First, I have to note the passing of a previously featured composer, the amazing Neal Hefti, the award-winning creator of the Batman TV theme. He died on October 11 at 85.
I have to warn you that zshare has been down all day, so there are two links for the song. The first one goes to Sharebee, which is a bit more work than zshare.
Now, the post.
Call four-year-old caithiseach a baby, if you wish, but the next four posts are about records he owned that owned him—songs that reached into my soul and terrified me almost to the point of paralysis when I was very small. A couple of the songs still sound creepy to me, but the others have become sources of amusement. Today’s song, “(The Land of) Bobby Beeble” by Mitch Torok and the Matches (Inette 105) continues to give me a case of the shivers when I hear it.
I don’t think I was much more of a chicken than the average tot. I didn’t like to sleep with my closet door open; it was darker there than in the rest of the room. Once it was pitch black each night, I shied away from the darkest part of the back yard, near the shed. That area had not been a scary spot until the recently mentioned Bubby told me a scary guy lived there.
Oh, and when I was at Good Fellow Camp the year I turned nine, the stories about Crazy Man Wilson made me lie awake, waiting for the shutter to rise behind my head, and for Wilson’s hand to punch through the screen, grab my hair, and carry me off into the woods.
All of that fear was based on bogus stories, so it’s fair to call me impressionable. Something I can’t explain that easily is a feeling of deep dread that attacked me one night when I entered the bathroom of my residence. It was about three a.m., and I didn’t turn on the light because I could see just fine. However, I felt something malevolent all around me, and I opened the door and turned on the light. This event occurred two years ago, two apartments ago, and I can’t make myself believe that there wasn’t . . . something in that bathroom with me.
Generally, though, the dark doesn’t bother me now, and I love Halloween’s trappings, haunted houses and scary movies. I’m still not happy with today’s tune, though.
I can almost remember when the 45 arrived, in the usual stack of twenty singles Uncle Tom brought me. I sat down before the record player and slapped the records on the turntable, listened, flipped them over, and listened some more. Then I got to “(The Land of) Bobby Beeble,” which happened to be the “plug side” of the single.
I can only imagine the look on my face when the song started playing. There are a lot of songs recorded in a minor key, but whereas “Sixteen Tons” doesn’t sound scary or even dreadful, the D minor strumming on “Bobby Beeble” just sounds wrong, evil, from the very beginning. And then Mitch, who sounds so perky on “Caribbean,” “Mexican Joe” and “Are You Trying to Tell Me Somethin’,” starts intoning what amounts to an otherworldly tale that, in retrospect, reminds me of what became of Maine in Stephen King’s “The Mist” (thereafter nullified by its incarnation as an eye-roller of a lame horror flick).
This “land,” named after a boy with a truly awful name, Bobby Beeble, is home to pink dinosaurs, beaches covered with polka dots, and “what else, only heaven would know.” Yikes. Everything about this alternate world is disastrously wrong. I don’t know how this could have gained airplay.
DJ: That was the Beach Boys singing “Fun, Fun, Fun.” And now, the creepy song you’ve all been requesting, “Bobby Beeble.”
Nope. It wasn’t going to happen. Teens listening to the radio would have to turn it off quickly so the kids they were babysitting wouldn’t start screaming.
I just realized that I associate Mitchell Torok more strongly with “Bobby Beeble” than with the rest of his output. The final verse, spoken in an eerie singsong that brings to mind an accent-free Bela Lugosi, would finally drive me over the edge. After sitting through as much of the song as I could, I would finally lose my nerve, hair standing on end, and run from the room. When a couple of minutes had passed (or half an hour, if a good show was on TV), I would go back, remove the 45, and purify my record player with something cheery, like “Uncle Tom Got Caught.”
So, I performed this ritual once or twice, right? Nope. More like a hundred times. Did I think I would eventually desensitize myself? Did I love scaring myself into nightmares about the Land of Bobby Beeble? I think I loved scaring myself. After I played this song, or any of the others to follow the rest of this month, the atmosphere of my room (once I returned) seemed to have become thicker, more ominous, bordering on uninhabitable. Some upbeat tune would purge the room of its malevolence, but then, night came . . .
Laugh all you wish. I’m immune to it; I teach Spanish. But do this: Wait until night to listen to the song. Turn off the lights, except for your monitor. Close the curtains. Open the closet, if there is one. Turn up your volume a bit, so you won’t know if a being tiptoes toward you. Click on the song link, then turn off the monitor and close your eyes.
