When discuss turns to the intense lights of the Detroit music scene, some names are rendered in vivid neon: Iggy Pop, The MC5, Ted Nugent. Bob Seger. The White Stripes. And, after all, Alice Cooper, godfather of shock rock and founding Hollywood Vampire.
One other Detroit legend? Soupy Gross sales, host of the anarchic children’ TV present Lunch with Soupy Gross sales, a person who famously inspired youngsters to ship him any “humorous inexperienced items of paper with photos of U.S. presidents” their dad and mom may need mendacity round, and ended up receiving 1000’s of {dollars} within the submit.
When Gross sales died in 2009, Cooper launched a brief assertion by means of his publicist, Bob Merlis. “Being from Detroit, I got here dwelling day-after-day and watched Soupy at lunch,” stated Alice. “One of many best moments of my life was getting piefaced by Soupy. He was certainly one of my all-time heroes.”
Being piefaced by Soupy Gross sales was a long-running tv custom, with Gross sales and his friends being served creamy pie justice an estimated 20,000 instances from the Fifties onwards. Victims included rat packers Frank Sinatra, Tony Curtis and Jerry Lewis, whereas Alice Cooper’s flip happened in 1979, after the present had relocated from Detroit to the studios of KTLA in Los Angeles.
It is a weird sketch, that includes an enormous puppet known as Black Tooth, in any other case often called the “largest and sweetest canine within the USA”, who stays principally offscreen. There’s additionally a spider, who performs a tiny piano and sings within the squeakiest of voices, and Alice Cooper, who comes armed with a $10,000 contract to place the gifted bug in his present. Occasions take a definite flip for the more severe when one other mostly-offscreen puppet (White Fang, the “largest and meanest canine within the USA”) arrives with a hammer.
By the way, Soupy Gross sales’s connections to the world of music did not start and finish with Cooper. His sons, Tony Fox Gross sales and Hunt Gross sales, have been each members of Iggy Pop’s band on the traditional albums Kill Metropolis and Lust For Life, in addition to backing Todd Rundgren on Runt, Runt: The Ballad of Todd Rundgren and “One thing/Something?”
Additionally they labored with David Bowie on the 2 Tin Machine studio albums, however weren’t in awe of the person. “Soupy Gross sales was my father and I grew up with that type of movie star,” Tony Gross sales advised Spin in 1989. “There have been children sleeping outdoors my home 24 hours a day.”
And their father? “I will most likely be remembered for the pies,” he as soon as stated. “And that is all proper.”
