Billy Plunkett cartoons

Subject: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 07:44 AM

A long time ago I inherited a cartoon book from my grandfather. It was about the adventures of Billy Plunkett and his band, a jazz style dance band I would guess, dated something like 1920s-1940s.

The book is long gone. I cannot find anything about it on the internet.

Do I have the name wrong?

Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 08:52 PM

The usual questions:

Do you remember any of the details, images, specific cartoons or jokes/punch lines or any other names of characters?

Where are you located: USA, UK, etc?

Was it a paperback, hardback, magazine-style publication etc?

Any more information would be helpful. Please post what you remember to help with internet searches.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Joe Offer
Date: 06 Jul 21 - 09:11 PM

This is one of those intriguing questions that begs to be answered. I'll be watching.
I tried searching, and that didn't work. But there's SOMEBODY here at Mudcat whose mind and memory are not totally decrepit, and they're going to remember and put us at ease.
-Joe-

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 12:06 AM

As an ex-librarian, unanswered questions and not enough further information to search effectively is like an annoying bug buzzing around my head and it won't go away until the riddle is solved. I wanna know the answer!! LOL

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 03:25 AM

It was a paperback book, landscape format, similar in size to the Giles annuals. All the illustrations were black and white, one cartoon to a page. The paper was low quality which makes me think WW2 restrictions. There were the usual drummer jokes and others referring to tune titles but I can't remember any examples. I am fairly certain it was UK or possibly Irish as I do not remember any USA spellings.

Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 03:42 AM

Thanks Robin.

Any info is useful for the search or to jog someone's memory.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 03:58 AM

Well, I doubt whether this is the one you are looking for but it was a magazine published in the '20's. It came up in a Google search for

cartoon book music jokes

Captain Billy's Whiz Bang - March 1921: Explosion of Pedigreed Bunk

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 05:20 AM

This was a bit more mass-market and no colour, though I am not sure if the cover was missing, but I think it was there and black and white.

One character, I think the drummer was portrayed with a quite round head with a single strand of hair, rather like a grown up Charlie Brown.

The band members were all dressed in black suits, reminiscent of Lancashire's own "Well Dressed Gentlemen".

I sometimes wonder if I slipped into an alternate universe at about the age of ten!

Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 04:07 PM

The landscape format of the paperback sounds like the collections taken from cartoon strips in newspapers or magazines, similar to some of the books in our own collection, e.g. Footrot Flats by NZ cartoonist Murray Ball, or Far Side by Gary Larsen or Garfield by Jim Davis. Usually the books have a colour cover but the pages are usually black print only and the paper quality is fairly low level. The books can look really old just because the paper quality is low and the pages start to brown with age.

However, you haven't given an indication/approximation of when you first saw the book. I know you said that your Grandfather owned it, but that doesn't tell us how long ago you first saw the book or when he may have acquired it. (I'm trying to put this diplomatically but Grandfathers can range in age from 30 to 100, depending on how quickly the generations are generated, so to speak. LOL)

My other suggestion is to try doing Google image searches to see if you recognise the book cover or the cartoonist's style.

Search terms could be, for example:

jazz cartoon book

music cartoon book

and then add or take away other words which might narrow down the search e.g.

Billy or Plunkett or 1920's etc

You are more likely to know the book or cartoons when you see them. It's difficult for me or others to look at the images and know whether it's the right book or cartoonist.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 05:21 PM

I last remember the book in about 1965, I was given it about 1960. My grandfather was born in the 1890s.

I agree that it looks like it was a compilation of newspaper cartoons, not a strip type but individual ones with no continuity of story.

I will try your search suggestions.

Thanks,
Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 07 Jul 21 - 05:29 PM

Thanks for the info. Please let us know if you get closer to solving the mystery. Also, others here may be able to help if we keep the thread going for a while and if we can manage to pique their interest.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 09:23 AM

Met up with Nick Caffrey today for our trio practice and he says that he remembers some of the cartoons being reused in some local folk magazines in the South West of England in the 1960s. He couldn't remember who drew them though.

At least somebody else knows that they existed!

Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 08 Jul 21 - 04:54 PM

Well, that proves you are not living in an alternate universe, unless trio practice happens there too.

Try searching images for

music jokes cartoons

and see if you can find any that look familiar.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: GUEST,#
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 11:20 AM

One thing of interest in today's world of having info at one's fingertips is why the name Billy Plunkett appears nowhere else on the internet (that I can locate) but Mudcat. I don't doubt either the OP or the OP's friend, so I know the book is out there somewhere, but I need to ask: are you sure about the name?? Part of the problem I've encountered is that Grace Plunkett (God love her) appears in alsmost every search that has the name Plunkett in it. And Billy Plunkett doesn't appear at all. Any help would be gratefully received.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 01:38 PM

I forgot to say that one of my useful tricks on Google searches is to put phrases in double quotes

"Billy Plunkett"

so then you don't get separate search results for Billy and Plunkett.

I was also thinking that Billy Plunkett may have been called Billy Plunk-it as a joke on playing a plucked stringed instrument.

GUEST,# I found a lot of references to Billy Plunkett even without the double quotes.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: GUEST,#
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 03:30 PM

Great, Helen. Could you please post a few links? All I'm getting no matter how I configure the search is Plunketts coming out the yin-yang, but none about Billy Plunkett and comic books/posters, etc.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 06:32 PM

It might be a joke on "Plunk it" but I think he was portrayed as a clarinet player! (I have tried various searches for clarinet cartoons).

One thing I have noticed is that there are no cartoons coming up with a similar style of figures either. The nearest to the style that I have seen is a series of cartoons called "The little people" (dwellers on a model railway layout, rather like borrowers) that were in the Railway Modeller magazine back in the 1960s 1970s. Now this was the Peco model railway publication and they are based in Seaton Devon so perhaps a West Country connection is coming up again. I should point out that my grandfather lived in Watchet, Somerset.

Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 06:55 PM

You know who the Borrowers are!! Yay!! I re-read those books every now and then even though I'm in my mid-'60's.

I'm starting to wonder whether it was just a small publication, not many copies printed, not very wide circulation, therefore very difficult to track down.

I thought I might have been onto something when I found the Billy Fawcett cartoon books. I thought you might have misremembered the name. Also, I started out by misreading your first post and thought that Billy Plunkett was the cartoonist and not a character in the cartoons. Oh well. Keep searching, I guess.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: cnd
Date: 09 Jul 21 - 11:20 PM

A search on both newspapers.com and World Cat of any of the various spellings of Billy or Plunkett (in quotes) that I could think of came up with nothing of use.

One thing I found which could be of importance is the British cartoonist Wally Fawkes. Though I haven't found a cartoon he made about jazz, and his name obviously differs greatly, he was active in the times you mentioned, British, and played in a jazz band himself. See some examples of his work here

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 10 Jul 21 - 04:41 AM

Interestingly, I was also given the first Flook annual, which is one of Wally Fawkes's creations, at about the same time. I have asked a question on his page on the "comiclopedia".

There are some similarities in style.

The Billy Plunkett cartoons being whole page ones had the dialog printed at the bottom rather than in speech bubbles.

Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: GUEST,#
Date: 10 Jul 21 - 01:48 PM

To add, Wally Fawkes also 'cartooned' under the name Trog.

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Helen
Date: 11 Jul 21 - 03:36 PM

Robin, do you remember the names of any of the other characters in the cartoons or the instruments they played?

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 12 Jul 21 - 04:39 AM

I don't remember any other names but they must have been fairly common ones or I would have noticed them. The instruments in the band were clarinet, drum kit, double base I think, trumpet (or could be cornet, I would not have known the difference), and perhaps trombone and saxaphone.

I am still looking to see if I can find a similar style, though of course, some cartoonists had diffeent styles for different subjects, Fagousse, for example (I had a book of his cartoons once as well and also one with WW2 cartoons by Gittins, Illingworth, Moon etc).

Robin

Subject: RE: Billy Plunkett cartoons
From: Black belt caterpillar wrestler
Date: 12 Jul 21 - 04:43 AM

Should be Fougasse! My spelling is getting worse.

Roin