FAMILY : Foote Leaves the Impression There’s a Twist for Everyone

If you think of gentle Raffi or gushy, sweet Barney when you think of children’s entertainers, then Canadian singer Norman Foote, with his sly pop icon references and use of bizarre, oversize puppets, may come as something of a shock.

The Disney recording artist, who periodically tours the Southland--performing over the weekend at Notre Dame High School in Sherman Oaks and at the Norris Theatre in Palos Verdes--is indeed child-friendly, but he aims to please adults in the audience, too.

Kids can snap their fingers, ticktock like clocks, clap and sing along to pop-, jazz- and rock-style tunes and inventive lyrics about dinosaurs who don’t think much of the progress of humans, a yucky dinner (“smashed peas and burnt liver”) and puffy clouds shaped like “Santa Claus on a buffalo.” They can even come on stage and solo adorably (or obnoxiously) while the star plays guitar backup.

But Foote’s comic gifts--his skillful timing, expressive physicality and wicked sense of humor--come to full bloom in dead-on impressions of the rich, famous and infamous, and in his use of wacky, weird puppets.

During Saturday’s Notre Dame concert, adults roared with delight while Foote did “Old MacDonald Had a Farm” as Bob Dylan, Johnny Cash and Sinatra (“Start spreadin’ manure . . . “) and “I’ve been Working on the Railroad” as England’s royal monarch (“Someone’s in the kitchen with Diana . . . it’s not my Charlie, oh, no”).

Hilarity reigned too, when Foote invited a child on stage, plunked an oversize, punkish puppet head with a Mohawk hairdo over the volunteer’s head and proceeded to do the puppet’s voice while manipulating its mouth, especially as the bemused child underneath caught on and acted out Foote’s remarks.

By the time another puppet doused unsuspecting audience members with a spray of water and Foote took his signature curtain call on the shoulders of a giant pudgy baby puppet, it was clear that this family entertainer is in a category all his own.