new version of "Doodle-de-Do." The B-side, "Make a Wish Upon a Lovedream," was also "Doodle-de-Do."

 

In 1956, Fleming unexpectedly encountered Sinatra in the lobby of Miami's Foutianbleu Hotel. "There he is!" Fleming screamed. "There's the guy who stole my career!" Fleming continued to scream incoherently as Sinatra was quickly whisked away to a waiting limousine. Fleming told reporters that Sinatra "is afraid to face me, because I'm a real man, and he's actually a six-year-old girl, with polio." Sinatra told Variety that Fleming was "the bottom of the heap and the heap of the bottom."

 

 

Marriage to Bitsy Smits

 

During his Vegas period, Fleming met and married a coquettish showgirl named Bitsy Smits, now Bitsy Smits Fleming Fitzgerald. He pursued her ardently, leaving white roses in her dressing room at the Desert View. The two were married in an impromptu ceremony in Las Vegas in 1953, and enjoyed a brief period of happiness, coinciding with one of the better chapters in Fleming's career. When the Sinatra feud, and unbecoming onstage outbursts, threatened Fleming's modest success, their relationship grew strained. In 1961, Bitsy ran off with the wealthy industrialist Abdington Fitzgerald. Fleming, hearbroken, threw himself into the composition of a new song about the pain of doomed love. The song, "Doodle-de-Dum," became a fixture of Fleming's act for the next two years.

 

Fleming vowed to get even with Fitzgerald, but he was forced to spend much of the Sixties trying to hang on to a tenuous career. The emergence of rock 'n' roll created a new musical obsession for the young, and even more famous artists of the Big Band era found it harder to land regular engagements. Fleming, who enjoyed neither the fame nor the goodwill of colleagues like Sinatra, Tony Bennett, and Mel Torme, continued to slip. In 1967, during the months some would remember as the Summer of Love, Fleming found himself writing letters to his former partners in the Seven Poppinjays, trying to persuade them that the world was ready at last for a Poppinjays reunion tour. The letters went unanswered, and the reunion unrealized, because the other six members were dead. Fleming briefly toured the west with a show he called "The Seven Poppinjays: Together Again," but soon grew weary of beginning each show with an explanation: "Looks like the other guys couldn't make it. Because they're dead! But I'm still going strong!"

 

 

Semi-retirement

 

Following his Vegas period, Fleming was forced into a state of unofficial retirement. He attempted to capitalize on the nostalgia craze of the 1970s with the release of his Live in Las Vegas album, which included several new versions of "Doodle-de-Do," but the record failed to make the charts. He spent the Reagan years singing on cruise ships, but he was always told to stop, as his job was to wash the dishes.

 

 

Rediscovery

 

Most of Fleming's notoriety from the late Nineties onward came about because of the interest of songwriter Noah Diamond, the rare Max Fleming fan, who learned about Fleming's work when he discovered an old copy of Doodle-de-Do among his grandmother's LPs. Taken with Fleming's style, and fascinated by the singer's obscurity, Diamond spent time visiting libraries and performing arts archives, learning all he could, which was not much. In 1997, Diamond discovered that Fleming was living in Hoboken, New Jersey (coincidentally the birthplace of Frank Sinatra). In a respectful fan letter, Diamond explained that he enjoyed Fleming's work and requested permission to create a Max Fleming website. "Through the Internet," Diamond wrote, "I am confident that your music can reach a whole new audience." Fleming initially refused, replying that "the kids" would not understand the "sophistication" of his music. After three years, and many more highly flattering letters from Diamond, the singer relented. "I have decided," he wrote to his young admirer, "that it would be cruel to deny genius to a new generation." The Max Fleming fansite finally made its debut in 2001, making three vintage Fleming recordings (the 1938 "Doodle-de-Do," the Live in Las Vegas "Doodle-de-Do," and "Make a Wish Upon a Lovedream") available to a mass audience for the first time in decades.

 

In 2003, Diamond produced a short radio documentary retrospective of Fleming's life and career for the series Music Music Music Music Music. Although Fleming himself refused to participate, Diamond did score interviews with Jack Bercury (the producer behind the 1941 Doodle-de-Do album) and Bitsy Smits Fleming Fitzgerald. The program was later made available as streaming audio on Diamond's Max Fleming website.

 

In 2005, Diamond and his collaborator Amanda Sisk invited Fleming to make a special appearance in their production Burning Bush: A Faith-Based Musical. Fleming was to have performed a political song written especially for him, entitled "Please Step Down." The veteran performer felt out of place in the world of Off Off Broadway theatre, and was reportedly difficult during rehearsals. The details remain foggy, but Fleming was quietly dropped from the production before opening. In a statement, Diamond and Sisk maintained that Fleming had quit for "health reasons," and that there were no hard feelings. A rehearsal demo of "Please Step Down," featuring Fleming's vocal, was later made available online.

 

In 2006, Jack Bercury emerged from retirement to help Fleming stage a comeback, the ill-fated Duets album. Modeled on the successful "duets" efforts of Sinatra and Tony Bennett (which paired the legendary singers with younger stars), Max Fleming Duets purportedly featured team-ups with such artists as Britney Spears and Eminem. When two sample tracks were released online, it was clear that Max Fleming Duets was not a proper duets album at all; Fleming was merely singing along with the existing recordings of songs like Spears' "Toxic." Worse, it was done without permission. A flurry of lawsuits were threatened, and Max Fleming Duets was permanently shelved. At the time of this writing, the two sample tracks remain available online.

 

 

External links

 

Max Fleming website

Max Fleming Duets

Music Beat interview

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