April 19 – A Sensible Novelty Song? Wot?

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our Silver Anniversary so to speak, our 25^th round . If you’re curious, we have an index to past topics covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is A Novel Idea For a Song. We asked our contributors to write about a novelty song they like. Or even hate!

Today we finish up with one more pick, from yours truly.

First, I want to thank our seven contributors this time around who again came through in a big way with some fun and often obscure novelty songs that really spanned quite a range of the musical spectrum.

Several people looked at just what a “novelty” song was anyway. I guess the best answer to that is there’s no definition… but you know it when you hear one! The closest thing I could come to suggesting a definition would be a song that was deliberately humorous , and as a consequence often become a bit stale or cloying before long. I had a number of ones which came to mind for possibilities. Of course the ’60s had a lot of hit novelty songs, ones about purple people-eaters and polka dotted bikinis, and I vaguely aware of them but they were a bit before my time. The ’70s seemed a golden age of the genre, with a number of hits being played into the ground by radio . Being a youngster at the time, I liked a lot of them – “The Streak”, “Spiders & Snakes” (by Jim Stafford who had several novelty hits, as Max reminded us), “Disco Duck” – which even at the time made me cringe – but few really still entertain me or make me want to pop them into the playlist. Just try listening to Jimmy Castor’s “Troglodyte” (a #1 hit in Canada in ’72) from start to finish. We dare ya!

The 1980s though seemed to also have their share of big novelty hits, and a few of them still hold up to this day to me. “Mexican Radio” by Wall of Voodoo was and still is a favorite of mine, as are some of its singer, Stan Ridgway’s solo songs . “Camouflage” for example, is a great tune and has its humorous moments but relies on a quirky, Sixth Sense-type story twist instead of guffahs to make its lyrics truly memorable. But the one I decided to feature is just flat out goofy, and being from the ’80s, it has a suitably goofy video to go with it.

Captain Sensible or Ray Burns as his birth certificate listed him, was one of the founding members of one of the premier bands of London’s ’70s punk movement, The Damned. He played bass, and at times guitar. However by the early-’80s, he’d gone solo and like several other “punk” stars (think John Lydon, The Stranglers by and large) one gets the impression he might not have been all that invested in the real “punk” lifestyle and walloping sound. I mean, he wore a trademark red beret and dark John Lennon glasses and his first solo hit was a tongue-in-cheek take on an old Rodgers & Hammerstein musical number, “Happy Talk.” Sensible was always good for quotes mind you, like on politics : “it’s quite easy to write lyrics when politicians are so corrupt. I had to start my own political party I was so angry. I called it the Blah Party.”

Anyway, one time while in a nameless city in the U.S. on tour, he was trying to get some sleep in his hotel room when someone started doing roadwork with a jackhammer. He complained to the front desk and suggested it was “a ploy to upset British bands” but the staff told him to just “have a nice day.” The musician taped some of the street racket… and used that actual tape to build a hit song on. Innovative, wot?

“Wot” was his second single off his debut album, Women and Captains First. I just “added some rubbish on top of the (hammer) track” he explains. He manages to make a three minute dancey, stream of consciousness diatribe where he complains about the noise, Adam Ant and informs us of his taste in females in the memorable line “I’ve been to the East, I’ve been to the West, where the girls I like most are the ones undressed!”. Go west,lads, go west! To top it off he got British girl group Dolly Mixture (of whom his girlfriend was a member) to sing over-the-top backing vocals echoing his sentiments. The song was repetitive, dumb… but just made me laugh! Even more so when watching the video that follows the story with Queen Elizabeth and Adam Ant imposters. And if you think the whole thing had a slightly Monty Python-esque quality about it, well pay attention to the video. You never know who might silly walk on into it.

“Wot” made it to #26 in Britain, #30 in Australia and #6 in fun-loving New Zealand. It did even better in continental Europe, reaching the top 5 in France, Germany, Switzerland and several other countries. Over here, it reached #24 on Billboard dance charts and was a college radio hit but missed mainstream commercial radio attention. Which might be part of the reason why I like it so much – unlike say, “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, I didn’t hear it hundreds of times over and over, day after day.

A couple more interesting tidbits on the Captain – he’s a vegetarian and a couple of years after “Wot” he followed up with “Wot, no meat?”. And he’s a big fan of the Crystal Palace football club in Britain. That should endear him to at least a few folks!

I hope this series brought a smile or two to your face. We can all use a bit more of that these days, I think!

April 17 – Turntable Talk 25 : Jim Lit Up A Hit

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our Silver Anniversary so to speak, our 25^th round . If you’re curious, we have an index to past topics covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is A Novel Idea For a Song. We asked our contributors to write about a novelty song they like. Or even hate!