Let me know if you make it all the way through the song without at least reaching for a light switch. If you do, you’re a braver person than four-year-old caithiseach. Congratulations.
Wednesday, I’ll have a twofer for you: two songs to which I was exposed via visual media, one of which no longer seems the least bit scary to me. See you then!
Sharebee link (not as convenient), if zshare is still down:
Mitch Torok, (The Land of) Bobby Beeble
zshare link, when the site is running again:
Mitch Torok, (The Land of) Bobby Beeble
Showing posts with label Good Fellow Camp. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Good Fellow Camp. Show all posts
Friday, October 17, 2008
Saturday, July 5, 2008
Dancing with the Stars
My collection of 45s didn’t grow much between 1967 and 1973. Uncle Tom stopped buying me 45s, and I started accepting that the radio was a good source of tunes. During this stretch of time, I had to love a song beyond measure before I would buy the single.
A couple of times, I was kept from buying 45s I wanted because I was summering at Good Fellow Camp in Porter, Indiana. That’s the camp that prevented me from seeing Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, but it’s also the camp that gave me very much-needed opportunities to explore life outside of my home.
What happened in these two cases was that, by the time I got home, a song I had enjoyed at camp had sold out and was not being restocked at Zayre, which was about the only place I could find 45s in the pre-mall days. When I was eleven, a single that was not in stock at Zayre was a single I would never find. In the case of today’s song, it meant I would never hear the song again.
The two weeks I spent at Good Fellow Camp in June, 1971 turned out to be a huge turning point in my world. It was my third year of camping, and I was far enough past the death of my mother to exert my personality a bit. Even so, the two expressions of who I was capable of being still surprise me by their daring. I took more risks that first week of camp than I tended to take in a year. I throw myself out there much more often now, but when I was eleven I had no perspective on the value of leaving my comfort zone.
One of my risks involved music, but the other one led to it, so I have to talk first about learning to swim.
After my first swimming lesson at age seven ended in disaster (lake plus boat plus short kid equals wake flattens kid), I didn’t take another stab at a deep pool until I was nine, at camp. There, the instructor was gentle, and all of us Beginners appreciated that but rarely tried to progress. I know I didn’t, especially after an ultra-pale kid named Brian splattered his hot dog from lunch all over the shallow end. He made this barking sound, then . . . never mind.
When I was ten, I fought the pool to a draw. I could hang onto the side and kick, as long as my head did not go under the surface.
When I went to camp in 1971, I had a new stepmother-to-be, and she was not kind about my fear of deep water. Never mind that I was a tree-climber after her heart, and that I loved to play baseball; I caught real hell for not being a swimmer.
You would think I would feed off the motivation of wanting to stick it in her face when I came home a swimmer, but I found her tactic demoralizing. When I came home not just floating but actually swimming after two weeks away, I had a different emotion to thank: I had fallen in love with my swimming instructor.
You know how that goes: you have a preteen crush on someone, and you see the person sometime later, and you are horrified at your poor taste. But I assure you, Beverly, the Good Fellow Camp swimming instructor that year, was a keeper. I was no dummy—she was six years older than I was, and there was no way she would want to have an eleven-year-old boyfriend. I kept my thoughts to myself, but it probably clued her in that I made constant eye contact with her when we were in the pool.
She had long blond hair, and she was wearing a bikini 90% of the time when I interacted with her. At first, she cupped water in her hands and had me blow bubbles in the water. Once, I kissed her hand. I don’t know if she caught on.
For Beverly, I would have done anything. And so, I let her erase my fears of the water, and I floated. Then I kicked. Then I swam.
On Tuesday, the second lesson day, I put my head underwater without panicking for the first time in my life. When I got back to Cabin 6, I was elated. A perky song was playing on my counselor’s radio: WLS was spinning “Do You Know What Time It Is?” by the P-Nut Gallery (Buddah 239). Alby, my counselor, was the first nurturing counselor I’d had; the previous two had been rough-and-tough types who hadn’t clicked too well with me. Alby really showed what a good guy he was this day.
When I stepped through the door and heard the song, I started doing a dance, which involved clapping my hands and stomping my right foot as I spun on my left. A couple of the boys were there as well, and they started clapping with me. I was the only one dancing, though.
