Excuse Me. Your Excused.
:: Songs of Safety Part One ::
:: Songs of Safety Part Two ::
:: Manners Can Be Fun Part One ::
:: Manners Can Be Fun Part Two ::
:: Health Can Be Fun Part One ::
:: Health Can Be Fun Part Two ::
Fun. We all like to have it, especially kids. When I first popped this on, I couldn't believe how unfun it sounded, especially when I tried to imagine being a kid and being bombarded with these condescending messages set to music that I doubt any kid was ever into. Things like making sure you don't cook your fingers by confusing the hot and cold faucet handles, and to hang on to your mother's hand when you are watching a parade, which incidently would be where you might hear music such as this. But the more I listened, the more the quaintness of it drew me in and by the time it got to manners being fun, they actually kind of were.
Some context helps here. I was under the assumption that this record was from the sixties, and from the inner sleeve this pressing was from at least 1967, a year I don't associate with hokey whitebread music using words like "motorcar." So I looked this stuff up, and this is just three 78's from the 40's put onto one LP, one of countless repressings that had been done over the years. That explains why this sounds so square for the late 60's, when surely talking magic mushrooms were already teaching kids to read.
Frank Luther is an interesting character. He started out doing very country Country Music, and later settled in as a top childrens records artist. The label this was on, Vocalion, which as this point had been revived by Decca as a budget label for reissues such as this, has a tremendously rich history, including the only Robert Johnson records ever produced.
So sit back and have a listen, and try to imagine an age when kids needed a whole lot of instruction just to stay alive and not be run over or burned alive, and then laugh thinking about how these days junior has to show grandpa how to download a photo attachment from an email.
Tony
This entry was posted
on Monday, December 29, 2008 at 2:00 AM.
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Monday, December 29, 2008 8:57:00 PM"when we finish playing we remember that our toys belong in boxes, in cupboards or shelves and when we finish playing we put them back ourselves, we put them back ourselves, our toys belong in boxes and we put them back ourselves."
thanks to this, i will no longer resort to yelling at the end of the day, i will instead sing this little ditty as i dance around the house and pray that the sheer ridiculousness of it will inspire my child to clean up.
Monday, January 05, 2009 5:04:00 PM
Absolutely excellent. Thanks for posting this!
I found a copy of this in a thrift store last year, and never got around to playing it, though I never forgot about how "fun" it might be.
Friday, January 09, 2009 9:44:00 AM
Wonderful!
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 3:25:00 AM
Hi! I just discovered your site via THE POOR MAN. You guys put an insane amount of work into this, it's obviously a great resource. And I feel smarter for the time I'm spending here. . .I've been reading the archives, and downloading stuff - but it seems that most stuff before a certain date is -whoop - gone. That's normal for a music blog, but what is weird is that there is no error message. I download a file with no problem, but it turns out to be unplayable because it is 2 bytes in size. Are there weird "ghost copies" of .mp3s floating around on the server? Or am I downloading them wrong?
Tuesday, January 13, 2009 6:49:00 AM
Thanks! We can't keep up everything forever because of server space, and also because we kind of never planned this to be an online library. I do keep things up way longer than I said we would, and there's always like 800MB of music available.
What song was giving the problem? I test all the mp3's out before posting, but I am sure stuff happens sometimes.
Cheers!
Friday, January 23, 2009 5:26:00 AM
Oh my,I'm laughing so hard I can't even work now
Million thanks for this gem
Tuesday, February 03, 2009 5:11:00 AM
Do you think you could offer more from John Froman - Wall Street?
Ever since you first posted a few of the tracks, I’ve been dying to hear more.
It’s probably topical too, what with the Stock Market trouble.
PS: I’ve added you to my Blog Roll at http://yourpaldoug.blogspot.com/
It’s my new web site with the Music we love blog updates. I just haven’t posted albums in a while, so it’s the least I could do.
Keep up the great work!
Your Pal,
Doug
Saturday, December 05, 2009 2:09:00 PM
This priceless record was given by my grandmother to my sisters and I back in the 60's and we played it until it wore out.
I would love to thank you for the memories, good and horrific, that you brought back. We still sing "let the ball roll" and the "excuse me song" when we have too many drinks.
Sunday, May 09, 2010 4:45:00 PM
Hey, good of you to put this up! I am literally this minute digitally converting my old vinyl copy of this very album -- Simulated Stereo sticker and all -- which I had when I was young, and is the only kid's record from that time I still have.
I freely admit that somebody -- somewhere -- should make hay with a sample of the 'we take off our clothes and go to bed' bit, just because in context it's completely innocent, and out of context, good grief!
Friday, June 18, 2010 5:04:00 AM
I found this record in a thrift store in 1986. We played it all the time, made cutup answering machine messages from it, and sang it to each other endlessly. It has become a part of my life in the most ridiculous way. thanks for posting it, now I don't have to pull out the vinyl to hear it.
Saturday, January 07, 2012 6:30:00 AM
Thank you for posting this. I'm 55 and I still remember every song. I loved this as a kid!
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