The Missus and I took a much-needed mini-vacation this past weekend, trekking off to central Florida for (among other things) our first visit to the other theme park in that neighborhood. We love amusement parks and fairs (county, state, you name it), but neither of us is a big roller-coaster fan; most of the rides at our destination park were pure roller coasters, or adaptations of the genre. And if you look through the place’s Web site, you will observe that pretty much all the happy, screaming people in the photos are no more than half our age, and the majority much younger.
Still, we found plenty to do, although we spent only about five or six hours at the park itself (counting a full dinner).
The single activity I spent most of the four days engaged in — other than driving, haha — was reading. It felt almost irresponsible, reading so much. I finished one book I’d been reading for weeks; started and finished another in the next 24 hours; and put a huge dent in a third. I read for hours at a clip. (Of course, it helped that I’d sorta-but-not-quiiiiiite-finished this draft of Seems to Fit a couple days before. The very last chapter still needs work, but even so, my head was largely empty of responsibility to my own story.)
Anyway, headed into the midweek I got thinking about theme- and amusement-park music. Usually — at least to my mind — this music is associated with carousels, merry-go-rounds, whatever-you-call them, and often has that characteristic hurdy-gurdy sound. (The rides’ up-and-down round-and-round rhythms favor short songs played over, and over, and over, and over…) When I was a kid, a carousel appeared on the streets of our own town every now and again in summer, and the single number I remember it playing was (maybe unsurprisingly) “The Merry-Go-Round Broke Down.”
Wikipedia says:
[It was] written in 1937 by Cliff Friend and Dave Franklin. It is best known as the theme tune for the Looney Tunes cartoon series produced by Warner Bros. Cartoons, used from 1937 to 1969.
Here’s one Looney Tunes rendition, not the opening-titles instrumental but as sung by an early version of guess-who in “Daffy Duck and Egghead” (1938):
But the cartoon version was (is) waaay too fast to be played by any carousel other than one about to fly apart at its welded seams. The one I remember was paced more like this disturbing version from television’s old Lawrence Welk Show:
(The cartoon version of the song, though, provided me with the title for Merry-Go-Round. The sequel to that, called Merrily We Roll Along, gets its title from the theme song for the Merry Melodies cartoon series — also by Warner Brothers.)
Now it occurs to me that another carousel song was adapted for use in short comedies from the same mid-1930s era: “Listen to the Mockingbird,” the first theme song for The Three Stooges’ films. (They later switched to “Three Blind Mice,” but I’ve never heard a carousel play that one. Maybe the transference works in only one direction.)
At any rate, no matter how much I enjoy theme and amusement parks, especially those in central Florida, I can never dissociate them from this song:
Yeah. That (the 1964-65 New York World’s Fair) was the first place I ever heard it, too — maybe fifteen, twenty years before first re-encountering it at Disney World. What a surprise *cough* that it stayed with me during all that time in between!
In the above clip, the voiceover celebrates how many languages sing the song during the ride. Of course, the more languages in which it’s sung and instruments on which it’s played, the more times the maddening tune must be played, and the more desperate the riders grow to be freed from the little boats they’re trapped in. I like to imagine the Disney crew in their white short-sleeved shirts and ties, brainstorming around a table in a bar in late-1950s Southern California, laughing, growing ever drunker as they call out, “We’ve gotta do it in Sanskrit!” “Wait — Tagalog!” “Don’t forget Urdu!” “Old Norse!” “Pygmy Bantu!”…
I opted here not to use any of the videos which play all of “It’s a Small World.” If you’re a glutton for punishment, you’ve got a lot of them to choose from.
Nance says
So glad you got that off your chest ; )
Hoo, that’s got to be some of the most annoying music on the planet. Music to whine and sulk by. It reminds me of the stuff I heard on High and Exalted Grandson’s teevee for two year olds. All except for Yo Gabba Gabba, which featured rap by Biz Markie and some pseudo-pop-rock by The Salteens.
I’m delighted you had fun, though. And, yes, that Lawrence Welk vid was perhaps the most disturbing thing I’ve seen lately. Who, exactly, was their target audience? Everyone I ever knew switched the channel so fast, it’d leave you dizzy.
Welcome home,
Your sulky, whiney readers.