As the week wore on, my spirit never wavered, and the guys demanded that I do my dance whenever WLS played “Do You Know what Time It Is?” The song peaked at #62 nationally, but in Chicago, it entered the WLS Top 30 at #21 on May 31, two weeks before it entered the Billboard Hot 100. On June 14 and 21, it ranked #9 and #8. It was in heavy rotation, which should have been a good thing on Thursday night, because that was when the boys called for a dance contest.
That could mean a lot of things in that social circle. Was I annoying them with my dancing? After the first time, I did it only by request. Other boys did the dance when I did. Did they want to show me up? These concerns barely crossed my mind, because we were all having great fun with the song.
After dinner, all the boys of Cabin 6 skipped other activities to attend the contest. Three others participated; they came up with something original and danced to whatever song WLS played. Then it was my turn, presumably to do my dance to “Do You Know What Time It Is?” But the song didn’t come on. Alby let me wait out two songs, but we agreed that I would have to dance to the third song. And the third song was the P-Nut Gallery tune. Thanks, WLS.
The vote made me a winner. Alby spent part of the day Friday making a plaque for me: “Best Dancer, Cabin 6.” We always had a bonfire and awards ceremony on Friday night. I was hoping it would impress Beverly when Alby handed me my award.
As it turned out, after two years without recognition, I got a number of awards: I received four certificates for my Nature studies, and I was named Most Enthusiastic Athlete, which I cinched by winning the running long jump. I didn’t win any Red Cross swimming awards, though, so all I could do was look at Beverly in the firelight while she doled out certificates to far better swimmers.
When she finished, she started talking about how she had never seen anyone progress as fast as one of the Beginners. She found it amazing, in fact, that someone could be afraid to get his face in the water and then finish the week by almost swimming a full lap. I still didn’t get it, until she said my name and called me the Most Improved Swimmer. I saw real pride in her eyes, and she gave me a hug.
So, what did I do at summer camp? I learned to swim, I allowed myself to cut loose and dance in front of people I barely knew, and I dealt maturely with a young lady I absolutely adored.
I stayed a second week and got even better at swimming. When they asked at home how my two weeks had gone, I said that I had learned to swim. Such was the disconnect between camp and home. And the record was off WLS, and it wasn’t available at Zayre, and I never saw Beverly again, and I never heard “Do You Know What Time It Is?” again.
Not, that is, until I was digging through some records in a vinyl shop in Douglas, Michigan. I wasn’t looking for it, but there it was: 28 years later, I bought that single. Instead of having to replay it from memory, I owned the 45. I consider my intention to buy the 45 sufficient cause to include it in this blog about my childhood 45s. Who knows if it would have survived the Great Meltdown?
When I bought the Buddah Box 3-CD collection, one song I was after was “Back When My Hair Was Short” by Gunhill Road. At the time, I didn’t know that the P-Nut Gallery song was a Buddah release, or I might have been irritated that they included a number of non-charting releases but ignored a song that made the Chicago Top Ten. Now, it annoys me. It’s not a spectacular song, but I really would like to have clean copies of all of my memory songs.
The guy singing this song is Tommy Nolan. The group seems to have been assembled to take advantage of the craze surrounding the return of the Howdy Doody show. The song’s writers and producers, Bobby Flax and Lanny Lambert, wrote nearly 80 songs together, including “White Lies, Blue Eyes,” a #28 hit in early 1972 for Bullet. Flax and Lambert did considerable work for Big Tree and Buddah Records.
I find the song to be an interesting hybrid, because it is aimed at kids, but it’s a song about a TV show that the parents of 1971 children had watched. If anyone were going to get the point of the song, it would be the 30-somethings of the early 1970s, not their children, who were just getting a taste of what Howdy Doody had meant to their parents.
I don’t know if I would have paid much attention to the song if I hadn’t stumbled into it while I was buzzing over my good swimming lesson and having Beverly cradling my face in her hands. At that moment, I could have danced to any tune.
Next time, I’ll bring you music by a no-name who actually scraped into the bottom of the charts, and I’ll try to figure out why he stayed there instead of climbing higher. See you Wednesday!
P-Nut Gallery, Do You Know What Time It Is?
A couple of times, I was kept from buying 45s I wanted because I was summering at Good Fellow Camp in Porter, Indiana. That’s the camp that prevented me from seeing Neil Armstrong step onto the moon, but it’s also the camp that gave me very much-needed opportunities to explore life outside of my home.