Today we have Max, from Power Pop blog where he showcases music ranging from old school blues to ’90s rock to British Invasion greats. Which should give him a lot of ground to choose from!

“Wildwood Weed” made me laugh as a kid and still does. It’s about as country and corny as you can get but fun all the same. Jim Stafford had mostly novelty hits. His prime was 1973-1974. I had in my possession (from my sister) three of his hits. “The Wildwood Weed”, “Swamp Witch”, and his biggest hit “Spiders and Snakes.” I was going to cover “Swamp Witch” today by Stafford but I couldn’t resist this one. As corny as this is…it contains one of my favorite lines of all time. More about that later.

Jim Stafford has a sense of humor. Most of his songs were silly songs like “I Got Stoned and I Missed It”, “My Girl Bill”, “Turn Loose Of My Leg”, and his big hit “Spiders and Snakes”. It didn’t take a genius to know what “Wildwood Weed” was about. Of course, I wasn’t and am not a genius now… the first time I heard it as an eight-year-old, an older neighbor had to tell me about it.

It peaked at #7 on the Billboard 100, #3 in Canada, and #57 in the Billboard Country Charts in 1974. I can’t believe it made it that high on the country charts considering how conservative country radio was at that time. Don Bowman wrote this song in 1964… I never knew until I wrote this. It’s a little different but I don’t like it as much as Stafford’s version. Bowman got inspiration from the Carter Family’s “Wildwood Flower”.

The song contains one of my favorite lines of all time. It’s not exactly “Meet the new boss same as the old boss” But… “Take a trip never leave the farm.” is pure gold and yes, I’ve used that line in real life. It’s about two country brothers living on a farm and discovering pot growing wild. Some federal agent soon discovered the huge garden of weed that was grown by the narrator and his brother Bill. The agent dug and he burned and he burned and he dug and killed all of their cute little weeds…but not before our two heroes waved goodbye… sitting on a sack of seeds.

Even though it peaked at #7 on the pop charts… some AM radio stations banned the song because of its reference to marijuana. Dang kill joys…just like the federal agent. Y’all Come Back Now Ya Hear!

April 15 – Turntable Talk 25 : Benny Got Hill Of Laughs With Ernie

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our Silver Anniversary so to speak, our 25^th round . If you’re curious, we have an index to past topics covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is A Novel Idea For a Song. We asked our contributors to write about a novelty song they like. Or even hate!

Today we’re across the ocean to the UK to check in with Paul, from Once Upon A Time In The ’70s. Hmm, a website about the 1970s and a ton of hit novelty songs in the 1970s… let’s see where that leads!

Thanks to Dave for coming up with another great topic for this month’s Turntable Talk. 

Listening as I did to a lot of 70s radio, Novelty Records were very much part of the landscape in that decade.

To be honest, I was never a big fan of the genre and found 99% of novelty songs to be as annoying as hell as it seemed to me that they just sucked up valuable airtime.

I mean who wanted to listen to Rick Dee’s ‘Disco Duck’ when you could listen to the Real Thing? However, every now and then a decent novelty tune would come along that held your attention and merited its share of airtime. To be fair though, they were few and far between and apart from Bobby Pickett’s ‘Monster Mash’ and my own choice… ‘Ernie (the fastest milkman in the west)’ by Benny Hill, I’m struggling to think of too many others.

To muddy the waters further, what even constitutes a novelty song?

Some people (including Google) think that Randy Newman’s satirical masterpiece ‘Short People’ is a novelty record, so where do you draw the line… aligning ‘Short People’, a song that’s blatantly about prejudice, with The Pipkins ‘Gimme Dat Ding’, a song about, god knows what, seems ludicrous to me, but who am I to argue with Google? I also think there’s a distinction between comedy songs i.e. Monty Python’s “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” and comedic novelty songs i.e. “The Streak” by Ray Stevens.

It comes as no surprise that the bulk of novelty songs are one hit wonders, artists presented with the opportunity to grab their 15 minutes of fame and never to be seen again (Ray Stevens being a notable exception).

Another gripe I have is that in lots of cases these dodgy discs prevented genuinely great pop songs from reaching their allotted slots. In the UK, Lieutenant Pigeon’s hideous ‘Mouldy Old Dough’ blocked the paths of both Python Lee Jackson’s ‘In a Broken Dream’ and 10cc’s ‘Donna’ from attaining the number one spot in 1972, whilst Ray Stevens ‘The Streak’ kept the Sparks classic ‘This Town Ain’t Big Enough for the Both of Us’ at bay in 74.

