Stan Ridgway

Stan Ridgway born April 5, 1954 in Barstow, California, is a Multi-instrumentalist singer-songwriter, and was the original lead singer of the band Wall of Voodoo.

The band was named Wall of Voodoo by Ridgway before their first gig in reference to a comment made by Joe Berardi, a friend of Ridgway's, while recording and overdubbing a Kalamazoo Rhythm Ace drum machine, a gift to Ridgway by writer and iconic voice over artist Daws Butler, partner to Stan Freberg, voice of Yogi Bear and many other Hanna-Barbera characters. Berardi was listening to some of the Acme Soundtracks music Ridgway and Moreland had created in their studio. When Ridgway jokingly compared the multiple-drum-machine- and Farfisa-organ-laden recordings to Phil Spector's Wall of Sound, Berardi commented it sounded more like a "wall of voodoo", and the name stuck.

Actually, for new listeners, the voodoo reference was a little misleading, as it referred to the music's often spooky quality, as opposed to any Haitian or Caribbean influences. In fact, Ridgway's Wov music could fairly have been described as a cross between early synthesizer pop (especially that of Devo) and Ennio Morricone's soundtracks for Sergio Leone's "Man with No Name" films. Adding to the music's distinctiveness was Nanini's percussive experimentation, mixing drum machines with unconventional found instruments such as pots, pans and various kitchen utensils, as well as Marc Moreland's twangy spaghetti-western guitar. On top of the mix was Ridgway's unusual vocal style — a flat, uninflected, nasal Western drawl that combined the stoic ballad-style Sprechgesang of Johnny Cash, the declamatory theatrical delivery of Ethel Merman, and the ironic, clenched-jaw voice of a wisecracking ventriloquist's dummy doing James Cagney impressions and carny routines. One of Ridgway's hobbies since childhood is ventriloquism and he occasionally assumes the persona of a dummy named Jackie "Teak" Lazar, such as in his cover version of "Behind Closed Doors" from Holiday in Dirt and in the video for "Big Dumb Town" from Black Diamond.