John says
Nance: The Universal theme park is divided into two, uh, sub-parks: Adventure Island and Universal Studios. Our five(ish) hours were spent entirely at the former. But looking through the park maps, I told The Missus that we could, if we hurried, make the day’s final performance of “A Day in the Park With Barney.” This wasn’t inducement enough to hurry.
My maternal grandparents were big fans of Lawrence Welk. (They also liked, oh, Redd Fox, and John Davidson, and Jim Nabors, and… Just in case that helps you draw a bead on the sort of hand I was dealt.) I would not be surprised to learn I’d actually seen the “Merry-Go-Round” number at the time it was broadcast.
Do you and The Mister like fairs? Whether you do or not, I bet your running commentary as you strolled the midway would be a wry hoot.
Nance says
I enjoyed fairs as a child. And the big Alaska State Fair in Palmer was a wonderful thing to behold in the years we lived nearby. It might have been the dramatic backdrop and the alpine slant of the light; those made everything that happened outdoors in Alaska seem to be the stuff of calendar art and gave the tawdriness of a fair a certain Renaissance charm. And they grow some unbelievable vegetables in Alaska. I like the agricultural tents at real fairs.
Otherwise, though, fairs and theme parks weird me out more and more as I age. I tend to get some combination of agoraphobia and claustrophobia in the crowds, I’m scared of the big thrill rides, and standing in lines makes me nuts.
Unless…unless that precious four year old grandson wants it. I will brave anything at all for his sake. And have done.
cynth says
I like the flavor of the local fairs better than anything, I think. The 4-H fairs in particular. There was one near us, well, near our grandparents, which had the most amazing old tractors, huge vegetables, bunnies! in cages!, chickens-also in cages, but not as exciting unless you counted the ones with the feathers on their feet and sprouting out of the tops of their head. I never liked the mid-way, though. I don’t like people shouting at me (I’m timid by nature) and even though they were trying to get me to play some rigged game, they made me nervous. Much like the Lawrence Welk clip as above.
s.o.m.e.one's brudder says
I believe that in that “after life” that we all may imagine from time-t0-time there is one furrow-browed, sprickle-haired, welder/pipefitter/Gene-Krupa-want-to-be that is seriously disturbed at this hour by the fact that the spawn of his loins (who shares his name, yet!) would give a platform to the dreaded theme-park-song-which-is-not-to-be-named.
For all the music which I remembered him imploring us to: “listen to this, listen to this…”, this is the single song that let me know that yes – it was possible for him to more passionately hate a “musical” composition” – maybe even more than the “yappin’ yaya shit” that we so often felt was MUSIC.
Thanks for the memory lane.
Jayne says
Yikes, that Lawrence Welk video is sort of like… The Stepford Wives meet Willy Wonka. Creepy.
I know this makes me the worst mother of the year (or years), but every summer the traveling carnival comes to town (with its inevitable merry-go-round music), I pack up our bags and hightail it to the Cape, or to Maine, or to some other fabulous distraction that will have the kids believing that they’ve missed nothing back home.
And well, they haven’t… at least not in my that’s-an-accident-waiting-to-happen mind. (Not to mention some of the seedy characters that can be found lumbering along the dusty grounds.)
Of course, the other theme park cannot be compared to a traveling carnival. And if I lived in Florida, I’d never get away with evading a visit. And I might be more easily coaxed to the other park, which doesn’t look all bad, minus the roller coasters.
Maybe this is why we’ve only gone as far south as S.C. with the kids? There’s just so much to see and do!
Thank goodness it’s not a too, too small world, after all. ;)
marta says
Well, you know I grew up near and even worked at Disney. My dad and I went to Disney the first year it was open. Oh, the memories.
As for the bizarre Lawrence Welk. I knew one family that watched his show religiously. They lived catty corner from us. And sometimes I would find myself stuck at their house with that show in the TV and I would have to watch. Not watching it wasn’t really an option. The best way I can describe that family is this: their daughter got pregnant at 15. The girl implied to my mother that her father was also the father of the baby. So. When I think of Lawrence Welk, I think of our neighbor. Needless to say, I’m no fan of Lawrence Welk.
marta says
P.S. Did you know RadioLab did a show about earworms?
And now I shall really go to bed…albeit with that family stuck in head. Hey, if a song stuck in your head is an earworm, what is a memory stuck in your head?