JULIA SPENCER-FLEMING: When you read the title of this post, did a song immediately pop into your head? Maybe two? Whether you call them novelty songs or children's songs or camp songs, there's a whole universe of them out there, living long past their expected sell-by dates. Why? I don't know, nor can I tell you how they're transmitted from one generation to the next, but they are.
Let's take the first name mentioned - Charlie. Charlie, who will ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston. I won't ask you to raise your hands (since I can't see you) but I'm going to guess a LOT of you can start humming or singing at least part of the Kingston Trio's hit "MTA Song." I certainly can. Here's the thing: it was released almost three years before I was born. I know my mom's extensive record collection didn't include anything by the Kingston Trio. I'm pretty sure it wasn't in regular rotation by the time I started paying attention to the radio in the early seventies. And of all the places we lived, New England was not on the list. I didn't visit Boston until my best friend was a Smith College.
So how is it I know this song?
There is a sizable portion of this genre, if we want to call it that, coming from a long, long tradition of American children's songs and games. "Guess I'll Go Eat Worms," "Miss Mary Mack," and "Chewin' Gum" can all be dated back to the mid-1800s. I remember my grandmother teaching me the hand-slapping game and I thought it was about her, because she had been Miss Mary MacEachron!
My mom would sing "Nobody loves me, everybody hates me," when I was sulky, and I, in turn, did the same to my kids. So we can see how it's passed on, between children and to children. But again, how many mid-nineteenth century songs do you know all the lyrics to?
Then there's the classic (?) "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah," which my own children encountered at summer camp. I have no idea how I picked it up, since I didn't go to camp. (It has a whole different connotation to Army brats anyway.) Written in 1963 by Allen Sherman, it was a huge success and won a Grammy the next year for best comedy performance. He also had a huge hit with the parody, "The Twelve Gifts of Christmas" (it starts with the receipt of a Japanese transistor radio, so you know how old it is.)
How many of you can sing Sherman's second hit, as compared to the first?
It is indeed a great mystery how some of these silly songs seep into the cultural consciousness and stay there, playing over and over as the decades go by. What are the silly songs you remember, dear readers, and can you identify when and where you learned them?