Even my own pick, ‘Ernie’ by Benny Hill, blockaded T-Rex’s glam-rock anthem, ‘Jeepster’, and Isaac Hayes’ iconic ‘Theme from Shaft’ from topping the charts in ’71… “you’re damn right”!

Given his popularity home and abroad, Benny Hill probably needs no introduction on either side of the Atlantic, albeit his comedy schtick hasn’t travelled that well into the 21st century.

Any Gen Z kids out there watching classic Benny Hill clips on YouTube will probably be saying “wait a minute, you’re saying this guy is funny!?”.

Fascinatingly for everyone on this side of the pond, Hill was a big noise in America with celebrity fans including Johnny Carson (who tried and failed repeatedly to get him on his talk show), Burt Reynolds, and most bizarrely Michael Jackson all hailing his comic genius. Inspired by his own experiences as a milkman, the story of Ernie was initially written by Hill as part of a proposed screenplay.

Fifteen years later the screenplay remained unfilmed but the character and an accompanying song were resurrected for a sketch on Benny’s TV Show, and the song was released as a single the following year.

‘Ernie’ would go on to spend 17 weeks (about 4 months) in the UK charts and was number one for four of them, attaining the coveted Christmas number one spot in December 1971.

Fifty-two years on and after a zillion hearings, my inner 12-year-old takes over any time I hear it and I can’t help but chuckle when I hear the lyrics….

Now Ernie loved a widow, a lady known as Sue,
She lived all alone in Liddley Lane at number 22.
They said she was too good for him, she was haughty, proud and chic,
But Ernie got his cocoa there three times every week

Bearing in mind the song came out in 1971, the same year as – Carole King’s, Tapestry, Lennon’s Imagine and Joni Mitchell’s Blue, ‘Ernie’ wasn’t going to win any Grammy’s, (although it did win a coveted Ivor Novello Award alongside George Harrison’s “My Sweet Lord”) but with all respect, Lennon hadn’t written lyrics as earthy and as descriptive as these since ‘A Day in the Life’!

Now Ernie had a rival, an evil-looking man,
Called Two-Ton Ted from Teddington and he drove the baker’s van.
He tempted her with his treacle tarts and his tasty wholemeal bread,
And when she seen the size of his hot meat pies it very near turned her head.

Not many people have a number one single in the UK and Australia, win a coveted Ivor Novello award and then (musically) call it a day, but Hill resisted the temptation to jump on the gravy train or in this case the milk float, and ‘Ernie’ was to be his last foray into the music business.

Yep, even good old Benny Hill knew there was a limit to the public’s appetite for novelty songs!

April 14 – Turntable Talk 25 : What Was That Name?

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our Silver Anniversary so to speak, our 25^th round . If you’re curious, we have an index to past topics covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is A Novel Idea For a Song. We asked our contributors to write about a novelty song they like. Or even hate!

To keep the fun going, today we have Christian, from Christian’s Music Musings. Growing up in Europe as he did, let’s see what caught his sense of whimsy:

Turntable Talk 25 it is, and the series is still going as strong as ever. This time, Dave’s proposition was to write about a novelty record we like. As usual, he was kind enough to give us some flexibility.

While I had heard the name “novelty song” before, I couldn’t come up with a great definition. Here’s how Wikipedia explains the concept: A novelty song is a type of song built upon some form of novel concept, such as a gimmick, a piece of humor, or a sample of popular culture. Novelty songs partially overlap with comedy songs, which are more explicitly based on humor, and with musical parody, especially when the novel gimmick is another popular song.

Based on the above, the first artist who came to mind is “Weird Al” Yankovic, but I figured he would be too obvious a choice or somebody might pick him. Then I strangely remembered a song titled “Gimme Dat Ding”, which my six-year-older sister had on vinyl. When looking it up in Wikipedia, I found it appeared in 1970 and was by The Pipkins, a British novelty duo.

Since it’s kind of an annoying song, I didn’t want this to be my pick, so I ended up doing some research. I was really surprised to see how many novelty songs there are, though the boundaries between novelty, comedy and parody songs are fluid. Finally, I decided to pick a song, which if I recall it correctly was the first I heard by Johnny Cash: 

“A Boy Named Sue.”

For some reason, I liked that song right away, even though I didn’t really get what it was about, since I didn’t understand English at the time. “A Boy Named Sue” was penned by American writer, poet, cartoonist, singer-songwriter, musician and playwright Shel Silverstein. “The Man in Black” first recorded the song during his February 24, 1969 gig at California’s San Quentin State Prison for his At San Quentin live album released in June of the same year.