What happened in these two cases was that, by the time I got home, a song I had enjoyed at camp had sold out and was not being restocked at Zayre, which was about the only place I could find 45s in the pre-mall days. When I was eleven, a single that was not in stock at Zayre was a single I would never find. In the case of today’s song, it meant I would never hear the song again.
The two weeks I spent at Good Fellow Camp in June, 1971 turned out to be a huge turning point in my world. It was my third year of camping, and I was far enough past the death of my mother to exert my personality a bit. Even so, the two expressions of who I was capable of being still surprise me by their daring. I took more risks that first week of camp than I tended to take in a year. I throw myself out there much more often now, but when I was eleven I had no perspective on the value of leaving my comfort zone.
One of my risks involved music, but the other one led to it, so I have to talk first about learning to swim.
After my first swimming lesson at age seven ended in disaster (lake plus boat plus short kid equals wake flattens kid), I didn’t take another stab at a deep pool until I was nine, at camp. There, the instructor was gentle, and all of us Beginners appreciated that but rarely tried to progress. I know I didn’t, especially after an ultra-pale kid named Brian splattered his hot dog from lunch all over the shallow end. He made this barking sound, then . . . never mind.
When I was ten, I fought the pool to a draw. I could hang onto the side and kick, as long as my head did not go under the surface.
When I went to camp in 1971, I had a new stepmother-to-be, and she was not kind about my fear of deep water. Never mind that I was a tree-climber after her heart, and that I loved to play baseball; I caught real hell for not being a swimmer.
You would think I would feed off the motivation of wanting to stick it in her face when I came home a swimmer, but I found her tactic demoralizing. When I came home not just floating but actually swimming after two weeks away, I had a different emotion to thank: I had fallen in love with my swimming instructor.
You know how that goes: you have a preteen crush on someone, and you see the person sometime later, and you are horrified at your poor taste. But I assure you, Beverly, the Good Fellow Camp swimming instructor that year, was a keeper. I was no dummy—she was six years older than I was, and there was no way she would want to have an eleven-year-old boyfriend. I kept my thoughts to myself, but it probably clued her in that I made constant eye contact with her when we were in the pool.
She had long blond hair, and she was wearing a bikini 90% of the time when I interacted with her. At first, she cupped water in her hands and had me blow bubbles in the water. Once, I kissed her hand. I don’t know if she caught on.
For Beverly, I would have done anything. And so, I let her erase my fears of the water, and I floated. Then I kicked. Then I swam.
On Tuesday, the second lesson day, I put my head underwater without panicking for the first time in my life. When I got back to Cabin 6, I was elated. A perky song was playing on my counselor’s radio: WLS was spinning “Do You Know What Time It Is?” by the P-Nut Gallery (Buddah 239). Alby, my counselor, was the first nurturing counselor I’d had; the previous two had been rough-and-tough types who hadn’t clicked too well with me. Alby really showed what a good guy he was this day.
When I stepped through the door and heard the song, I started doing a dance, which involved clapping my hands and stomping my right foot as I spun on my left. A couple of the boys were there as well, and they started clapping with me. I was the only one dancing, though.
As the week wore on, my spirit never wavered, and the guys demanded that I do my dance whenever WLS played “Do You Know what Time It Is?” The song peaked at #62 nationally, but in Chicago, it entered the WLS Top 30 at #21 on May 31, two weeks before it entered the Billboard Hot 100. On June 14 and 21, it ranked #9 and #8. It was in heavy rotation, which should have been a good thing on Thursday night, because that was when the boys called for a dance contest.
That could mean a lot of things in that social circle. Was I annoying them with my dancing? After the first time, I did it only by request. Other boys did the dance when I did. Did they want to show me up? These concerns barely crossed my mind, because we were all having great fun with the song.
After dinner, all the boys of Cabin 6 skipped other activities to attend the contest. Three others participated; they came up with something original and danced to whatever song WLS played. Then it was my turn, presumably to do my dance to “Do You Know What Time It Is?” But the song didn’t come on. Alby let me wait out two songs, but we agreed that I would have to dance to the third song. And the third song was the P-Nut Gallery tune. Thanks, WLS.
The vote made me a winner. Alby spent part of the day Friday making a plaque for me: “Best Dancer, Cabin 6.” We always had a bonfire and awards ceremony on Friday night. I was hoping it would impress Beverly when Alby handed me my award.
