Lake Effect News

By JACK BESS
Contributing Editor

North Town News ad from April 4, 1939 for Nathan Provol's Golden Birds pet store at 2304 W. Devon Ave.

Back on September 16, 1939, a New Yorker writer mused, “I wonder if bird-lovers know that canaries are now actually taught to whistle correctly by trainers who play phonograph records to them which contain trills, chirps and simple arias created by a human whistler. His name is Nathan Provol.”

It was just a passing reference but much more could have been said about him. For 20-some years, Provol was a ventriloquist and bird-call imitator who performed with his troupe of trained canaries on the vaudeville stage. From 1936 to 1945, he owned a bird store and hospital at 2304 W. Devon Ave.

Trained in a special birdcage designed by the vaudeville star, Provol’s Golden Birds recorded 78s on which they sang in harmony to piano, violin and cello accompaniment to such songs as “The Emperor Waltz” and “Ciribiribin.” The records occasionally turn up on eBay.

Born in Syracuse in 1881, Provol ran away from home at age 11. He came to Chicago in 1893 to see the Colombian Exposition and eventually enlisted in the army.  Provol served as a scout for U.S. forces fighting insurgents in the Philippine jungles from 1899 to 1902.

After the war, Provol was stationed at Yellowstone National Park. When President Theodore Roosevelt and naturalist John Burroughs visited the park, he served as chief scout for the party. During long hikes with the men, Provol impressed them with his ability to imitate birds singing.

This Devon storefont was once the home to Nathan Provol's superstar canaries.

He left the Army in 1909 and returned to Chicago. One day, in a restaurant across the street from a theatrical booking office, an agent heard Provol whistling and offered him a job performing at the Majestic Theatre on Monroe Street (later the Shubert and today the Bank of America Theatre). That began a quarter-century stint in vaudeville, where Provol played on bills with such names as Will Rogers and Jack Benny.

According to the Who’s Who in Music and Drama (1914) Provol’s bird and animal imitations were especially notable because “he performs this feat while continuously smoking a cigar.” At the time this guide was published, he lived at 2430 N. Lincoln Avenue.

When the Chicago Tribune looked in on Provol on Dec. 28, 1941, he was living at 6353 N. Oakley Ave.  It was three weeks after Pearl Harbor and Provol, 60, had walked into a North Side recruiting office and offered to enlist.

By then, he had retired from vaudeville and was running his Golden Birds store on Devon. Visitors to the store could hear Provol’s canaries sing “Yankee Doodle” and “God Bless America.” In the back of the store was a clinic where Provol tended to sick birds, performing surgeries and setting birds’ broken legs with splints made of chicken quill and dental floss.

Selling the store in 1945, he retired and moved to Los Angeles, where he died in 1982 at age 100. His vaudeville skills remained sharp in retirement. For a Los Angeles Times reporter in 1978, Provol performed one of his trademark bird whistles with a handkerchief stuffed in his mouth.

Today, 2304 W. Devon Ave. is a shuttered storefront, and the entrance to the former bird store, once touted as the “world’s cleanest pet shop,” is now flecked with pigeon droppings and feathers.