Title: The Scotty York DVD Series
Medium: DVD Set
Arena: close up and Bar Magic
Available: Any shop, distributed by Murphys Magic Supplies

Scotty York was, he is now retired, one of the top bar magicians of all times. I won’t go as far to say he was the best but he certainly was up there and laid a lot of the trails others have since followed. Scotty knows what works behind a bar and several years ago he made a series of videos showing and explaining, with a couple of exceptions, the material and routines that made him what he was, The Silver Fox. These videos were professionally shot so the production levels are very good. The original titles of the videos were Professional Tricky Bartender, His Own Self, and Scotty York Strikes Again. The videos consist of over six hours of working material and since the shot is in a bar setting you get to see how Scotty interacts with the spectators and works the bar. It should be noted that some say Scotty works blue and this may scare off some but I did not find him at all offensive.

Murphys Magic Supply has selected this series, along with some others, to not only release as individual DVDs but also in a DVD series, meaning all three in one package. So far they have been releasing some outstanding material and this set is certainly in that outstanding category. There is so much material here I can’t really, unless I want to take up six pages to write this up and then present it, address each routine. I would like to look at each individual disk and while I suggest you get the entire package you may want to get one or two of the volumes rather than all three. While they are all good number one has the most commercial material, number two the most in quantity and stand alone pieces, and number three some solid memorial routines plus you get to see how a performer works if he is, seemingly, slightly buzzed.

Disk One: The Silver Fox Professional Tricky Bartender

We see how Scotty works the crowd, uses their names during his performance, which we know people love to hear their names, and how he makes sure people are having a good time after a day of work. The material is great for the bar as are the presentations. Look for the bits Scotty tosses in, here are some of my favorites:

My Ladies Teddy Bear:
Uses a coffee cup and some olives. A great routine with some very good lines. The olives appear to penetrate the coffee cup and then turn into a lime and finally a teddy bear that is given to the selected young lady helper. This will play very strong.

Fast Eddie Smith:
This is one of those routines where the slicker is trying to pull a fast one by miscounting cash and you end up turning the tables on them. Looks great and will get the jaws dropping at the end because it seems impossible. Great presentation too.

Froggy Goes A’courtin’:
This is a solid routine using the ol’ origami frog made out of a playing card. I’ve seen other presentations, Mike Close and Carl Andrews, but this one goes a bit further and adds some new elements, this is also a winner.

Marked Coin in Sugar Packet:
A fooler…..

3-Card Monte:
In the hands and fast, not your normal street monte type routine this one will leave ‘em wondering.

Scotty’s Kiss Trick:
Want the ladies at the bar to love you? This will get them on their way, nice way to produce candy.

The Rising Card:
Beautiful multiple rising card routine. I’m still waiting for Kohler to release his but this may be the key to his. You have three specs pick cards and they are returned to a deck, the deck is placed in a glass onto a platform and covered with a glass dome and the cards rise into a fan. I love this routine and the rising card.

The other routines are very good as well but time to move on to…..

Disk Two: The Silver Fox His Own Self

Scotty once again keeps ‘em laughing at the bar but this time he shoots through a large number of effects. I don’t want to leave anything out but I’ll just go over a few that I really liked. If I don’t list one it doesn’t mean anything other than there are 17 effects on this DVD explained and no one wants to hear about all of them. They are gems each and every one.

A card sequence: Note I think the following effects ran together the way Scotty does it makes for a great sequence

Cut The Aces / Twisting the Aces / Pineapple Twist / Last Trick of Jacob Daley / Just Tweezing

Here is a beautiful set of effects that make up a nice routine. You start with a deck being shuffled and you cut to the aces. Scotty has a different handling on Twisting The Aces than The Professor but is very similar, the changes at the get ready I like. Next we have the Pineapple Twist. I’ve not seen this one before and I like it and am considering adding it to my ace routine and removing a routine from Focus. The Pineapple Twist looks very good. Next the Last Trick of Dr. Daley, which always gets the specs and would be loved by the street assassins. The last effect is Just Tweezing where the aces are used to find a card buried in a deck.

Next we have another sequence of card effects that run pretty well together, or at least Scotty is able to link them.

Card In Drink / High Jumper / The Warpedist Card / The Warmest Card

Mostly standard ‘you pick it I’ll find it’ card tricks the set does include Scottys handling of Card Warp. Pretty traditional the only real interesting aspect is how he runs these all together. This is material that if you don’t know it will interest most blooming card guys.

The Fist O’Doom:

When the fellow at the bar, John, did a card trick for Scotty I was surprised that he would do something like that. It turned out to be just an excuse to show Fist O’Doom which is just a very effective way to deal with the magician who tries to step on your gig. I don’t know how much luck you’ll have finding the prop he uses but it would be worth it.

Scotty’s Light Bulb:

Very cool and devious lie detector routine. The only problem is I’m not sure if the light bulb is available any longer from Scotty.

No Switch Razor:

The always fun selected card is found by a razor that cuts all the other cards up. Another great routine like this is found on Mix N’ Mingle, plays very well.

The Gypsies:

Old fashioned looking routine based on a story of Gypsies. Looks great and plays well.

There are a few other routines on there as well, all are strong.

One thing I’ve noticed about guys like Scotty York (Doc Eason for example) is when they put out a set of videos you get their working material and it is great stuff. There is a lot of performance style similarities between Scotty and Doc, as well as a lot of differences, which makes sense since Bob Sheets has been a major influence on both gents. What I’m getting to is in explanations Scotty, like Doc, moves through them at a pretty fast pace and expects you to keep up. Not a problem for those who have been around awhile but for newbies they may feel lost at times. Luckily this DVD has a nice section on the sleights Scotty uses and I found it to be of great value and I think is something others may want to consider using should you not catch a move Scotty uses.

Disk Three: The Silver Fox Strikes Again

This DVD is an example of why one shouldn’t drink during their job. Scotty is either very tired or has had a bit much o’ the liquor and it shows. The end result is this is the weakest of the three disks but is still interesting to watch and it has a few ideas that may interest some of you. The disk has a handling of Card On Ceiling, not the best I’ve seen but not too bad. It has the dreaded torn paper to panties, and some interesting card magic used for promotion. The best routine is The Ring in the World, which if you could put together the props would be killer and also an interesting version of The Side Walk Shuffle.

There you have it folks. The magic is, with some weakness in disk three, excellent and developed for the bar. If that is your venue or if you are interested in performing magic in a bar as a magical bartender (rather than a bartender that does magic) or if you want to learn some good close up magic Scotty is giving out his lifes work. When a pro releases his real work it is usually good and in this case there is a lot of great magic. This is one of my favorite sets and I always enjoyed Scotty. Thanks to Murphys Magic Supply for bringing this out of the dust bin and also they did a nice job converting to DVD with the titles menu and all that fun stuff.

This is a great DVD set. You'll enjoy having it in your collection.

Mark.

Thanks for that review, MagicSanta. Terrific as always. I only wish I had your budget for magic stuff

Good severence package and time to watch the DVDs while out in the middle of no where...

Awesome!