Curiously, that live version of the song became Cash’s biggest hit on the U.S. pop chart the Billboard Hot 100 where it peaked at no. 2, marking his only top 10 single there. It also topped the country charts in the U.S. and Canada and climbed to no. 4 in the UK – his best showing there in a tie with his 1971 single “A Thing Called Love”.

According to SecondHandSongs, there are more than 60 versions of “A Boy Named Sue”. Here’s the original by Shel Silverstein. Not bad, but it’s hard to beat Cash’s coolness factor!

Here’s another live version by The Highwaymen, a country supergroup featuring Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, Willie Nelson and Kris Kristofferson – quite a quartet! Their live rendition was included on an album titled Live: American Outlaws, which came out in May 2016.

Following are some additional insights from Songfacts:

This is about a boy who grows up angry at his father not only for leaving his family, but for naming him Sue. When the boy grows up, he sees his father in a bar and gets in a fight with him. After his father explains that he named him Sue to make sure he was tough, the son understands.

Shel Silverstein’s nephew Mitch Myers told us [meaning Songfacts ] the story: “In those days in Nashville, and for all the people that would visit, the most fun that anyone really could have would be to go over to someone’s house and play music. And they would do what one would call a ‘Guitar Pull,’ where you grabbed a guitar and you played one of your new songs, then someone else next to you would grab it and do the same, and there were people like Johnny Cash or Joni Mitchell, people of that caliber in the room.”

“Shel sang his song ‘Boy Named Sue,’ and Johnny’s wife June Carter thought it was a great song for Johnny Cash to perform. And not too long after that they were headed off to San Quentin to record a record – Live At San Quentin – and June said, ‘Why don’t you bring that Shel song with you.’ And so they brought the lyrics. And when he was on stage he performed that song for the first time ever, he performed it live in front of that captive audience, in every sense of the word.”

“He had to read the lyrics off of the sheet of paper that was at the foot of the stage, and it was a hit. And it wasn’t touched up, it wasn’t produced or simulated. They just did it, and it stuck. And it rang. I would say that it would qualify in the realm of novelty, a novelty song. Shel had a knack for the humorous and the kind of subversive lyrics. But they also were so catchy that people could not resist them.”

Shel Silverstein went on to write another song titled “The Father of the Boy Named Sue.” It’s the same story, but from the father’s point of view.

Johnny Cash performed this song in the East Room of the White House on April 17, 1970 when he and his wife were invited by President Richard Nixon. Nixon’s staff had requested the song along with Okie From Muskogee and a song by Guy Drake called “Welfare Cadillac,” but Cash refused to perform those songs, saying he didn’t have arrangements ready.

The Goo Goo Dolls named their 1995 breakthrough album A Boy Named Goo in a play on this song’s title.

In the 2019 animated film Missing Link, the main character, a male Sasquatch voiced by Zach Galifianakis, is named Susan.

April 13 – Turntable Talk 25 : After Coasters, Along Came Ray

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our Silver Anniversary so to speak, our 25^th round . If you’re curious, we have an index to past topics covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is A Novel Idea For a Song. We asked our contributors to write about a novelty song they like. Or even hate!

Today we go north to Randy, from Mostly Music Covers. Being from southern Ontario, will his choice be Canadian, eh?

When Dave sent us the topic for this round of Turntable Talk my mind went spinning through names. The Novelty Song was alive and well in the ’50s, ’60s, and into the ’70s. Now, it was hard enough to pick just one song in this category and Dave left us a lot of leeway. I thought of the genius, Victor Borge, and everything up to Weird Al. But for me, few could do a better job than The Coasters and Ray Stevens. With these two names alone, there are dozens of titles to choose from.

Ray Stevens is the man who brought us uplifting songs like “Everything is Beautiful” and “Misty” and won a Grammy Award for each of those. But he liked to make people happy with his goofy songs. He wrote and recorded high-charting novelty songs like “Gitarzan” (#8,1969) and “The Streak” (#1,1974), which capitalized on an international craze of people running around naked at sporting events and elsewhere.

The Coasters would post 13 songs on the R&B Chart and 17 songs on the Hot 100, “Yakety Yak” hit #1 on both in 1958, and “Charlie Brown” in 1959 was #2 on both as well. They did more than just novelty songs “Searchin'”(1957) went to #3 on the Hot 100 and the first of four #1s on the R&B chart.

So where do these two great talents collide?

“Along Came Jones” was a Top 10 hit for The Coasters in 1959. It was written by the legendary team of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller who had a lot of fun and success with The Coasters.

The premise of the song is someone watching a Western Movie on TV involving the “damsel in distress”, the villain, and the Hero. The name was taken from the movie Along Came Jones, starring one of my one of my favorite actors, Gary Cooper. The movie itself is a comedic take on the Western genre. Novelty all around.