As it turned out, after two years without recognition, I got a number of awards: I received four certificates for my Nature studies, and I was named Most Enthusiastic Athlete, which I cinched by winning the running long jump. I didn’t win any Red Cross swimming awards, though, so all I could do was look at Beverly in the firelight while she doled out certificates to far better swimmers.
When she finished, she started talking about how she had never seen anyone progress as fast as one of the Beginners. She found it amazing, in fact, that someone could be afraid to get his face in the water and then finish the week by almost swimming a full lap. I still didn’t get it, until she said my name and called me the Most Improved Swimmer. I saw real pride in her eyes, and she gave me a hug.
So, what did I do at summer camp? I learned to swim, I allowed myself to cut loose and dance in front of people I barely knew, and I dealt maturely with a young lady I absolutely adored.
I stayed a second week and got even better at swimming. When they asked at home how my two weeks had gone, I said that I had learned to swim. Such was the disconnect between camp and home. And the record was off WLS, and it wasn’t available at Zayre, and I never saw Beverly again, and I never heard “Do You Know What Time It Is?” again.
Not, that is, until I was digging through some records in a vinyl shop in Douglas, Michigan. I wasn’t looking for it, but there it was: 28 years later, I bought that single. Instead of having to replay it from memory, I owned the 45. I consider my intention to buy the 45 sufficient cause to include it in this blog about my childhood 45s. Who knows if it would have survived the Great Meltdown?
When I bought the Buddah Box 3-CD collection, one song I was after was “Back When My Hair Was Short” by Gunhill Road. At the time, I didn’t know that the P-Nut Gallery song was a Buddah release, or I might have been irritated that they included a number of non-charting releases but ignored a song that made the Chicago Top Ten. Now, it annoys me. It’s not a spectacular song, but I really would like to have clean copies of all of my memory songs.
The guy singing this song is Tommy Nolan. The group seems to have been assembled to take advantage of the craze surrounding the return of the Howdy Doody show. The song’s writers and producers, Bobby Flax and Lanny Lambert, wrote nearly 80 songs together, including “White Lies, Blue Eyes,” a #28 hit in early 1972 for Bullet. Flax and Lambert did considerable work for Big Tree and Buddah Records.
I find the song to be an interesting hybrid, because it is aimed at kids, but it’s a song about a TV show that the parents of 1971 children had watched. If anyone were going to get the point of the song, it would be the 30-somethings of the early 1970s, not their children, who were just getting a taste of what Howdy Doody had meant to their parents.
I don’t know if I would have paid much attention to the song if I hadn’t stumbled into it while I was buzzing over my good swimming lesson and having Beverly cradling my face in her hands. At that moment, I could have danced to any tune.
Next time, I’ll bring you music by a no-name who actually scraped into the bottom of the charts, and I’ll try to figure out why he stayed there instead of climbing higher. See you Wednesday!
P-Nut Gallery, Do You Know What Time It Is?
Friday, April 25, 2008
Camping under the Moon
My Uncle Tom, in addition to buying me close to 300 45s, made it possible for me to attend a summer camp sponsored by his employer, U.S. Steel in Gary, Indiana. My mom bought today’s 45, but that doesn’t mess up the story.
The Good Fellow Club of U.S. Steel was, as far as I can tell, an outreach of the company. Certainly its summer camp was. Good Fellow Camp sat near Lake Michigan in Porter, Indiana. A log-and-stone lodge sat atop a steep hill, and at least ten, perhaps a dozen, cabins stood in a semicircle where the hill leveled off. Beyond the cabins were woods, as well as the archery range, the rifle range, and the ball fields.
I first attended Good Fellow Camp the summer I turned nine. My mother was in the hospital at the time, but she wrote me a letter that arrived at camp. She said she would be coming home soon. She did, but she was not home long.
One of the features of Good Fellow Camp was Crazy Man Wilson. He had been a janitor at a local high school, but a furnace explosion melted his face, and he went to live in the woods near the camp. On rare occasions he went crazy enough to come after the boys in the cabins. I didn’t know why the cabins didn’t have armed guards, with Crazy Man Wilson lurking nearby, but I think I get it now.
