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The Nairobi Trio

The Nairobi Trio
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The Nairobi Trio was a skit Ernie Kovacs performed several times for his TV shows. It combined many existing concepts and visuals in a novel and creative way.

People in gorilla suits have always been a comedy staple. The notion of well-known or predictable music pieces gone awry has long been practiced by artists as diverse as Stan Freberg, Spike Jones or P. D. Q. Bach. The "slow burn" of one character being annoyed by another, resulting in eventual retaliation, was not new. But the combination of all those ingredients, combined with impeccable timing, produced a unique and memorable result.

It was a live-action version of a child's animatronic wind-up music box, and performed to the tune "Solfeggio" by Robert Maxwell. According to an interview with Edie Adams contained in John Barbour's 1982 documentary Ernie Kovacs: Television's Original Genius, when Kovacs first heard a recording of the Maxwell's composition, he immediately came up with a mental image of what would become The Nairobi Trio: Barry Shear, Kovacs' director at DuMont Television Network, brought the tune to Kovacs' attention in 1954.

In the middle sat the "head gorilla," always played by Kovacs (with a cigar), conducting with a baton or (sometimes) a banana. To the viewer's left another gorilla stood, holding two oversized timpani mallets. The identity of this ape varied, but among Kovacs' celebrity friends both Jack Lemmon and Frank Sinatra are known to have performed in the skit. Seated at screen right at a piano was a female simian (variously played by Barbara Loden, Jolene Brand and Kovacs' wife, Edie Adams), robotically thumping up and down on the keys.


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