Ray Stevens with a great live clip from the Andy Williams Show. The record was released in 1969 and reached #27 on the Billboard Hot 100.

April 12 – Turntable Talk 25 : Lehrer Tickled The Ivories & Some Fancies

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! This is our Silver Anniversary so to speak, our 25^th round . If you’re curious, we have an index to past topics covered. By now all our regular readers know how this goes, but for any new readers, first off, welcome! And second, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is A Novel Idea For a Song. We asked our contributors to write about a novelty song they like. Or even hate!

To get us going on this, we have Keith, from The Nostalgic Italian. Keith’s worked in radio before and has kids so I bet he’s got a whole closet full of novelty songs somewhere in the recesses of his mind!

It’s time once again for another submission of Dave Ruch’s Turntable Talk hosted by A Sound Day. Every month he presents our musical blogging community with a musical topic and I have been lucky enough to have participated in every one of them.

This month’s topic was difficult for me, because there were just SO many songs I could choose from. Our instructions for A Novel Idea for a Song were to “pick a novelty record you like. Or else one you love to hate if you don’t have any favorites.  I’ll let you decide what exactly is a “novelty” record but I look forward to seeing your picks and maybe having a laugh or two. And maybe a cringe or two as well!“

I want to say that the first novelty song I remember hearing as a kid was “Ahab, the Arab” by Ray Stevens. This led to the discovery of an album that had all kinds of silly songs on it. The tracks included “Mr. Custer, I’m a Nut”, “Hello Muddah Hello Faddah,” and more. What kid doesn’t love a silly song? I began to search for more silly songs. During my search I was introduced to Stan Freberg and his amazing satires, Weird Al Yankovic and various other novelty song collections.

In the late 1980’s, the Doctor Demento Show aired on a local radio station and he played many novelty songs that were completely new to me. The songs he played were recorded anywhere from the 1920’s to the present. I had no idea that novelty songs were something that went back that far. The Dr. Demento show was where I heard Monty Python for the first time and where I was introduced to another artist – Tom Lehrer. I read where Tom celebrated his 96th birthday this week (April 9), and that is what led me to my song for Turntable Talk. All in all he only recorded about 50 or so songs, and I could have picked one that may not be so …. controversial, however, of all his songs, it was THE one that stuck out to me. More on that in a minute, but first, here’s a bit about him.

According to Wiki, Tom is “an American musician, singer-songwriter, satirist and mathematician, who later taught mathematics and musical theater. He recorded pithy and humorous songs that became popular in the 1950s and 1960s. His songs often parodied popular musical forms, though they usually had original melodies.” His early stuff featured songs that were kind of dark like “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” and “I Hold Your Hand In Mine.” His later material was a little more topical.

So what led Tom to record this dark and humorous songs? The story goes that Tom had been playing some of these songs for friends and was convinced to record them. According to Wiki, “he paid $15 (equivalent to $171 in 2023) for some studio time in 1953 to record Songs by Tom Lehrer. The initial pressing was 400 copies. Radio stations would not air his songs because of his controversial subjects, so he sold the album on campus at Harvard for $3 (equivalent to $34 in 2023) while “several stores near the Harvard campus sold it for $3.50, taking only a minimal markup as a kind of community service. Newsstands on campus sold it for the same price.”

This was followed by More by Tom Lehrer and a live concert version of those songs on a album called An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer. In 1960, he basically retired from touring in the US, but he was employed as the resident songwriter for the U.S. edition of That Was The Week That Was. TWTWTW was a satirical TV show and he was responsible for a song per show. For the show (and the album of the same name), he wrote songs about political and topical events. There were songs about education (“New Math”), race relations (“National Brotherhood Week” the ecology (“Pollution”), and the military (“Send the Marines”). What are the two things people aren’t supposed to talk about – politics and religion, right? Naturally, Tom had a funny take on a religious news event.

The Second Vatican Council took place in the early to mid-1960’s. A spoken introduction describes “The Vatican Rag” as a response to the “Vatican II” council—which, among other things, broadened the range of music that could be used in services. Tom humorously proposes this “rag” as a more accessible alternative to traditional liturgical music of the mass.

Before I go on, I want to say that I was born and raised Catholic. I am a Christian who no longer practices Catholicism (my choice). I did not pick this particular song as one to offend, but it may very well do so. Humor, they say, is subjective. That being said, while the song mocks some of the Catholic rituals (confession, the rosary, and more), it is the fact that it is a rag that makes it so ridiculous. You can imagine, however that many people of that faith considered it blasphemous at the time.

