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

[writingortyping.livejournal.com]

I think she used green and blue interchangably, in fact. Clearly, accuracy was not a concern.

What about the classic WB Bugs Bunny opera stuff?

[kip-w.livejournal.com]

The Bugs Bunny opera treatments showed some understanding and sophistication. Stalling (and later Franklyn) could handle the music and (with Michael Maltese's words) mold it into something that was funny without being a travesty. WHAT'S OPERA, DOC? is the finest example of this, with Milt Franklyn arranging.

I once thought of writing an article comparing different treatments of the same music in cartoons that dealt with one classical piece. "Largo al Factotum," for instance, was in MGM's MAGICAL MAESTRO, Terry's BLUE PLATE SYMPHONY, and MGM's THE CAT ABOVE, THE MOUSE BELOW. Liszt's Second Hungarian Rhapsody figured in Bugs's RHAPSODY RABBIT, as well as a Woody Woodpecker cartoon, a Tom & Jerry, and RHAPSODY IN RIVETS (a Friz Freleng collection of construction site gags). Suppe's "Poet and Peasant Overture" carried a couple of cartoons.

(I'd be remiss if I didn't mention THE BAND CONCERT, whose version of "William Tell" includes some of the most stirring animation Disney ever made. Near the end, the tornado has all the players flying in the air while conductor Mickey strives resolutely to keep order and time. He gives an upbeat for the final climax, and when he raises his hands, everything stops, and my spine invariably gives me a jolt when it does. Also, Horace Horsecollar gets his best part in this cartoon.)

Spike Jones took on "Carmen" and "I Pagliacci." Musically, the band was great, but I get tired of the constant references to fat sopranos. Okay, I get it. Four times would have been enough. The narration for "Pal-yat-chee" is almost perverse in what they choose to criticize: It's too long! (It's actually about an hour long.) It's too artificial! (Okay, but it was a pioneer in operatic realism, and much -- not all -- of the singing has a real function. I've always loved Homer & Jethro (who sing this one). They impressed the socks off me when I saw them in concert. But they're way off base here.