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 *don't* remember that one. Though it sounds good.

Let's see, off the top of my head: Middies, Bloomers; The Princess Pat; A Ram Sam Sam; Just a girl and a boy, in a little canoe.... (I like that one).

I've been known to get "Anna Botsford Comstock" stuck in my head for *weeks* at a time.

I totally need to start singing these to Elena. She's a little bored with some of the songs I sing her. :)

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

(If it's not obvious, I don't remember the Georgie one - I don't know how this comment got here.... *grin*)

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Curse you! Now I've got "Middies, Bloomers" stuck in my head. I can only fight back with:

Anna Botsford Comstock, to thy name we sing
As we sit 'round the campfire each night
And gladly in chorus our voices do ring
While o'er us the heavens shine bright
And the work that you've done
We will still carry on
With a will that is lasting and true
'Neath the hills and the trees, by the lake that you loved
We will always remember you.

Did you ever know who Anna Botsford Comstock actually was? She was one of the great American naturalists, and she wrote a Handbook of Nature Study (http://www.amazon.com/Handbook-Nature-Study-Botsford-Comstock/dp/0801493846) that's still in print. "The work that you loved" is nature study, and teaching children about nature.

Remember "Billboards?"

One day as I was walking, one dark and dreary day
I came upon a billboard, and much to my dismay
The sign was torn and tattered from the storm the night before
The wind and rain had done its job, and this is what I saw:
Smoke Coca-Cola cigarettes, drink Wrigley's Spearmint beer
Ken-L-Ration dog food makes your wife's complexion clear
Simonize your baby with a Hershey's candy bar
And Pepsi-Cola beauty cream is worn by all the stars
So take your next vacation in a brand-new Frigidaire
Learn to play the piano in your father's underwear
Doctors say that babies should smoke til they are three
And people over 65 should bathe in Lipton Tea.

[kcobweb.livejournal.com]

Oh, I had forgotten that one.

I did look up Anna on the internets, last year maybe. Wikipedia, I think, had a lovely article about her.

The other good source I had for random songs in childhood is the notebook of 60s folk songs my mother used with the guitar - she had written out the lyrics with chords. We used to love paging through it. "Today while the blossom still clings to the vine" and "The Universal Soldier" and things like that. :)