My first night at camp, July 20, we learned that the Eagle had landed. The TV was showing the footage six hours later when Neil Armstrong descended to the moon. However, there was just one TV at camp, and Armstrong stepped onto the moon at 9:56, after Lights Out. We had to make do with the radio. I was so geeked about the moon walk that I even had eaten Space Food Sticks when I stayed at my grandmother’s house for a couple of weeks in early 1969. Imagine how I felt, then, to miss the video. I still haven’t seen it, now that I think about it.
I don’t know if my counselor, Mike Nickovich, was supposed to have the radio on, but he did. Thanks, Mike. I heard Neil Armstrong’s words live, at least.
In addition to Crazy Man Wilson and the frustration of missing the lunar landing, another early issue with camp was the pool. I was terrified of water at the time (more on that coming in the August 16 post), and I spent the week hanging to the wall in the shallow end. No one tried to force my head under, and no one mocked me, but being a Beginner carried a stigma, especially after Brian puked up his lunch in the shallow end early that week. He had eaten a hot dog, or maybe three. Caddyshack had nothing on us when it came to scurrying away from floating objects.
That first night at camp, one song from my “distant” past ran through my head: “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)” by Allan Sherman (Warner Brothers 5378). My copy of the single was Ground to Dust long before I attended Good Fellow Camp, so my recollection of the song involved a lot of static, but it took its place in my ear and didn’t go away except in the liveliest moments of camp.
As the first classical record I listened to frequently (Amilcare Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours, performed by Lou Busch and His Orchestra, served as the backdrop), HMHF somehow didn’t register as a serious piece of music. I got the comedy pretty early on, and I laughed along with the audience. I wavered between thinking the people were laughing a lot and deducing that it was a laugh track. It turns out that it is indeed a live recording.
Allan Sherman (1924-1973), born Allan Copelon in Chicago, worked in television. He created the game show I’ve Got a Secret. Later, his neighbor, Harpo Marx, brought him to parties so he could show off his music parodies. It paid off with a Warner Brothers contract, and Sherman was the Next Big Thing for a good stretch. Even so, he hit the Top 40 just twice: HMHF debuted on August 10, 1963 and spent three weeks at #2. “Crazy Downtown” spent the week ending May 8, 1965 at #40 and then sank. A Christmas hit, a re-recording of HMHF and another tune round out his Hot 100 chart life.
An early binge eater in the style of John Candy, Sherman wound up diabetic before dying of emphysema when he was just 48.
Lou Busch (1910-1979) turned Sherman’s words into songs. Busch, who also recorded as Joe “Fingers” Carr, hit the Top 40 with “11th Hour Melody” and “Portuguese Washerwomen” in 1956. As conductor/arranger for Capitol and then Warner Brothers Records, Busch contributed to a number of careers besides Sherman’s. Busch died in a car accident on September 19, 1979.
As I lay in my cot that Sunday night, in the new sleeping bag Uncle Tom had bought for my week at camp, I could not help thinking that having a psychopath loose a few feet away, missing the moon landing and being forced to swim put me in the same category as the poor kid about whom Allan Sherman had sung. Unlike that kid, I didn’t write home to beg for release from this torture. I lost some sleep over Crazy Man Wilson, but I didn’t tell anyone I was scared of him.
Just like that kid, though, I learned eventually that there was a bright side to being at Good Fellow Camp. I met another Seán from another town who was my camp friend for the six years I attended. I learned that sassafras trees have three different shapes of leaves. I had my first water-balloon fight there. I broke my nose there. I experienced my first bonfire there. I comforted a kid from my neighborhood who became homesick there.
But did I learn to swim there? I know at least a couple of you are wondering about that, so I’ll tell you on August 16, when I revisit Good Fellow Camp.
Next time, I’ll tell you about a song I own by two different artists, a song that was recorded by a number of others as well, a song that never made the Top 40 in any incarnation. The question will be, why did so many people record it, when it didn’t appeal to the public? See you Wednesday!
Allan Sherman, Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh
The Good Fellow Club of U.S. Steel was, as far as I can tell, an outreach of the company. Certainly its summer camp was. Good Fellow Camp sat near Lake Michigan in Porter, Indiana. A log-and-stone lodge sat atop a steep hill, and at least ten, perhaps a dozen, cabins stood in a semicircle where the hill leveled off. Beyond the cabins were woods, as well as the archery range, the rifle range, and the ball fields.
I first attended Good Fellow Camp the summer I turned nine. My mother was in the hospital at the time, but she wrote me a letter that arrived at camp. She said she would be coming home soon. She did, but she was not home long.
