Meyer, Jay

Vocalist who was a member of the Sportsmen Quartet, which made frequent appearances on The Jack Benny Show, and The Randy Van Horne Singers, a group of steadily employed session singers. He was also active with Ray Conniff and His Orchestra and Chorus, sometimes taking up the conductor reins, as he did on 1964’s Speak to Me of Love. The following year, he appeared on Ray Conniff’s Friendly Persuasion.

Some of his other early recordings include Duane Eddy’s 1960 LP, A Million Dollars Worth of Twang, 1962’s Bonanza: A Ponderosa Party, and the A side of a 45 he recorded with Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians, entitled “Cannon Ball Rag”. (The B side was “I Love You I Do”, sung by Carmen Lombardo.)

His musical legacy, however, may be as one of the singing busts in the Disney theme park attraction, The Haunted Mansion. The singing busts comprised Jay, along with Bob Ebright, Thurl Ravenscroft, Verne Rowe, and Chuck Schroeder. (His character name is Ned Nub.) After the quintet laid down some tracks for the amusement park ride, Allan Davies, who was overseeing the recording session, decided they would look good as the ghostly statues, and filmed them in harnesses to obfuscate their bodies and keep their heads in place. The song the quintet is famous for singing is “Grim, Grinning Ghosts”, which is available on the Disney Karaoke Series Theme Park Favorites CD, released in 2005. Jay worked at other venues at Disney’s theme park, occasionally filling in for Fulton Burley in the Golden Horseshoe Revue.

You have plenty of opportunities to hear him in CD format: He appears on Rosemary Clooney’s The Girl Singer, Duane Eddy’s Twangin’ from Phoenix to L.A., Duane Eddy: The RCA Years: 1962-1964, the movie and TV western anthology, My Rifle, My Pony and Me, and Frank Sinatra’s Trilogy.

Here he is with The Sportsmen Quartet performing “The Hum Song”. Jay is the one on the far left…

Sources:

Meyer, Jay

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