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"Surly to bed and surly to rise."Unfortunately the needle skips a few times near the beginning of the musical number for the Declaration of Independence. The voice characterizations are a thing of beauty that awed a coupla shorties who overheard their dad playing this album in the early 1960s. Rocky and Bullwinkle fans will recognize the voices of June Foray (the voice of Rocky) doing all the female parts here, and Stan Freberg, who did umpty-nine wiseguy voices pretty much everywhere in Jay Ward cartoons in the early and mid-'60s in addition to his own hugely fruitful and influential output. Paul "Boris Badenov" Frees, is hard to recognize as the narrator. Freberg and partners did very hip and smart parody, and other tracks from this LP, The United States of America, display some pretty biting satire about the white man's relations with Indians (as we used to call Native Americans). I hope to revisit Freberg sometime in the future because he was a giant in 1950s and '60s pop culture, catering both to hipper adults and legions of kids.
Declaration of Independence and Betsy Ross and the Flag, Stan Freberg (1961, from "The United States of America: The Early Years," Capitol W/SW-1573), via YouTube.
Smart! Too bad you don't have an audience of teabaggers (at least the protestant kind). They could learn something about something from this, since they seem to know nothing about anything.
ReplyDeleteIn fact, considering the quarter of the US that doesn't even know who we declared independence from, let alone when or how, history teachers could improve US literacy many times over using just this album. A bonus, you learn about the 1950s and 60s as well. Of course, how many history teachers know any of this themselves? History class is just a place to park coaches (and pay them) while they fashion team strategy these days.
Ha! You know that "Dead Head" may have been thinking it was Jerry Garcia, depending on what he was on.
ReplyDeleteYou are in rare form with the music selections this weekend, and the "Svengoolie." We had the "Cool Ghoul" in Cincinnati. First time I ever saw Boris in the original Frankenstein.
I'm going to have to start "50Fifty" as the "flip side" to...."Fifty50". Way too much material over here.
Happy 4th!
Anon: sadly to me, I think there's such a difference between the postwar American cultural context and the millennial one that much of Freberg's wit would go right past any demographic that equates snark with humor, sarcasm with irony, and mockery with satire. Children of the '50s and '60s will remember that it was sort of "naughty" to make fun of the founding fathers, and maybe even "worse" to characterize them as everyday schmoes with the same foibles that we all have. I'm afraid most kids today wouldn't get how it all goes together, design-wise. However, if they listen to the Freberg show tunes on this album they should be able to see some of the likely inspiration for similar packaging of material on The Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park, and others.
ReplyDelete59er: if a lack of material was an obstacle, you could always relaunch as Thirty70! (Actually, you were robbed this week. I had a treat for you but it was preempted by Link Wray. Hopefully this coming week....
I don't know about treats. I may have you beat. I had Dick Dale whaling from the deck with "The Victor (64)" this weekend. Kick out the jams!!!.
ReplyDeleteArguably one of the best surf instrumentals ever!
If you need a copy of the original I can email it to you...
I'll let you know about the Thirty70. Maybe Sixty40...
59er: by "Victor" do you mean a 1964 tube-drive phonograph? I don't know much Dick Dale except the obvious suspects, but I sure do like that distinctive electric sound.
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