SONGS OF LAUGHTER

 

Up and down conditions and uncertain atmosphere have been the dominant features of our lives during the last two years. Easy to despair but we must step out of it. Let’s begin this year on a brighter note and recall some songs of laughter from good old happy, carefree days.

Husband and wife jokes are common, so we start with the song, ‘Yakety yak’. It’s about a guy who can never be on the right side of his wife. Its lyrics go like this-

“When I come home from work with a big smile and feeling gay (remember the song is pre-present day meaning of gay!)

Suspiciously my wife says, hey, where have you been all day,

But when I come home tired and disgusted, she says, sure I see

Outside you have a good time and home you come to cry to me.”

The husband goes on to sing that when he dresses ordinarily, the wife asks him to make himself presentable otherwise what will people think of her. But when he shaves well and wears a new suit, she is jealous and asks him who he’s gonna see today!

“Yakety yak, blah blah, blah blah, yakety yak, blah blah, blah blah

That’s all I hear all day, yakety yak, blah blah, blah blah.”

In two songs one on each side of an old disc, Jose Ferrer and his wife Rosemary Clooney set out to define Man and Woman. Jose says-

“A woman is something both evil and good,

But too complicated to be understood,

An angel when lovin’, a devil when mad,

A woman can make you both happy and sad.

Afraid of a cricket, she’ll scream at a mouse,

But she’ll tackle a husband as big as a house.

Oh woman, oh woman, oh what can she be,

Whatever she is, she’s necessary.”

And Rosemarie hits back-

“A man oh a man, any woman will say,

Whatever he is, we like him that way.

As strong as an ox, or as meek as a pup,

He’s just a small boy who’ll never grow up.

A leader by day, he can make business hum,

Then wind up at night under some woman’s thumb.”

Rosemary Clooney also had a hit ‘Sisters’ who were extremely devoted and stuck to each other in all kinds of weather, kept an eye on the other and never had to have a chaperone, no sir. She warns-

“Lord help the mister who comes between me and my sister,

And Lord help the sister who comes between me and my man.”

Back in 1951, Phil Harris gave us a rib-tickling song, ‘Oh What A Face’-

“…..it’s a disgrace, to be showing it in any public place. 

One morning he took her to a pig farm, he told her to wait by the rail,

But when he returned he couldn’t find her, the farmer had put her up for sale.

She liked to watch the horses racing on the track,

Until the day she wandered near the stable, 

And the jockey put a saddle on her back.”

Man is on the receiving end in Harry Belafonte’s famous calypso ‘Mama Look a Boo-Boo’-

“I wonder why nobody don’t like me, or is it the fact that I’m ugly,

My children don’t want me no more,

And when I talk they start to sing,

Mama look a boo boo they shout, their mother tell them shut up your mout’,

That is your daddy, oh, no, my daddy can’t be ugly so.”

Another huge hit of Belafonte’s was ‘Matilda’, “she take me money and run Venezuela”. The way he performed this song at Carnegie Hall was phenomenal enjoining the audience to sing these lines again and again with ‘sing a little louder…sing a little softer…women over forty…going round the corner…everybody…once again now…’ and so on endlessly.

Harry Belafonte was a master of funny songs. A classic is his ‘A Hole in the Bucket’ with Odetta. The lady in the song, Liza, asks him to go fetch some water but Henry has a problem-

“There’a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, there’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, a hole.

So fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, dear Henry, so fix it dear Henry, dear Henry, fix it.

With what shall I fix it, dear Liza, dear Liza…”

And Liza suggests ways of fixing while Henry has a problem with each leading to Liza getting increasingly riled. Liza suggests straw which is too long requiring to be cut with an axe which is too dull and needs sharpening with a stone which is too dry requiring wetting with water which is to be fetched in a bucket but-

“There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, 

There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza, a hole.”

Towards the end of my school days came a song with popular versions by The Ames Brothers and Dean Martin, ‘The Naughty Lady of Shady Lane.’ The arrival of the lady had the town in a whirl who had admirers galore. The town was peaceful and quiet before she came on the scene and disturbed the suburban routine. She throws come-hither glances at every Tom, Dick and Henry and never says no to liquid refreshments. Further-

“The things they’re trying to pin on her, won’t hold much water, for sure,

She just needs someone to change her……

The naughty lady of Shady Lane, so delightful to hold,

The naughty lady of Shady Lane….

And she’s only nine days old!”

In 1960, a song “Goodness Gracious Me” had everyone in fits of laughter. Peter Sellers plays the part of an Indian doctor with Sophia Loren as a rich, Italian patient in love with him. Her consultation with him goes like this,

She, “Oh, doctor I’m in trouble”

He, “Well, Goodness gracious me.”

She, “For every time a certain man is standing next to me, a flush comes to my face and my pulse begins to race,

It goes boom boody-boom boody boom-boody boom boody boom boody-boom-boody boom-boom-boom.”

The doctor proceeds to examine her and finds his stethoscope bobbing to the throbbing of her heart. He says that he has done his share of healing from New Delhi to Darjeeling and cleared up beriberi and dysentery but this complaint has got him really foxed. He sees her tongue and quickly asks her to put it away. All her hints to tell him that he is the cause of her discomfort fail and when she asks him to put two and two together, he wisely replies, “Four”. Finally, he says there is nothing he can do and that his heart is jumping too and the trouble is with him. She, “With you?”

He, “Ah, I’m sorry, it is us. Goodness gracious.”

A 5-year old freckle-faced cartoon character was created by Hank Ketcham in 1951 based on the mischiefs of his own son, Dennis. While Ketcham was planning to give the character a name, Dennis’s mother, Alice, got exasperated by her son not listening to her to take a nap and making a mess of her room. Alice shouted at her husband, “Your son is a menace.” Hank promptly named his character ‘Dennis the Menace’ and his parents after his own and his wife’s names. A song with that title followed, performed by none other than Rosemary Clooney and a kid, Jimmy Boyd. The lyrics are so funny and here are just a few-

Alice,“ Dennis the menace, he’s a bundle of dynamite, 

Oh the things he says and the things he does will make you shake with fright…

His Mom and Dad get nervous, whenever he’s too quiet, 

They never know what will happen next, a cyclone, flood or riot.”

Dennis, “Last night I got a spanking, I don’t know what to think,

‘Cause all I did was fill my water pistol full of ink.

Now I ask you did Mommy have to yell at me like that

Just because I watered all those flowers on her hat.

My daddy love to ride on planes ‘way high up in the sky.

He didn’t see my roller skates and oh boy, did he fly.”

Alice, “(Beware of) Dennis the menace, though he makes your hair turn gray,

When he looks at you with his eyes so blue, he’ll steal your heart away.”

I am afraid there is some disappointing news from Eartha Kitt for couples wanting to tie the knot-

“Somebody bad stole de wedding bell, somebody bad stole de wedding bell,

Somebody bad stole the wedding bell,

Now nobody can get married.”

Tailpiece. In an amazing coincidence, a British artist, Davey Law, created a cartoon with the same name and character in the UK while Hank Ketcham was coming out with his cartoon in the US on the same day, 12 March 1951.  There could not have been any contact between the two artists and this can only be described as a cosmic miracle. The boys are both naughty and lovable but look different. Also the US Dennis has his dog Ruff while the UK one has Gnasher. The two Dennises live to the day and are enormously popular.