Being attracted to musical oddities, I downloaded off of Usenet an album called “The Best of Elton and Betty White,” by, well, you can figure it out.
This album doesn’t freakin’ exist. Google and Amazon have never heard of it. It could be a compilation put together by some mp3 trader and not an “album” as such, but these recordings had to come from somewhere, right?
Their music is very sparse acoustic folk that sounds like it was recorded in a living room on an old cassette recorder. Betty sings about religious/spiritual/humanist issues, while Elton regales with ditties like “A Jelly-Behind Woman Blows My Mind” and “A Woman’s Best Look Is From Behind,” when he isn’t singing paeans to his native Arkansas. Info on Elton and Betty is exceedingly sparse. I’ve learned that he is a young black man, she an old white woman, and supposedly they met in a homeless shelter and at some point decided to make music together (in both literal and figurative senses, one supposes).
Anyway, has anyone heard of these two, and/or have some idea where this record comes from?
A quick Google on their names shows them having a public access TV show in Venice, CA , here is a video clip , and this link lists them as street performers, with the quote:
“We met in a homeless shelter in Arkansas. Then we both ran for political office and lost, so we decided to come out here and break into show business. —Street performers (Elton and Betty White)”