The Rocklopedia Fakebandica now has a podcast.
Listen now!
Norman Shrdlu
Jazz composer credited on several LPs released by real jazz entrepreneur and producer Norman Granz. Shrdlu first appeared on the 1950 release Norman Granz' Jazz At The Philharmonic - Vol. 12.
In reality, Granz used the name as a joke when the piece was not composed, but improvised by the group.
The name comes from the nonsense phrase "Etaoin shrdlu," which was the first two lines of letters on the keyboards of type-casting machines, in the days of "hot type" publishing. Machine operators would occasionally fill out a line of bad text with the phrase, as it was easier to let the proofreaders catch it and remove it, than to manually fix it whilst creating the type. Occasionally such lines would still make their way into print.