"Look At That Caveman Go"
One Saturday my dad walked into the house hugging a pile of 78 rpm records. There was a smug look on his face that said "look what I've got here". I spent the afternoon having that look; going through what must have been a hundred shellac discs, diligently hunting for hidden gems. I found nothing of any great interest or import. No Bill Haley. No Elvis or Buddy. Not even a Gracie (Fields) or a Tommy (Steele). The 10 inch discs were strewn across the carpet. There were just two records familiar to me. One was Mario Lanza singing "The Donkey Serenade"(w. Rudolf Frimi and Herbert Stothart). The other was a 1926 recording of "The Laughing Policeman" by Charles Penrose (w. Mabel Penrose aka Billie Grey). This was an early example of what was known in the music world as the 'novelty song'.
Dad enjoyed listening to novelty records when they came on the wireless or TV. He especially liked "Hev Yew Gotta Loight Boy?" by The Singing Postman (w. Allan Smethurst) and "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman In The West)" (w. Benny Hill). It rubbed off on me too. My favourites at the time were "Mr Custer" by Charlie Drake (w. Al De Lory, Fred Darian & Joseph Van Winkle), The Goons' "The Ying Tong Song" (w. Spike Milligan) and "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha- Haa!" by Napoleon XIV (w. Jerry Samuels). I recall listening to the B-side of the latter platter with Keith Coffey at his nan's house in East Ham and enjoying the fact it was the A-side played backwards.
The novelty song is popular because of its novelty and the fact it sounds different to anything else. This means, of course, it cannot be repeated. Professor of Music at Edinburgh University Simon Frith made the point they are "treated as novelties and, in pop terms, remain so - their commercial success leaves no mark on either pop history or the musicians concerned". So the vast majority are 'one-hit wonders'. There are alway exceptions to the rule and Ray Stevens springs to mind. At some point he merits a blog entry of his very own.
The hey-day of the novelty song was almost certainly the late fifties and early sixties.
Rock writer Richard Meltzer has a theory that in these early years of rock and roll no one took what they were doing too seriously . So there was an irreverence in the lyrics of some of the greats, such as Leiber & Stoller, Larry Williams and Chuck Berry (ignoring "My Ding-A-Ling" of course). It was not a big step to go from that sense of irreverent fun to where the humour is clearly part of the content - think Sheb Woolley's self composed 1958 hit "The
Purple People Eater", "Alley-Oop by The Hollywood Argylles (w. Dallas Frazier) and "The Monster Mash" by Bobby (Boris) Pickett (w. Bobby Pickett & Leonard L Capizzi). And that is where the novelty song is born.
There was a tradition of 'childrens' songs that are a very close relative to the novelty record. At the time the playlist of the BBC programme "Children's Favourites" was dominated by songs like "Ragtime Cowboy Joe" from The Chipmunks (w. Grant Clarke, Lewis F. Muir & Maurice Abrahams), "I Taut I Saw A Puddy Cat" by Mel Blanc and The Sportsmen (w. Alan Livingstone, Billy May & Warren Foster) or my all-time favourite Burl Ives singing the old nursery rhyme "There Was An Old Lady".
Then The Beatles appear on the scene. Their fans were not just teenagers. They included eight year olds like yours truly. Between 1964 and 1966 the output of Lennon & McCartney, Brian Wilson, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies and Dylan gave creedence to the notion: "good" pop music had something important (and lasting) to contribute to the world. Coincidentally by the mid-sixties, we witnessed the demise of the children's song and in the main watched novelty songs get kicked into the long grass.
The novelty song did make a return in the 1980s. In the US there was at least a tacit acceptance the release was a marketing ploy and tie-in to a film or TV programme. For instance, "Who Shot J.R.?" by Gary Burbank (w. Ed Vanover, Gary Burbank & Ron Reed) or "Ewok Celebration" by Meco (w. John Williams with English lyrics by Joseph Williams and Ewok language lyrics by Ben Burtt). In the UK it was far more insidious, but at the end of the day was still an exercise in blatant money-grabbing greed, appealing to the lowest common denominator and the widest possible audience, whether that be toddlers or grannies. If they got it right, of course, both - "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" By St. Winifreds School Choir (w. Gordon Lorenz).
Other than DJs who were spinning the discs at the local social club on a Saturday night or at weddings the question remains - who actually went into their local branch of Harlequin and purchased "The Birdie Song" by The Tweets (w. F Rendall & W. Thomas) that kept this particular 45 in the charts for 28 weeks in 1981? Or for that matter "Agadoo" by Black Lace (w. G. Peram, M. Delancey & M. Simille) and "I Wish I Could Fly" by Keith & Orville (w. Keith Harris & Paul Ridgley)? Was it an executive from the label - who can say? What I can say is that rather than categorising these embarrassments as novelty songs, which would have my old man turning in his grave, let's call them what they are - disposable and throw them as far away as possible.
The novelty song is popular because of its novelty and the fact it sounds different to anything else. This means, of course, it cannot be repeated. Professor of Music at Edinburgh University Simon Frith made the point they are "treated as novelties and, in pop terms, remain so - their commercial success leaves no mark on either pop history or the musicians concerned". So the vast majority are 'one-hit wonders'. There are alway exceptions to the rule and Ray Stevens springs to mind. At some point he merits a blog entry of his very own.
The hey-day of the novelty song was almost certainly the late fifties and early sixties.
Rock writer Richard Meltzer has a theory that in these early years of rock and roll no one took what they were doing too seriously . So there was an irreverence in the lyrics of some of the greats, such as Leiber & Stoller, Larry Williams and Chuck Berry (ignoring "My Ding-A-Ling" of course). It was not a big step to go from that sense of irreverent fun to where the humour is clearly part of the content - think Sheb Woolley's self composed 1958 hit "The
Then The Beatles appear on the scene. Their fans were not just teenagers. They included eight year olds like yours truly. Between 1964 and 1966 the output of Lennon & McCartney, Brian Wilson, Pete Townshend, Ray Davies and Dylan gave creedence to the notion: "good" pop music had something important (and lasting) to contribute to the world. Coincidentally by the mid-sixties, we witnessed the demise of the children's song and in the main watched novelty songs get kicked into the long grass.
The novelty song did make a return in the 1980s. In the US there was at least a tacit acceptance the release was a marketing ploy and tie-in to a film or TV programme. For instance, "Who Shot J.R.?" by Gary Burbank (w. Ed Vanover, Gary Burbank & Ron Reed) or "Ewok Celebration" by Meco (w. John Williams with English lyrics by Joseph Williams and Ewok language lyrics by Ben Burtt). In the UK it was far more insidious, but at the end of the day was still an exercise in blatant money-grabbing greed, appealing to the lowest common denominator and the widest possible audience, whether that be toddlers or grannies. If they got it right, of course, both - "There's No One Quite Like Grandma" By St. Winifreds School Choir (w. Gordon Lorenz).
Other than DJs who were spinning the discs at the local social club on a Saturday night or at weddings the question remains - who actually went into their local branch of Harlequin and purchased "The Birdie Song" by The Tweets (w. F Rendall & W. Thomas) that kept this particular 45 in the charts for 28 weeks in 1981? Or for that matter "Agadoo" by Black Lace (w. G. Peram, M. Delancey & M. Simille) and "I Wish I Could Fly" by Keith & Orville (w. Keith Harris & Paul Ridgley)? Was it an executive from the label - who can say? What I can say is that rather than categorising these embarrassments as novelty songs, which would have my old man turning in his grave, let's call them what they are - disposable and throw them as far away as possible.
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