{"id":12683,"date":"2013-01-30T14:02:35","date_gmt":"2013-01-30T19:02:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=12683"},"modified":"2013-01-30T14:02:35","modified_gmt":"2013-01-30T19:02:35","slug":"midweek-music-break-stan-frebergs-musical-parodies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/midweek-music-break-stan-frebergs-musical-parodies\/","title":{"rendered":"Midweek Music Break: Stan Freberg’s Musical “Parodies”"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Stan<\/a>Wikipedia’s got an interesting article<\/a> on the musical parody genre: “borrowing” the lyrics or music of existing songs, and recasting them with different music or lyrics, respectively. Usually (as the ‘pedia points out) this is done with humorous intention — think Weird Al Yankovic — and that’s what this post is about. Apparently though, the intention isn’t always to induce laughter, especially when it comes to lifting music from old folk songs and like sources:<\/p>\n

Bob Dylan took the tune of the old slave song “No more auction block for me” as the basis for “Blowin’ in the Wind.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Talk about a whiplash response when I read\u00a0that<\/em> little tidbit. I mean, I know Dylan has great respect for old music. Still…)<\/p>\n

Anyhow, parody may be unique among the various forms of satire in that we can’t always tell what’s being made fun of. Is it the melody? the lyrics? a particular performer, or even a specific performance? The humor seems to rely strictly on the upending of expectations: we have to\u00a0know<\/em> the song to get the joke, and we have to know it well enough to recognize what’s been changed. (I guess from a certain perspective, even the work of this group<\/a> — contemporary songs performed in old-fashioned styles — could be considered parody.)<\/p>\n

Stan Freberg<\/a> — the comedian, writer, all-around wizard of words and pop culture who flourished on radio and television in the 1950s-60s — seemed to specialize in a particular form of not-quite-parody: poking fun at\u00a0the process by which recordings are made in the first place<\/em>. It was almost as though he’d at some point heard Song X, Y, or Z, and thought:\u00a0Wow. I bet THAT made for some interesting sessions in the studio…!<\/em> The classic Stan Freberg musical piece featured a nearly note-for-note reproduction of some popular song… and a performer openly at explosive loggerheads with his accompanists or studio technicians. These little three(ish)-minute gems of artistic melodrama tended to conclude with hurt feelings, slammed doors, or worse.<\/p>\n

Here’s an example. Around the time of Freberg’s heyday, Harry Belafonte contributed his “Day-O” (a\/k\/a “The Banana Boat Song”) to the library of pop-music earworms:<\/p>\n