Singing Right Along

In a fit of nostalgia, I grabbed a Mitch Miller CD on my way out the door the other morning.

As is the case with a lot of old songs, I was singing right along (which is what you are supposed to do with Mitch Miller, after all), when I began to pay attention to the words.

It may seem odd to you that a professed writer hadn't given much thought to the lyrics before. But for some reason, the songs of my childhood soaked into my brain, seemingly by osmosis, and stuck, without question. But on this particular day, I started to listen as I sang.

And then I laughed and marveled at how things change.

She's got a pair of hips just like two battleships. I give her everything to keep her in style. Well, well, well, she wears silk underwear, I wear my last year's pair. Say, boys, that's where my money goes.*

Huh?

Then there was a song, a master of innuendo, called Sweet Violets.

There once was a farmer who took a young miss
In back of the barn where he gave her a...
Lecture on horses and chickens and eggs.

I began to listen and pay attention to the rest of the tunes. The "next" stanzas.

For example, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon, which always seemed like a nice tune about a woman pining for her man who'd gone off to war or something. Stanza three goes like this:

Behind the door, her father kept a shotgun. 
He kept in the springtime and in the month of May
Hey, Hey, and if you ask him why the heck he kept it
He kept it for her lover who is far, far away.

Hold on there, Tonto. I decided to go to my friend the Google and learn more. I found a crap-ton of versions. One involves a baby and calls the MIA in question a cowboy rather than a lover (although he was apparently both).

Well, now, this was an eye-opener.

Finally, I came to You Are My Sunshine. After my dad passed away, my mom told me he would sing this to her in bed every night.

Apparently, he only sang the first verse.

The tune is about a guy who is pining because the love of his life left him. At one point in the song he even issues a mild threat about how she'll be sorry.

Holy Cats!

When my son was a toddler, he listened to Raffi and Mary Poppins and such. Although, to be fair, Mr. Ginley did expose him to a fair amount of rock and roll. So I suppose it could be argued that our boy listened to his share of inappropriate tunes.

But, if they were appropriate, Mr. Ginley would often change the lyrics and render then unsuitable anyhow.

That's how we roll. And that's how we've given our son more material for his future based-on-real-life TV sitcom.



Notes:  *From a military variation of a folk song called My Gal's a Corker. Sweet Violets was penned by Joseph Emmet in 1882.   She Wore a Yellow Ribbon is derivative of a folk song/poem that goes back many generations. You Are My Sunshine is attributed to Paul Rice, who sold it to Jimmie Davis, who made it famous in 1939.