Singing down memory lane.

[rivka]

telerib just posted the marvelous news that Boston has named their reloadable RFID-based subway card the "Charlie Card."

I grew up on the song "Charlie on the M.T.A.." (Anyone unfamiliar with the song? It's about a guy who gets stuck on the subway for eternity because they want to charge him an "exit fare" to get off.) It was one of the songs my father loved to sing for his kids. One of the many songs.

I remember so much of my father's music.

He sang something that, whoa, apparently was originally a Child Ballad. (I had no idea it had such a distinguished pedigree!) It's about a ship that encounters a mermaid, and my father used to sing it when we were out on his little sailboat. I don't remember the verses from his singing, but he sang the chorus this way:

And the ocean waves do roll, do roll
And the stormy wind doth blow, doth blow
And we poor sailors go running to the top
While the landlubbers lie down below, below, below
While the landlubbers lie down below.

He sang the deeply mysterious song "Green Grow the Rushes-O." I spent hours trying to figure out what it meant, and am pleased to find that others have apparently found that "the lyrics of the song are in many places extremely obscure, and present an unusual mixture of Christian catechesis, astronomical mnemonics, and what may very well be pagan cosmology."

But mostly he sang goofy songs from his college years. He liked Norman Levy's intricately rhymed "Thais," and a similar retelling of "Bluebeard" which I am astonished to discover is more than a hundred years old.

When I was six years old, I liked to sing:

One day while sleeping heavily, from wresting with the Devil he
Had gone to bed exhausted, though the sun was shining still
He had a vision Freudian, and though he was annoyed, he an-
Alyzed it in the well-known style of Doctors Jung and Brill.

He dreamed of Alexandria, of wicked Alexandria.
A crowd of men was cheering in a manner rather rude.
And Athaneal glancing there at Thais, who was dancing there
Observed her do the shimmy, in what artists call The Nude!

Said he,"This dream fantastical disturbs my thoughts monastical,
Some unsuppressed desire, I fear, has found my monkish cell.
I blushed up to the hat o' me to view that girl's anatomy
I'll go to Alexandria and save her soul from Hell!"

I was an odd six-year-old, and my father is at least partially to blame.

He sang the Kingston Trio's bastardized version of the traditional Scandanavian immigrant song "Oleanna." And he sang us every song from Tom Lehrer's first record. His favorite was "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park," but I also remember him treating us to "Fight Fiercely, Harvard," "The Old Dope Peddler," "In My Hometown," "Be Prepared" ...all when I was a tiny kid.

What off-the-beaten-path music shaped your childhood?

Comments

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

I totally associate "Charlie and the MTA" with your father, actually. I remember singing it with you and him. :)

The songs I go back to are songs from Girl Scout camp. Almost every time my sister and I are together, we end up singing some, and asking each other about lyrics and whatnot. My sister is incredibly good at remembering lyrics of songs she heard once or twice when she was a kid (she said this doesn't apply to stuff from later years). The last time she was here it was the song "Chicken":

C, that's the way it begins,
H, I'm the second letter in,
I, I am the third and
C, I'm the fourth letter in that word, oh-
K, I'm filling in,
E, I'm nearing the N
Oh, C H I C K E N
That's the way you spell chicken!

Oh, Rufus Ruff-us Johnson Brown,
Whatcha gonna do when the rent comes round?
Whatcha gonna say,
Whatcha gonna play,
Whatcha gonna do on the judgment day?
Oh, you know I know
Rent means dough,
Landlord gonna throw you out in the snow,
Oh, Rufus Ruff-us Johnson Brown,
Whatcha gonna do when the rent comes round?

Her boyfriend was.... stunned.

You could *completely* keep up with us in these discussions, *and* add to the mix.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

You could *completely* keep up with us in these discussions, *and* add to the mix.

Girl Scout camp songs!!

Do you sing them to Elena? When Alex was teeny tiny, I used to sing her every song I knew that had hand motions - mostly songs from Camp Comstock.

Remember this one? Or was this one from when I went to Comstock as a counselor, instead of from when we were kids?

Every morning at half past eight
I go "ooie ooie ooie" to Georgie
And every morning at half past eight
He goes "ooie ooie ooie" to me
No need to shout, no need to call
But as I rub my eyes
I open the window, pop out my head
And "ooie ooie ooie" goes Georgie.

Every morning at half past eight
I go "ooie ooie ooie" to Georgie
And every morning at half past eight
He goes "ooie ooie ooie" to me
No need to shout, no need to call
But as I rub my eyes
I open the window, pop out my head
Down falls the window, off rolls my head
And "ooie ooie ooie" goes Georgie.

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

Girl Scout camp songs were big in my life, with three older sisters in the cult and my mom being both a scout leader and a brownie leader. Little did I know they were preserving the folk-song legacy of Britain. I bought an LP at the record sale that used to go from campus bookstore to campus bookstore, with Charlie Byrd accompanying a countertenor, and I knew several of the songs! "The Keeper Would a-Shooting Go" was my favorite of those. So jolly, and the doe seems to play along, despite the fact that it's rather hard on her. (Hunting the merry, merry doe seems to have been a metaphor for something else, ya think?)

I look forward to finding out who the characters in "Green Grow the Rashes" really are.

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Oh! And did you know that there really was a Princess Pat Light Infantry?

No, really. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Princess_Patricia's_Canadian_Light_Infantry)

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Was heck, there is a PPLI. I've done joint operations with them.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Is there also a British one, or is it the Canadian one?

[wcg.livejournal.com]

Canadian. As far as I know that's the only one.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

IIRC, their new Colonel-in-Chief will be our former Governor General, Adrienne Clarkson.

[therealocelot.livejournal.com]

You just made my day.

[ex-helygen254.livejournal.com]

C - that's the way it begins, and
H - that's the next letter in,
I - you're in the middle of the word, and
C - you've already heard, and
K - now you're nearing the end, and
E - now you're nearing the N,
C-H-I-C-K-E-N, oh, that's how you spell clap clap chicken!

Rufus Rustus Johnson Brown, oh,
Whatcha gonna do when the rain comes down?
Whatcha gonna do, oh, whatcha gonna say, oh,
Whatcha gonna do when the rain comes your way?
Now, you know, and I know, and everybody knows,
That you can't pay the rent if you ain't got the dough.
Rufus Rustus Johnson Brown, oh,
Whatcha gonna do when the rain comes down?

Girl Guides in Scarborough (Toronto), Ontario.