Spike Jones' father was a Southern Pacific railroad agent. He got his nickname by being so thin that he was compared to a railroad spike. At the age of eleven he got his first set of drums. As a teenager he played in bands that he formed himself. A chef in a railroad restaurant taught him how to use adapted pots and pans, forks, knives and spoons as musical instruments. He frequently played in theater pit orchestras.

Read more about Spike Jones & the City Slickers on Last.fm.


User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License and may also be available under the GNU FDL.