KNOCKERS UP…

Submitted by k2dtw August 28th, 2010
Certifikitsch Winner

This was a huge adult party album by the legendary Rusty Warren…
I love the flirting couple on the cover…and the guy holding the table knockers..
I guess “knockers up” meant raise your knockers/noise makers…and/or stop applauding???.. And Rusty Warren took that innuendo, and ran with it??… I wish I had a turntable…
The table knocker must have been a great souvenir, fun to collect, like the napkins and matches, it has all the club info stamped on the handle.
This table knocker is from…The Bowery Cafe, located in Detroit’s beloved Hamtramck, Mi…where everyone still goes for the best authentic polish food and pastry.
During the holidays, you’ll always find the local tv news in Hamtramck with their cameras. They love to interview all the people at the shops and bakeries that are standing in lines that wind down the street…film at 11:00….yumm
Hamtramck, was home to Ford, Packard, Dodge Main… and is still home to Kowalski sausage..

4 Responses to “KNOCKERS UP…”

  1. Allee Willis

    I have all of Rusty’s LPs. The covers are always great. I love that the guy on this one is playing the glockenspiel on the gal’s nose.

    I LOVE the table knocker from Hamtramyk. I went to summer school at the big hig school in Hamtramyk one summer. Was that Cooley? No. I’m blanking on the school name. I hated driving there because I was taking chemistry (which I believe I flunked).

    Kowalski!!!

  2. k2dtw

    THE BOWERY CAFE….
    I just found this online…

    Of all the bars and nightclubs in Hamtramck, The Bowery was probably the most famous; it was popular until the 1950s, when it met its sad demise. Many big name stars appeared at The Bowery, including Stan Kenton and Frankie Lane. Comedian Frankie Rapp would do a Don Rickels-type routine. Each patron at The Bowery received a rapper, which was a long, wooden stick that looked like a lollipop with a twelve-inch-long handle, and the patrons used these rappers to rap on the tables as a form of applause.

    The Bowery drew major talent who would come to Detroit on tour, and it was not uncommon at any given time at The Bowery to see performers such as Jimmy Durante sitting at a table drinking Pfeiffer beer–which was distributed from 11618 Sobieski Street in Hamtramck…or Sophie Tucker sitting with United Auto Workers (UAW) moguls Walter Reuther and Dick Frankenstein, or Jack Dempsey, one-time heavyweight boxing champion of the world. The emcee was Amos Jacobs (Danny Thomas).
    An artist would come weekly and paint on the exterior of the building a portrait of the entertainer who would be appearing that week as neighborhood children sat and watched the face develop to see if they recognized the star. The Marx Brothers, the Ritz Brothers, Martha Raye, Sophie Tucker and Tony Martin, who was a very popular singer in the 1940s and was marreid to Cyd Charisse in 1948, were among the stars who appeared at The Bowery. During the 1940s, before they ever became famous on the Jackie Gleason television show, the June Taylor Dancers made up the chorus at The Bowery.