Harold "Scrappy" Lambert (May 12, 1901 – November 30, 1987, New Brunswick, New Jersey

New Brunswick, New Jersey

New Brunswick is a city in Middlesex County, New Jersey, USA. It is the county seat and the home of Rutgers University. The city is located on the Northeast Corridor rail line, southwest of Manhattan, on the southern bank of the Raritan River. At the 2010 United States Census, the population of...

) was an American dance band

Dance band

Dance band can be one of several kinds of musical ensemble:* British dance band* Dansband, a Swedish pop genre* A Eurodance band...

 vocalist who appeared on hundreds of recordings from the 1920s to the 1940s.

At Rutgers University

Rutgers University

Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey , is the largest institution for higher education in New Jersey, United States. It was originally chartered as Queen's College in 1766. It is the eighth-oldest college in the United States and one of the nine Colonial colleges founded before the American...

 he was a cheerleader and played piano for a jazz group, the Rutgers Jazz Bandits. He and fellow student Billy Hillpot formed a musical duo, which was discovered in 1926 by Ben Bernie

Ben Bernie

Ben Bernie , born Bernard Anzelevitz, was an American jazz violinist and radio personality, often introduced as The Old Maestro. He was noted for his showmanship and memorable bits of snappy dialogue....

, who signed them to perform with his orchestra. Lambert and Hillpot appeared on many recordings with the orchestra and remained under Bernie's employ until 1928.

Other bandleaders who employed Lambert include Red Nichols

Red Nichols

Ernest Loring "Red" Nichols was an American jazz cornettist, composer, and jazz bandleader.Over his long career, Nichols recorded in a wide variety of musical styles, and critic Steve Leggett describes him as "an expert cornet player, a solid improviser, and apparently a workaholic, since he is...

, Frank Britton Wenzel

Frank Britton Wenzel

Frank Britton Wenzel, born Frank Wenzel in New York City, .In 1917, he changed his name to "Frank Britton" to form a double act with Milt Britton...

, Fred Rich

Fred Rich

Frederic Efrem "Fred" Rich was a Polish-born American bandleader and composer who was active from the 1920s to the 1950s. Among the famous musicians in his band included the Dorsey Brothers, Joe Venuti, Bunny Berigan and Benny Goodman. In the early 1930s, Elmer Feldkamp was one of his...

 and Sam Lanin

Sam Lanin

Sam Lanin was an American jazz bandleader.Lanin's brothers, Howard and Lester, were also bandleaders, and all of them had sustained, successful careers in music. Lanin was one of ten children born to Russian-Jewish immigrants who emigrated to Philadelphia in the decade of the 1900s...

. Lambert was one of the Smith Brothers and also one of Red Nichols' Five Pennies.

In the 1920's and early 1930's, Lambert was one of the most prolific 'band vocalists' (hired to sing the vocal chorus on recordings by both performing Orchestras and studio groups). His voice is featured on hundreds of recordings, as well as having a series of vocal solo recordings for Brunswick.

In the 1930s, Lambert and Hillpot took their comedy routine to the National Broadcasting Company

NBC

The National Broadcasting Company is an American commercial broadcasting television network and former radio network headquartered in the GE Building in New York City's Rockefeller Center with additional major offices near Los Angeles and in Chicago...

. In 1943, MCA

Music Corporation of America

MCA, Inc. was an American talent agency. Initially starting in the music business, they would next become a dominant force in the film business, and later expanded into the television business...

 offered Lambert a job overseeing their radio department in Beverly Hills, California

California

California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...

. This marked the end of his singing career, and he worked for MCA until 1948. He died in Riverside, California

Riverside, California

Riverside is a city in Riverside County, California, United States, and the county seat of the eponymous county. Named for its location beside the Santa Ana River, it is the largest city in the Riverside-San Bernardino-Ontario metropolitan area of Southern California, 4th largest inland California...

.

"Cheerio, Cherry Lips, Cheerio," a 1929 vocal that Lambert recorded under the name Gordon Wallace, has been the closing theme of Dr. Demento

Dr. Demento

Barret Eugene Hansen , better known as Dr. Demento, is a radio broadcaster and record collector specializing in novelty songs, comedy, and strange or unusual recordings dating from the early days of phonograph records to the present....

's weekly radio broadcast since the early 1970s.