The music for “Carol of The Bells” predates the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, is based upon a Ukrainian traditional chant that predates Christianity, and celebrates the New Year… in April. The original lyrics for the song describe a swallow flying into a house and promising good fortune because lambs have been born, and compliments the master of the house for having a wife with dark eyebrows (at least according to Wiki).
There are exactly 15 Pas, 18 Rums and 63 Pums in the lyrics to “Little Drummer Boy.” If you delete the spaces between the pa-rum-pa-pum-pums, there are exactly 21 Rumps. I can’t stand that song because it doesn’t stop when it should (just as the “Twelve Days Of Christmas” made it’s point on Day One).
Your Telephone Of Tomorrow: Fairly accurate prediction from September 1956, and source of the *ahem* top image.
P.S. We get notifications of new followers from time to time, and we like to see who you are, so we stop by your blogs out of curiosity. Our readers are an eclectic mix of all ages, backgrounds, ethnicities and nationalities. We’ve known this for years, courtesy of WordPress, RevolverMaps and other sources.
That said, here’s the website of a recent follower, both disturbing and fascinating at the same time. NSFK except as a warning to those who choose to tread a similar path.
“She was 5 feet tall. She was less than 100 lbs “soaking wet”. She spent her childhood in Oregon and Idaho yet was proud of her family’s Southern roots. She could hunt and fish and, if you deserved it, she could punch your lights out! She was Lee Morse, one of the most popular female recording artists during the Jazz Age 20’s and 30’s. And, she is worth remembering.” ~Ian House
Jimmie Rogers (1897-1933) is considered the Father of Country Music for his long-lasting music influences, worked the railroad until he contracted tuberculosis in 1925. While fighting off the disease and unable to perform physical labor, he returned to his original love, writing and performing, until he succumbed at the age of 35.
Sadly, there was a vaccine to combat TB as early as 1921, but according to Wiki it wasn’t widely available in the U.S. or Europe until after WWII. Rogers also sang about his affliction in “TB Blues.”
Here’s Jimmie Rogers in the Columbia Pictures short “The Singing Brakeman” from 1930.
That’s it for this edition of The Saturday Matinee. Have a great weekend, folks.
“Pogo” was penned by a famous anti-communist conservative cartoonist and his missive was directed at the Southern Democrats who created the KKK and enforced segregation via Jim Crow Laws. Walt Kelly was oftenoccasionally censored by the liberal mediasome newspapers for posting strips like these, so he published his uncensored opinions in “The Pogo Poop Book” in 1966.
We need more people like Walt Kelly to fight the latest “Gibber of Goblins,” and these New Goblins don’t wear white hoods either…
[Update: Some wording has been amended by popular demand.]
There’s a bizarre history to that familiar song credited to The McCoys, and it traces to Dorothy Sloop of Steubenville Ohio who became a New Orleans singer and piano player with the stage name “Sloopy.” The song was originally recorded by The Vibrations in 1963, predating the McCoys’ version:
So how did a 60s soul group from LA decide to sing about a girl who moved to New Orleans?
“Sloopy” was Dorothy Sloop, a Bourbon Street piano player. Born Sept. 26, 1913, in Steubenville, she performed at a New Orleans nightspot under the stage name Sloopy.
‘Hang on Sloopy’ was written by Bert Russell Berns and Wes Farrell, two New York City songwriters. Berns also wrote The Isley Brothers and Beatles hit Twist and Shout. Farrell went on to become the musical brains behind the Partridge Family.
The song was originally recorded as My Girl Sloopy by the Los Angeles R&B vocal group the Vibrations. It debuted in April 1964 in the Top 40 of the Billboard pop chart, where it spent five weeks and reached No. 26.
A rock version, ‘Hang on Sloopy,’ was recorded by the McCoys, a Dayton garage band led by Celina native Rick Zehringer. Locally, the band was known as Rick and the Raiders, but it changed its name to avoid confusion with chart-toppers Paul Revere and the Raiders. Hang On Sloopy debuted in September 1965 in the Top 40 of the Billboard pop chart, where it spent 11 weeks and reached No. 1.
Rick Zehringer later changed his name to Rick Derringer and became one of the top rock guitarists and producers of the 1970s. He recorded with the Edgar Winter Group and scored a 1974 solo hit with Rock and Roll, Hootchie Koo. [More at this source]
“Dottie” Sloop recorded an album, “Sloopy Time” Featuring Dixie and Sloopy, in 1957 with Yvonne “Dixie” Fasnacht, a jazz vocalist and clarinetist.
“Dixie” Fasnacht operated a bar called Dixie’s Bar of Music on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. It was there that Dorothy’s acquaintance and co-writer of “Hang On Sloopy” Bert Berns-Russell found the inspiration for the song. During problems with the sound equipment and a crowd getting rowdy, he heard a regular call out to her “Hang on, Sloopy!” [Source]
I couldn’t find a recording of either Dottie Sloop or Yvonne “Dixie” Fasnacht, but there has to be a copy of the album in someone’s basement somewhere. One more piece of trivia: Ohio is the only State to have an Official State Rock Song.
The Best Damn Band In The Land adopted “Hang On Sloopy” as a signature song for the times when OSU was down a few points, and their a capella version is classic.
Tacky Raccoons 