Animal House

This week on Three Tune Tuesday, we throw open the barn door for “Animal House” — three records with critters in the title and not a serious thought among them. No grand theme, no hidden agenda. Just a bird, some chickens, and a bee, scattered across two decades of shellac.

We open with “On the Wing” (1904), a breakneck galop from Arthur Pryor’s Orchestra hiding behind the house name “Victor Dance Orchestra.” Pryor was Sousa’s star trombonist, and this one moves like something with feathers and a head start. Then the Six Brown Brothers turn their saxophones loose on “Chasing the Chickens” (1918), a fox-trot from vaudeville’s favorite reed-blowing clowns — back when the saxophone was still the funniest instrument in the room. We close with “Bee’s Knees” (1922), a Ted Lewis romp co-written by New Orleans cornetist Ray Lopez, the same man who’d helped copyright the first jazz record five years earlier. The title was brand-new slang that year: the very best of the very best.