One of the features of Good Fellow Camp was Crazy Man Wilson. He had been a janitor at a local high school, but a furnace explosion melted his face, and he went to live in the woods near the camp. On rare occasions he went crazy enough to come after the boys in the cabins. I didn’t know why the cabins didn’t have armed guards, with Crazy Man Wilson lurking nearby, but I think I get it now.
My first night at camp, July 20, we learned that the Eagle had landed. The TV was showing the footage six hours later when Neil Armstrong descended to the moon. However, there was just one TV at camp, and Armstrong stepped onto the moon at 9:56, after Lights Out. We had to make do with the radio. I was so geeked about the moon walk that I even had eaten Space Food Sticks when I stayed at my grandmother’s house for a couple of weeks in early 1969. Imagine how I felt, then, to miss the video. I still haven’t seen it, now that I think about it.
I don’t know if my counselor, Mike Nickovich, was supposed to have the radio on, but he did. Thanks, Mike. I heard Neil Armstrong’s words live, at least.
In addition to Crazy Man Wilson and the frustration of missing the lunar landing, another early issue with camp was the pool. I was terrified of water at the time (more on that coming in the August 16 post), and I spent the week hanging to the wall in the shallow end. No one tried to force my head under, and no one mocked me, but being a Beginner carried a stigma, especially after Brian puked up his lunch in the shallow end early that week. He had eaten a hot dog, or maybe three. Caddyshack had nothing on us when it came to scurrying away from floating objects.
That first night at camp, one song from my “distant” past ran through my head: “Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh! (A Letter from Camp)” by Allan Sherman (Warner Brothers 5378). My copy of the single was Ground to Dust long before I attended Good Fellow Camp, so my recollection of the song involved a lot of static, but it took its place in my ear and didn’t go away except in the liveliest moments of camp.
As the first classical record I listened to frequently (Amilcare Ponchielli’s Dance of the Hours, performed by Lou Busch and His Orchestra, served as the backdrop), HMHF somehow didn’t register as a serious piece of music. I got the comedy pretty early on, and I laughed along with the audience. I wavered between thinking the people were laughing a lot and deducing that it was a laugh track. It turns out that it is indeed a live recording.
Allan Sherman (1924-1973), born Allan Copelon in Chicago, worked in television. He created the game show I’ve Got a Secret. Later, his neighbor, Harpo Marx, brought him to parties so he could show off his music parodies. It paid off with a Warner Brothers contract, and Sherman was the Next Big Thing for a good stretch. Even so, he hit the Top 40 just twice: HMHF debuted on August 10, 1963 and spent three weeks at #2. “Crazy Downtown” spent the week ending May 8, 1965 at #40 and then sank. A Christmas hit, a re-recording of HMHF and another tune round out his Hot 100 chart life.
An early binge eater in the style of John Candy, Sherman wound up diabetic before dying of emphysema when he was just 48.
Lou Busch (1910-1979) turned Sherman’s words into songs. Busch, who also recorded as Joe “Fingers” Carr, hit the Top 40 with “11th Hour Melody” and “Portuguese Washerwomen” in 1956. As conductor/arranger for Capitol and then Warner Brothers Records, Busch contributed to a number of careers besides Sherman’s. Busch died in a car accident on September 19, 1979.
As I lay in my cot that Sunday night, in the new sleeping bag Uncle Tom had bought for my week at camp, I could not help thinking that having a psychopath loose a few feet away, missing the moon landing and being forced to swim put me in the same category as the poor kid about whom Allan Sherman had sung. Unlike that kid, I didn’t write home to beg for release from this torture. I lost some sleep over Crazy Man Wilson, but I didn’t tell anyone I was scared of him.
Just like that kid, though, I learned eventually that there was a bright side to being at Good Fellow Camp. I met another Seán from another town who was my camp friend for the six years I attended. I learned that sassafras trees have three different shapes of leaves. I had my first water-balloon fight there. I broke my nose there. I experienced my first bonfire there. I comforted a kid from my neighborhood who became homesick there.
But did I learn to swim there? I know at least a couple of you are wondering about that, so I’ll tell you on August 16, when I revisit Good Fellow Camp.
Next time, I’ll tell you about a song I own by two different artists, a song that was recorded by a number of others as well, a song that never made the Top 40 in any incarnation. The question will be, why did so many people record it, when it didn’t appeal to the public? See you Wednesday!
Allan Sherman, Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
