— Apparently I hit a nerve with my Jungle Song column last time. I don’t know how many people have accosted me with some version, sung badly, of “Bingle, Bangle, Bongo,” while the folks under 60 look at us as if we’re out of our minds. Which may not be out of the running, if considered by an impartial jury.
I had already started my next column about something entirely different when another old song was brought to my attention. Apparently this one has now become part of the curriculum of the kiddies schoolroom, but I have to tell you that there was a time in history when this was on the top 10 pop list for grownups — and it was back when I was growing up. (By now you know that was in the 1930s and 1940s.)
I had forgotten about this one until some friends were reminiscing about the pop songs of our youth — and came up with:
Down in the meadow in a little bitty pool,
Swam three little fishies and a mama fishie too
“Swim” said the mamma fish, “swim if you can”
And they swam and they swam all over the dam.
There was universal agreement (and later another friend also wrote in to remind me) about how incomparable the chorus was:
Boop, boop, dittum, dottum, whatem choo!
Boop, boop, dittum, dottum, whatem, choo!
Boop, boop, dittum dottum, whatem, choo,
And they swam and they swam all over the dam.
Hey, my old reader — sound familiar? (And yes, I’ll sing this one for you too, if you ask nicely.) As for my other reader, who is relatively young, eat your heart out. They don’t make whackadoodle like that anymore. Or if they do, things are so noisy, you can’t tell..
Just in case you want to hear more, I looked the song up on internet, and there are three or four more verses, which add up to a heartrending tale of something like the Prodigal Son, as they stray from the loving home they grew up in and encounter terrible danger in the outside world — and only just barely escape to come back at last to the parental arms, or rather fins.
I couldn’t find who wrote it, but I got the impression that the Andrews Sisters, bless their hearts, had made a hit out of this one too. They sure had a knack for recognizing the public appetite for foolishness, and I guess you could say that there was a resemblance in that to public entertainers nowadays, but there it stops.
Because — I have to say this, no matter which reader I lose — the truth is, younger reader, our nonsense was better than your nonsense. It wasn’t trashy, it wasn’t profane, it wasn’t earthshakingly loud. (I haven’t heard yet that there is a scientific connection between recent earthquakes and the music that is being played all over the world these days but any day now —) It was cute, it was clever and it never made any pretension of showing the world who was boss.
Most of all, it was never intended to give the finger to our elders. For goodness sake, we had been through a depression and a war together — we were bonded. Nowadays, although there are many young people who still love their elders, they would never let that affect their musical choices — except maybe in the opposite direction. (Love the old folks but shh — they’re idiots!)
This all reminds me of yet another nonsense song of my youth, and this is one that both of you, if you’re still reading, might recognize. I think that even some of the current young may have heard “Mairzy Doats” from their grandparents. Written by Milton Drake and others in 1943, it actually figures in some World War ll trivia: Allied soldiers used it for marching and passwords. The Merry Macs made a hit out of it, and Spike Jones recorded it in his own way, complete with sound effects. (Wickipedia says it was inspired by an English nursery rhyme, “Cowsy tweet and sowzy tweet and liddle sharksy doisters.” You can figure that one out by yourself.)
“Mairzy Doats” is one of the best nonsense songs of all time, although there is no deep underlying message. It just is what it is — fun. Without any modern accompanying trauma. (Like universal deafness, drunkenness, unplanned pregnancy, or the addiction of your choice.)
Sorry, youngsters.
We did it better.
Maude McDaniel is a Cumberland freelance writer. Her column appears on alternate Sundays in the Times-News.
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Inspired foolishness was never done better
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Not all grasshoppers wind up like Aesop’s
