Are You Ready For 100 Great Novelty Songs?
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Artist:
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Track:Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah
Perhaps I should have saved this for Toxic Tuesday, but it's too much fun to make you wait. One of my favorite music listening sites outside of MOG, is a site called Nutsie. It is a site that has lots of cool playlists, as well as the ability to listen to your favorite artists (much how I envision the new MOG will be). One of their very fine playlists, is a great collection of some unforgettable (and some perhaps forgotten by choice) novelty songs.
If you just want to have a fun listen to all those goofy songs and possibly some artists that were destined to be one hit wonders, this is the list for you.
How many do you remember and what kind of memories do they conjure up? What kind of feelings hit you, as you hear them again? If you care to share, I'd be curious to know where these songs take you, in your head and heart.
For me, hearing Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah reminds me of my parents (my Dad has passed) and some of the first recorded sounds I ever listened to. Basically, my introduction to records and what a joy they were. They were big Allen Sherman fans and had all his records. They were also big on Bill Cosby and Tom Lehrer. I never really saw my parents as being great cut-ups or even very comedic (far from it), but they sure seemed to love comedy records.
Before "the kid's" Beatles records started infiltrating their collection, those comedy records were about all I had to listen to, on our one and only stereo, other than Mitch Miller type records and the Chipmunks.
Having been reared on comedy records, I later found great appreciation in Dr. Demento's show and all the new novelty and comedy artists he exposed me to, like Weird Al, Spike Jones, Stan Freberg, Fire Sign Theater, Ray Stevens and others.
I was also drawn to those Flying Saucer type novelty tunes where they play snippets of other songs in one song to tell the story of the song. I thought that was one of the most clever things ever. And, I used to record and listen repeatedly to Dr. Demento's radio shows and started collecting Ray, Al and other novelty artists.
People who know me, say that I have a very sarcastic, but great sense of humor. Gee, I wonder why??? I guess I'm just a novel kind of guy.
So as you look over the list, what story, or time in your life, do one or more of them conjure up for you?
Check out what you'll hear in random order:
Comments (8)
100 songs? talk about yer overkill :-)
Well. Novelty tunes! Is that where we're at now? At what point does novelty become noxious? Perhaps too toxic even for Tuesdays. Don your protective suits if u push play
Phew, Mr. Jaws was my jam..just eked in there at 97. I haven't heard some of these, but I am intimately familar with quite a few because of my son. Nice work.
How could they have left that off the list, Jeff? LOL
I remember this Summer camp song, and though the camp I went to had no bears, Poison Ivy, Malaria, alligators, or search parties. (Also no snakes, though the neighboring camp featured that mysterious race called Girl Scouts.) I quoted the lyrics for Beep Beep at songfacts.com earlier this week, and I have Dr. Demento AND Bob Rivers CDs in a secret stash. (Dare I unleash "The Restroom Door Said 'Gentlemen" on Mog during the holioday season?) I have more than 100 novelty songs for sure and wonder if in.solit.us will ever be the same if I'm in a Dr. Demento mood...?
doesn't look like any songs got past the 80's so does that mean the 90's is lost on this art form. Frank Z should awarded the prize for the most by one artist.
I remember some of these songs from my youth but quite a few are unfamiliar to me.
Most of the holiday songs (Monster Mash those types) you still hear periodically.
Yeah, the list isn't complete by a mile, but it is really fun to listen to. I'm sure there are 100's of them through the decades. But these are real fun to hear again.
Aiea- I forgot about Bob. Hope you do get in a Demento mood at some point. We could have a fun MOG day of all wacky tunes.