N: The Name Game

 

The Name Game

Some people may be familiar with this song, but may not know its title. It's a rhyming song game that creates variations on people's names. Shirley Ellis, who co-wrote and sang the song, based the song on a game she'd played as a child. The rules for the song are as follows:

Using the name Katie as an example, the song follows this pattern:

Katie, Katie, bo-batie,

Bonana-fanna fo-fatie

Fee fi mo-matie

Katie!

A verse can be created for any name, with X as the name and Y as the name without the first consonant sound (if it begins with a consonant), as follows:

(X), (X), bo-b (Y)

Bonana-fanna fo-f (Y)

Fee fi mo-m (Y)

(X)!

If the name starts with a b, f, or m, that sound simply is not repeated. For example: Billy becomes "Billy Billy bo-illy"; Fred becomes "bonana fanna fo-red"; Martha becomes "fee fi mo-artha"^[3]

The song as originally performed gives no indication of what to do with names where the stress falls on a syllable after the first, like Anita or Antoinette, but during the live rendition of the song on The Merv Griffin Show, Ellis uses the same rules as explained above ("Tallulah, Tallulah, bo-ballulah").^[5] However, the cover version on the workout video Sweatin' to the Oldies 3 (vocals by Donna Miller) suggests that the first syllable should be dropped after the name is first said; the name Madonna is sung as "Madonna-donna-bo-bonna," etc.

The song's first verse gives Ellis's first name as an example. The other names used in the original version of the song are Lincoln, Arnold, Tony, Billy, Marsha, and Nick. 

The song was used in a series of commercials for Crest Kids Toothpaste in the 1980s.

M: Monster Mash

 

Monster Mash

This one goes without saying. It's a favorite on people's Halloween playlists every year (including mine). It reached #1 in 1962, just before Halloween. It was re-released in 2021, reaching #37. It thus has had a long-lasting impact.

Bobby Pickett was nicknamed Boris because of his ability to impersonate horror-film legend Boris Karloff. The song is about a mad scientist whose monster arises from its slabs one night and begins a new dance, supposedly inspired by the Mashed Potato dance of the early 1960s. The dance becomes "the hit of the land," and the scientist throws a party at which other monsters, such as the Wolfman, Igor, Dracula and his son. Pickett also impersonated Bela Lugosi as Dracula on the record, as well as impersonating Peter Lorre as the voice of Igor (even though Lorre never played that character). The lyrics ask "Whatever happened to my Transylvania Twist?" a reference to the popular dance The Twist. The "Transylvania Twist" is now the "Monster Mash." This also may be the only popular song to include the word "electrodes" in the lyrics.

Pickett was never able to repeat the success of "Monster Mash," but the song remains a perennial spooky time favorite.

L: Leader of the Laundromat

 

Leader of the Laundromat

Decades before Weird Al Yankovic and other parody artists of today, there was a group called The Detergents, who specialized in song parodies. The band included Ron Dante, who would later become lead vocalist for the Archies, singing lead on that band's signature hit "Sugar, Sugar." 

"Leader of the Laundromat" was released in 1964, as a parody of the Shangri-Las' then-recent hit, "Leader of the Pack". "Leader of the Laundromat" became a hit in its own right, reaching Billboard's Top Twenty. It wasn't without opposition, though, as the writers of "Leader of the Pack" filed a suit against the Detergents, which was settled out of court. The Detergents remained active until 1966. Two years later, Dante joined the Archies.

Below are both songs. The original is included for comparison. Both can be considered novelty songs.

Book Discussion: Subgenres I Did Not Know About

 

Just when I thought I'd seen everything as far as book subgenres go, I find two I'd never heard of until recently:

Solarpunk

Hopepunk

How many of you have heard those? I won't be surprised if not many of you have, since I just barely learned of them myself.  In looking at the lists from Goodreads, I was surprised to see how many books in each I'd read, not knowing the said subgenres actually existed. There are even more books in the hopepunk list that I have read that in the solarpunk one. To me, they just seemed like fantasy or in some instances climate fiction (cli-fi), a subgenre that was new-to-me several years ago. 

Every year, I get the reading category, "Genre you don't often read" (or some variation on that idea). I immediately think of self-help or westerns when I see this. Those have never been big reads for me. But do subgenres count, even if I have read the main genres? Solarpunk and hopepunk are just subgenres of fantasy. A western romance is just another romance. I won't even get started on romantasy!

I now wonder what other subgenres people will come up with. Are there any others you've found that seemed new and unusual to you?

K: Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)

 

Kookie, Kookie (Lend Me Your Comb)

While looking for novelty songs starting with K, I found many I'm not too fond of, and one that I felt was inappropriate to include. I nearly forgot this about this one. It was well before my time, but I am familiar with this song.

Sung by Connie Stevens and Edd Byrnes, that song refers to Byrnes's character from the TV series 77 Sunset Strip. It was included on Byrnes's album Kookie Star of 77 Sunset Strip.

In the song, she wants him to lend her his comb. When he finally asks why, she says so he can stop combing his hair and kiss her. The song consists of mostly spoken-word lyrics, except when Kookie sings the bridge section.

J: Joy to the World

 

Joy to the World

Some may argue about whether this could be considered a novelty song, but the members of Three Dog Night, who recorded this tune written by Hoyt Axton, have described the song as a "kids' song" and a "silly song." It contains some nonsensical words in the lyrics. The song is most recognized for its opening line, "Jeremiah was a bullfrog." When Axton (whose song "Never Been to Spain" was also a hit for Three Dog Night) presented the song to the group, two of Three Dog Night's lead singers, Cory Wells and Danny Hutton, initially turned it down. But the third singer, Chuck Negron, felt a "silly song" was needed to bring the group back together as a working unit (from the link above). The song became one of the group's best-known hits. 

The song's opening line is referenced in this Far Side cartoon (only those familiar with the song would get the cartoon):

Not to be confused with the traditional Christmas song of the same, though Mariah Carey used the Three Dog Night song's refrain in her 1994 rendition of the Christmas song.

The story behind the song is in this video:

Also see this video of puppets performing the song. Note lyric changes: "Joy to the fishes..." from the original becomes "Joy to the city..." in this cover. Also "...a good wine" is replaced with "...have a good time." Obviously that one needed to be changed for a kids' version :)

I: I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream

 

I Scream, You Scream, We All Scream for Ice Cream

Some letters offered more than one possible song choice, and this was one of them. 

"I Scream..." was first published in 1927 with words and music by Howard Johnson, Billy Moll, and Robert A. King. After success as a novelty song in the early 1930s, it became a jazz standard. The song's refrain remains a pop culture saying. Many people know the refrain without knowing the rest of the song lyrics. I only knew it by that one line, and had never heard the full song until now. The setting of the song was a fictional college in Alaska, and the refrain was the college cheer. The song has been popular among kids. And some may remember it being used as a commercial jingle.