…of Spanish ventriloquist Señor Wences.
UPDATE WITH A PERSONAL NOTE: I actually got into ventriloquism partially BECAUSE of Señor Wences.
In the late 80s I got a letter in the mail from a ventriloquist’s group noting that a testimonial/tribute dinner would be held in NYC to celebrate Wences’ birthday. If you couldn’t come, it said, can you kindly send a letter or video?
So I went to a super-cheapo video studio. I put on an audio tape of me playing “Together Wherever We Go” on the piano and sang to it — me and my brand-new dummy. Then, as the music played at the end, a written tribute that I did for Señor Wences scrolled across the screen as the song ended in a flourish.
Two days after the dinner I got a call from Chuck Jackson, who made my dummies.
“They had the dinner in New York for Señor Wences,” he told me.
“That’s nice,” I replied.
“And they got THREE videos.”
“OH, NO!” I never dreamed there would only be TWO OTHERS. Before Chuck could finish, I saw people shaking their heads in disgust.
“Yes,” Chuck said. “One was from Jim Henson.”
“Oh, no!”
“One was from Willy Tyler.”
“Oh, no!!”
“And one was from an unknown California ventriloquist named Joe Gandelman…and they loved it!”
Chuck recently sent me a carton of old ventriloquism newsletters and found the entry about the dinner, mentioning my video. And they liked me, they really liked me!
That spurred me on, to inflict myself on other audiences. My passion was performing for sick kids at hospitals. I did so many shows there and private visits that one hospital insisted I take a TB test and get credentials. A ventriloquist in Maryland found out and later arranged for me to be made an Honorary Kentucky Colonel.
But there was a SECOND PERSON who gave me the nudge to quit my full-time journalism job: my all-tome favorite ventriloquist since childhood, Jimmy Nelson.
I sent the Señor Wences tribute video that I had done to his office in Florida and he wrote back that it looked great and said he’d be happy to see me in his office when I visited my parents there, as per my request.
He encouraged me and became a mentor and friend. This led to my sending him practice videos, and his sending back letters detailing how he thought I did. At one point he said, “You smile and seem so at ease that you’re one of the people who I think could do it full time.”
And, starting Nov. 7, 1990, I did — shocking my editors as I shifted gears and professions as I moved into the entertainment biz. But it all started…with Señor Wences. (And now you know THE REST OF THE STORY..)
Here is a classic Jimmy Nelson Nestles’ Quik video (Jimmy still performs with Farfel and Danny O’Day) via You Tube:
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.