Lehrer never submitted the song to the show That Was the Week That Was, as he felt they would edit all the satire out of the song. Instead, he debuted the song at a California nightclub called the Hungry I. At one performance, actor Ricardo Montalban was in the audience and it is said that he approached Lehrer and told him “I love my religion. I would die for my religion.” Lehrer reportedly responded, “Hey, no problem, as long as you don’t fight for your religion.”

At this point there are a couple of Tom Lehrer quotes I want to share with you before you listen to the song:

“You can’t be satirical and not be offensive to somebody.”

“The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended (by the song “The Vatican Rag”). But I gather that there were other people who were offended.”

About the song, he says, “Well, I wasn’t really attacking the religious beliefs, I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.”

With all of that being said, I hope this one song I picked doesn’t stop you from checking out some of his other stuff. For example, “The Elements” is a fantastic song that literally just lists all the elements. It is a fan favorite. Lehrer fan Daniel Ratcliff (Harry Potter) actually sang it on The Graham Norton talk show from memory (this is what led Weird Al Yankovic to pursue Ratcliff to play him in his recent movie).

Tom Lehrer’s fans consider “The Vatican Rag” to be one of his best compositions. So without any further ado, pull up a pew and give it a listen.

Lehrer has said, jokingly, of his musical career: “If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while.” In October 2020, Lehrer transferred the music and lyrics for all songs he had ever written into the public domain. In November 2022, he formally relinquished the copyright and performing/recording rights on his songs, making all music and lyrics composed by him free for anyone to use, and established a website (https://tomlehrersongs.com) from which all of his recordings and printable copies of all of his songs could be downloaded. His statement releasing all his works into the public domain concludes with this note: “This website will be shut down at some date in the not too distant future, so if you want to download anything, don’t wait too long.”

Thanks again to Dave from A Sound Day for a great Turntable Talk Topic. Hopefully, after my choice, he will invite me back next month. Maybe I should have just went with “The Curly Shuffle”, instead?

March 2 – Creepy Crawlies Ruled The Airwaves 50 Years Ago

Spring is in the air, which means certain “creepy crawlies” will be out and about. Which leads to today’s hit … Jim Stafford‘s kinda comedy, kinda country “Spiders and Snakes” which topped out at #3 in the U.S. on this day in 1974. It would actually rise to #1 in Canada a week later.

Stafford was at the time pushing 30 and a self-taught guitarist/banjo player/pianist/fiddler from Florida who was riding high on his debut album, a self-titled affair that also spawned two more , slightly less-successful, semi-humorous singles, “My Girl Bill” and “Wildwood Weed”. That one was about a weed that grew up on his property that he found he could smoke and which drew the attention of the feds. “Spiders and Snakes”, on the other hand, deals with, presumably, a high school boy who loves a gal but tries to win her affection by giving her spiders and snakes. It was a likeable enough little country-esque ditty that went gold in the U.S. and helped his album hit the country top 10. It was also representative of the times. With Watergate, Nixon, gas-shortages and inflation, the public was more than ready for a little humor and levity in their lives, and this single, Ray Stevens “The Streak”, Carl Douglas’ “Kung Fu Fighting”, and a little later, C.W. McCall’s “Convoy” demonstrated that across the airwaves.

While Stafford would only put out a couple more, less successful albums, he did quite alright and made some influential friends. The album was co-produced by Roland LaVoie, aka “Lobo”, who’d had some success on his own with early-’70s hits like “I’d Love You To Want Me” and “Me and You And A Dog Named Boo.” The two of them had at one time been in a band together in Florida with another more than decent musician – Gram Parsons. And while the song wasn’t a blockbuster hit, it, with his personality mixed in got him his own variety show briefly (hey, if the Captain and Tennille can do it…) where he met lovely Bobbie Gentry, whom he married and had a son with.

These days, Stafford has his own theater in Branson, MO and at least until recently, played there a few nights a week. If in town, you might want to check it out… after all, if you go into the woods around there instead, you might run into spiders… and snakes!

By the way, a little more spiders-and-snakes music trivia for today… Lou Reed, New York’s musical bard and lead singer in the Velvet Underground, who was born 82 years ago today (and passed away in 2013) has a European spider named after him. The scientist who found it was inspired to name it as such because it had a velvety body, and lived largely underground!

October 21 – 50s Superstar Hits The Top At Last…In 70s

“The Flame” was the biggest chart hit, and biggest-selling single, of Cheap Trick’s career…but it probably isn’t the song that comes to mind when you think of them. Sometimes, an artist’s best work isn’t always their best-seller. Perhaps there’s no better example of that than the guy Paul McCartney dubbed “the true king of rock’n’roll.” Chuck Berry was an obvious inductee into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame’s first round, back in 1986, and created a good chunk of the sound we think of when we think of “rock & roll.” He put out classic hits of the early part of the genre – “Maybelline”, “Johnny B. Goode” and so forth. But his biggest hit of his career went to #1 in the U.S. this day in 1972 … “My Ding-a-ling.”

