Readers with stomach problems might want to skip this part, but it seems only logical that the man who would replace Sir Fredrick Gas would have to be the same guy who once toured in a band called Jack Pepper With Mustard and Ketchup. Born Paul Garner, this pianist and comedian actually got his professional vaudeville start in the latter band with the appetizing name. Garner was the "mustard" in the group, to be exact, and perhaps the nickname "Mousie" came about because of someone's bad pronunciation. Garner was never a pianist to sit quietly at his keyboard. How much of a clown was he? The best way to illustrate his capacity for clowning is to point out Garner's connection with the Three Stooges. That trio of eye-poking terror began as part of Ted Healy's revue. When the original Stooges went on their own in 1931, Healy hired Garner as a replacement stooge for his own act, which from then on included an act called Healy's Stooges. A few years later, Garner and some of his earlier associates (perhaps Ketchup?), played in the Broadway show Crazy Quilt and started up a vaudeville act of their own named the Gentlemaniacs. As the Three Stooges soared to popularity in vaudeville, both Healy and Garner were sometimes tapped as replacement Stooges, that is when their noses and eyes could stand the abuse. Healy and Garner also appeared together in the 1934 film Operator 13. Bandleader Spike Jones noticed Garner while making the rounds of Hollywood nightclubs in the early '50s. When a replacement was needed in 1954 for the previously mentioned Gas, one of the most obnoxious members of the City Slickers, the job was handed to Garner on a platter, hopefully cleansed of ketchup and mustard stains. Garner took over some of the numbers previously done by Gas, whose real name was Earl Bennett. These included hits such as "Chloe" and "You Always Hurt the One You Love." Rather than imitate what Gas had put in the engines of this material, Garner came up with his own slightly Stoogy formula and became one of the funniest parts of the show. His only rival was the pint-sized Billy Barty. In 1957, Garner was part of the cast of the CBS Spike Jones Show. The style of this program differed greatly from past Jones ventures. For one thing, the City Slickers were gone, replaced by the Band That Plays for Fun. Although there were still laughs and moments of musical insanity, the popularity of Lawrence Welk seemed to have influenced Jones. During that decade and into the early '60s, Garner became a character actor on television and was a regular on the cast of Surfside 6, where he had the character Mousie named after him. He played a gangster on an episode of the Monkees and also appeared onPetticoat Junction and the Munsters. He also continued performing in nightclubs until retiring. He was involved off and on with Jones up until that bandleader's death on-stage at Harrah's casino in Lake Tahoe in 1965. In 1994, Garner appeared in the film Radioland Murders, in which Michael McKean, Billy Barty, and others attempted to recreate the Jones stage show. Mousie Garner: Autobiography of a Vaudeville Stooge was published by McFarland and Company in 1999, with a foreword by Steve Allen. ~ Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide