I still have this one and a bunch of other "Ronco Records", I haven't played them in years, because I have them in digital. One day I will traumatize the kid and break out the records:). I haven't seen any funny songs released anymore, now all music has to have a message, no more humor I guess. These songs came from the 60's and 70's, back then we had a sense of humor....now people have thin skins, what does this say about our society. Well back to the music, I remembered playing these songs and many others over and over again on my little plastic record player until I actually got a decent stereo.
Even now if I break out in a lyric, people from my age group and older will sing along...Man what the kids nowadays miss out on.
"Junk Food Junkie" is a 1976 novelty song by Larry Groce. It spent 15 weeks on the U.S. charts, reaching # 9 on the Billboard Top 100. It was Groce's only song to chart.
The song tells the story of a man leading a double life: during the day he boasts of his natural diet lifestyle, however, at night, he indulges in his secret addiction to junk food. The song is currently released on K-tel International.
"Junk Food Junkie" reached # 48 in Canada.
"Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (A Letter from Camp)" is a Grammy Award-winning novelty song by Allan Sherman and Lou Busch, based on letters of complaint Allan received from his son Robert while Robert attended Camp Champlain in Westport, New York. The song is a parody that complains about the fictional "Camp Granada" and is set to the tune of Amilcare Ponchielli's "Dance of the Hours". The name derives from the first lines:
- Hello Muddah,
Hello Fadduh.
Here I am at
Camp Granada.
Camp is very
entertaining.
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.
After the song scored #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 list for three weeks beginning August 24, 1963, Sherman wrote a new 'back at Camp Granada' version, "Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh!", for a May 27, 1964, performance on the The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Sherman wrote a third version for, and acted in, a 1965 TV commercial for a board game about Camp Granada, a "real rotten camp".
The song won a 1964 Grammy Award for comedy. The song was played often on the Dr. Demento Show and is featured on the Rhino Records compilation album, Dr. Demento 20th Anniversary Collection.
Variations of the song include translations in Swedish ("Brev från kolonien" by Cornelis Vreeswijk), Finnish ("Terve mutsi, terve fatsi, tässä teidän ihmelapsi") and Norwegian ("Brev fra leier'n" by Birgit Strøm). The Finnish version is included in the Finnish Boy Scouts' songbook. The Swedish version notably does not revolve around the camper hating the camp, but is about the kids running roughshod over it and having run off all the counselors, one of whom has committed suicide after they let a snake into the mess hall, and the organizer of the camp being arrested by police after the kids start a forest fire. The song begins with the boy writing the letter asking his parents to send more money, as he's lost all his pocket money playing dice with the other campers. The song then ends with the boy having to wrap up the letter as he is about to join the others in burning down the neighboring camp lodge.
"Snoopy vs. the Red Baron" was inspired by the comic strip Peanuts by Charles Schulz, which featured a recurring storyline of Snoopy imagining himself in the role of a World War I airman fighting the Red Baron. The song was released approximately one year after the first comic strip featuring Snoopy fighting the Red Baron appeared on Sunday October 10, 1965. Schulz and United Features Syndicate sued the Royal Guardsmen for using the name Snoopy without permission or an advertising license. (The Guardsmen, meanwhile, hedged their bets by recording an alternative version of the song, called "Squeaky vs. the Black Knight"; some copies of this version were issued by Laurie Records in Canada.) UFS won the suit, the penalty being that all publishing revenues from the song would go to them. Schulz did allow the group to write more Snoopy songs.
The song begins with a background commentary in faux German: "Achtung! Jetzt wir singen zusammen die Geschichte über den Schweinköpfigen Hund und den lieben Red Baron," which is a purposeful mistranslation of the English: "Attention! We will now sing together the story of that pig-headed dog Snoopy and the beloved Red Baron" and features the sound of a German sergeant ("eins, zwei, drei, vier" after the first verse), and an American sergeant (after the second verse) counting off in 4s; a fighter plane; machine guns; and a plane in a tailspin (at the end of the last verse). The song (1.46-1.54) quotes the instrumental chords from The McCoys' version of "Hang On Sloopy". In the original recording of "Snoopy", the lyrics "Hang on Snoopy, Snoopy hang on" were sung at this point. This led to some initial speculation that the Guardsmen were the McCoys under a different name. Prior to release, these lyrics were removed to prevent copyright issues.
Great take back to the 70s.Here I am at camp Granader. LOL. Oldies but greats. Great post!
ReplyDeleteI remember some of those, and the Ronco records...LOL
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