David Sedaris Sings the Oscar Mayer Theme Song in the Voice of Billie Holiday

I’m going to make your Fri­day, right here, right now. Above, we have a clip of David Sedaris doing a dead-on Bil­lie Hol­i­day impres­sion while singing the famous Oscar May­er theme song. The clip is an out­take from a 1998 episode of This Amer­i­can Life where Sedaris talks about his child­hood fan­ta­sy of singing com­mer­cial jin­gles in Hol­i­day’s voice. You can catch the jin­gles around the 9:00 mark (lis­ten here) … and again at the 17:45 mark. But I’d real­ly encour­age you to lis­ten to the full tale from the very start (6:00). Day made?

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Bil­lie Hol­i­day Sings ‘Strange Fruit’

Bil­lie Holiday–The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

David Sedaris Reads You a Sto­ry By Miran­da July

Find Sto­ries Read by David Sedaris on our list of 800 Free Audio­Books


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Comments (2)
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  • Your Majesty says:

    So baloney Blimey hap­py to have found you, love­ly, as my life is full of divorce attor­neys, court appear­ances and pro­tec­tive orders, one can only imag­ine the below base­ment lev­el cur­rent­ly sur­round­ing me life. You are a blast of fresh breath air snd and reminder that life can be good with a bit of humor judi­cious­ly sprin­kled.

  • Leontaras says:

    That clip is so NOT David Sedaris! The only place to hear him is on NPR, This Amer­i­can Life episode 104, 17 min­utes in…

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Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.