The song was from a live album Chess Records designed to be a comeback for Berry, who’d not had a hit in eight years at the time. A hit comeback it was, though one many of his fans might ultimately think was unwelcome.

The London Chuck Berry Sessions was the album recorded at a Berry show where he headlined the Lanchester Arts Festival earlier that year. It was a festival also featuring Pink Floyd, Billy Preston and George Carlin. An eclectic arts festival apparently! Berry was busy touring that year and didn’t have a regular backing band, as he was “confidant he could hire a band that was already familiar with his music no matter where he went.” He was probably right. For the English concert, he had some talent behind him, including drummer Robbie McIntosh and backing guitarist Onnie McIntyre, who’d later form the Average White Band.

The double-entendre dripping “My Ding-a-ling” was actually a 1950s song from Dixieland trumpeter Dave Bartholomew, a friend of Fats Domino. He’d helped Fats write “Ain’t That A Shame”. The song about the “toy” the little boy couldn’t stop playing with wasn’t a hit for Bartholomew, but appealed to Chuck. He played a lengthy, ad-lib full 11-minute version for the recorded concert; the record company (thankfully) cut it to a little over four minutes for the single.

Many people found it offensive, not surprisingly given the era. A number of AM stations in the States wouldn’t air it and even edited out the weekly American Top 40 show when the song was on it. Surprisingly, the ban-happy BBC in Britain didn’t ban the song, even though they had protests, including one from a teacher who “found a class of small boys with their trousers undone, singing the song, and giving it indecent interpretation!” Despite the controversy, or maybe because of it, the song raced up the charts and hit #1 at home, in Britain where it was recorded, and Canada and Ireland as well. He’d come close before, with a #2 hit with “Sweet Little Sixteen” in ’58, but never had a chart-topper in any of those countries. It was one of the 20 biggest singles of the year in North America, and earned him his only gold single.

It was probably a double-edged sword for Berry. While it perhaps gave some people the idea he was a jokester more than a musician, it also undoubtedly introduced some younger listeners to his great early catalog, some of which showed up on the London album, which was the only top 10 album in his lengthy career.

 

October 17 – One Week A Quarter Century Ago…

Sometimes “one week” might be enough to make a career. In the case of the Barenaked Ladies, that is about all it took to take them from a Canadian pop band well-loved at home into international stars. Both literally and figuratively… their song “One Week” hit #1 in the U.S. on this day 25 years ago and would spend… one week at #1. That “one week” in 1998 was all it really took to make them household names from Brampton to Bavaria. Not only was it significant for them, it was something noteworthy for Canadian music. Even though several Canadian ladies sold millions of copies of albums during the ’90s, that seldom translated into massive hit singles in that decade. In fact, the only other Canuck act to have a #1 during the second half of the ’90s was Celine Dion.

The quirky, rap-like pop tune sung very fast (in a manner reminiscent of Reunion’s “Life is a Rock”) seemingly about a pop culture-obsessed couple waiting to make up after a fight touches on any number of popular or nerdy pop culture subjects ranging from international (The X-files, Aquaman, Harrison Ford) to decidedly local (Swiss Chalet, or “the chalet Swiss” as they sing, is a chain of chicken restaurants in Ontario.) The song was hummable, quirky, fun… pretty much the hallmarks of the Toronto band who’d been big at home all decade long. Much like the similarly humorous domestic hit “If I Had $1 000 000”, the song trades off the lead vocals between the band’s two leaders, Ed Robertson and Steven Page. This was unusual for them, most of their songs were sung by one or the other. Also unusual, it was written entirely by Robertson; by that point in their career Page had become the dominant writer and even “Tin Tin” Duffy, British producer (and soon to be Page’s bandmate in the short-lived Vanity Project) was arguably doing more towards putting together the band’s sound than Ed Robertson. Ultimately, this conflict and differing views on their future (Robertson seemed to like focusing on more novelty material and children’s records, Page, who’s wrestled with depression favored a more mature, darker outlook musically) coupled with an unfortunate arrest for cocaine led Steven Page to depart the band, rather acrimoniously, in 2009.

But back in ’98, things were rosy for the Ladies. The single helped their fourth studio album, Stunt, go higher on the charts in the States (#3) than at home and let it sell to quadruple platinum status in both countries as well as making the British top 20. Not that everyone loved it, of course. Rolling Stone graded it a so-so 2.5-stars, calling it “accessible melodies” for “Hootie-honed melody lovers” that want to sing along to tunes. Britain’s NME was far snarkier, giving it a meagre 1 out of 10, calling it among other things “soulless and plain, good old-fashioned terrible” and likening the band members to “cohorts of Satan (who)have sold six million records.”

Ultimately, the band had the last laugh. Not only did Stunt itself sell in the range of six million copies, the song lives on on retro-radio continent wide, and in movies like American Pie. What’s more, the song and the band’s goofy, nerd-appeal seemed to catch the attention of Chuck Lorre. He picked them to do the theme for a new TV show he had back in 2007. That show still runs continuously, it would seem, on about half of all the networks known to man… The Big Bang Theory.

Oh, and by the way – if you’re stuck wondering what they sing at the end of the song, it’s “Birchmount stadium, home of the Robbie.” Birchmount is a neighborhood they grew up near in Toronto, and ‘The Robbie’, an annual youth soccer tournament.

October 13 – Turntable Talk 19 : It Could Always Be Worse!

Welcome back to Turntable Talk! Thanks once again to all the regular readers and welcome to any new ones. If you’re keeping count, today begins our 19^th instalment…if you’re wondering about past topics, I have previous topics indexed here. For any new readers, briefly, on Turntable Talk we have a number of guest columnists from other music sites, sounding off on one particular topic. This month, our topic is A Design For Life. I’ve asked our writers to highlight a song that sums up a great personal mantra, or philosophy of life. A song that tells how to live better, basically. I hope you’re as curious to see what they come up with as I am!

Today, we have John from The Sound of One Hand Typing… which sounds kind of philosophical in itself!

We’ve been doing some home improvement here, and it seems like every time our contractor starts working on something, he finds another problem that needs to be fixed before he does the improvement. For example, when he took out the old shower in the master bathroom to install a new one, he discovered that the last guy who worked on it had failed to line the inside of the walls and that, as a result, mold was growing behind the walls. So that had to be cleaned out.

That was minor compared to what he discovered a couple of weeks ago. We want to have a platform lift installed because I can’t handle the stairs anymore. The best place to install it, we decided, is beside the deck, so that Mary can wheel me out onto the deck and into the lift to take me down to the driveway. The deck had fallen into disrepair and we decided to have the old one taken down and a new one built. Our contractor thought that it would be a simple matter of taking the old deck floor and rails off and install the new one using the supports that were already there. When he started to look at what was left, he realized that the whole thing had to be taken down and we’d basically have to start from scratch.

When he took the rest of the deck down, he saw that water had gotten behind the vinyl siding we had installed over the old cedar siding, and we now had water damage to a good portion of the back of the house, and that we were in danger of the living room floor collapsing. He was able to install supports to hold the floor in place and contacted a company that repairs water damage. They were out yesterday, and the damage was even more extensive than we had thought. So, the job’s going to take a lot longer and involve a lot more of the house taken apart. We think (and hope) that the insurance company can pick up a big chunk of the cost of the repair work.The work to determine just how much has to be repaired and what it will end up costing will be done on Monday.

All I can think of is, “well, it could be worse.” Which reminded me of this Eric Idle song, from the end of Monty Python’s Life Of Brian, “Always Look On The Bright Side Of Life.”

Cheer up, Brian.

You know what they say;

Some things in life are bad,

They can really make you mad.

Other things just make you swear and curse,

When you’re chewing on life’s gristle,

Don’t grumble, give a whistle,

And this’ll help things turn out for the best, hey,

Always look on the bright side of life,

Always look on the light side of life,

If life seems jolly rotten,

There’s something you’ve forgotten,

And that’s to laugh and smile and dance and sing.

When you’re feeling in the dumps,

Don’t be silly chumps,

Just purse you’re lips and whistle,

That’s the thing.

And, always look on the bright side of life,

Always look on the right side of life,

For life is quite absurd,

And death’s the final word,

You must always face the curtain with a bow,

Forget about your sin,

give the audience a grin,

Enjoy it, it’s you last chance of the hour.

So, always look on the bright side of death,

Just before you draw your terminal breath,

Life’s a piece o’ shit,

When you look at it,

Life’s a laugh and death’s a joke it’s true,

You’ll see it’s all a show,

Keep ’em laughing as you go,

Remember that the last laugh is on you.

And, always look on the bright side of life,

Always look on the right side of life,

Come on, Brian cheer up,

Always look on the bright side of life,

Always look on the right side of life,

Worse things happen at sea, you know,

Always look on the bright side of life,

I mean, what do you have to lose?

You come from nothing,

You go back to nothing.

What have you lost? Nothing!

Always look on the bright side of life.

Not quite “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” but it’s what helps me get by…