Thursday August 25, 2022
Something got me thinking about the pop songs I listened to in my youth. Here’s one of them: “Sh-boom sh-boom… yallalala lallalalala, Hey nonny ding dong, a-lang a--lang a-lang, Boom ba-doh, ba-doo ba-doodle-ay…”
The quartet went on to include some real words, but they’ve faded from memory. Only the nonsense syllables remain.
Or Sammy Kaye and his orchestra, otherwise a fairly conservative group: “Chickery chick, cha-la, cha-la, Check-a-la romey in a bananika, Bollika, wollika, can't you see, Chickery chick is me?”
And either Kay Kyser or the Andrews Sisters: “… Boop boop dittem dattem wattem chu, Boop boop dittem dattem wattem chu, Boop boop dittem dattem wattem chu, And they swam and they swam all over the dam.”
Perhaps you need something more modern. Like Little Richard, perhaps, belting out Tutti Frutti with its explosive “A wop bop a loo bop a wop bam boom”?
How about the Beatles, turning a meaningless phrase like “Ob la di, ob la da” into a Number-One hit?
Or ending I am the Walrus with “Goo goo g'joob, goo goo goo g'joob, Goo goo g'joob, goo goo goo g'joob, goo goo…”?
Name that singer!
There’s obviously something to these nonsense words. Can you identify the singers who performed any of these immortal lines?
· Aba daba daba daba daba daba dab
· Ram ram ramadama ding dong
· Zip-a-dee doo dah
· Na-na na na, na-na na na. na na na, na-na na
· Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
At least you shouldn’t have any trouble with that last one.
Ella Fitzgerald, it is claimed, invented scat one night when she forgot the words for her next verse, so she adlibbed something like, “Pa pee, pa doo-yah doo-yah doo-ee…”
As far as I know, no one has ever transcribed her improvisations. That would defeat the point, wouldn’t it?
But Italian composer Piero Umiliani mimicked scatting, for an exercise in writing a song with no real words, when he created Mah na mah ma. A choir of pink Muppets sang it on the first episode of The Muppet Show.
Innocent sounds
Nonsense words have been around for a long time. You probably shaped your children’s vocabulary with, “Hey diddle diddle, the cat and the fiddle…”
And we sang around the piano or the campfire, “Mairzy doats and dozey doats and liddle lambsie divy…” Didn’t you?
Sting, the lead singer for the band Police, said he was inspired to write De Do Do Do, De Da Da Da because he wanted to know why nonsense songs became hits.
He told Q magazine, “I was intrigued with why songs like Doo Wah Diddy, (Manfred Mann) why Be-Bop-A-Lula (Gene Vincent) worked. I came up with the idea that they worked because they were totally innocent. They weren’t trying to tell you anything or distort your vision – it was just a sound.”
Not entirely innocent, perhaps. It’s seems that wherever I have gone around the world, children chant the same derogatory syllables at their less fortunate peers: “Na na na-na na…”
But perhaps it’s the chanting that matters. The doing together. Not the words. You don’t have to know the words to join in and sing along.
Oh, those singers? Nat Cole, The Edsels, James Baskett in Disney’s Song of the South, the Beatles Hey Jude, and Julie Andrews.
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Copyright © 2022 by Jim Taylor. Non-profit use in congregations and study groups, and links from other blogs, welcomed; all other rights reserved.
To comment on this column, write jimt@quixotic.ca
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YOUR TURN
“Congratulations your new relationship,” Sheila Carey wrote about last week’s column, on my having acquired a small furry living partner named Dickie. “My best wishes for surviving your first year with Dickie. After that he may be a little less active.
“As a life-long cat lover I have to admit that the last time I brought home a kitten was in 2003. The two cats who ‘own’ us now both came to us a rescues about a year old as we had decided that we didn’t have the energy for a kitten, even though they are such a joy.
‘Do remember that, like small children, they can be lovingly disciplined so that they grow into compatible roommates. No jumping on counters, tables, bookcases -- knocking stuff off and stealing food! A spray bottle and lots of cat toys for distraction helps with some cats. (And yes, some are incorrigible.) I’m still trying to train our latest (now two and a half) not to walk on the keyboard when she wants attention.
“And yes, I’m old enough to remember dickies. I’ll bet he’s really cute.”
Barb Dean recommended “a Netflix documentary called Inside The Mind of a Cat. You might find it enlightening. “
John Shaffer recalled an experience: “In the late 1960's, we were living in a log cabin with a fireplace. One night when it was -30 outside, I closed the flue, believing that the fire was out. I was wrong. At 4:00 a.m., our cat did something she had never done before. She climbed into our bed, went to my ear and meowed loudly. When I woke up and opened my eyes, smoke from the fireplace was within four inches of my head. We opened the doors and cleared out the smoke. Without the cat, we may well have died in our sleep. I treated that cat even better after that occasion.”
Darryl Auten and Steve Roney thought along some parallel lines.
Darryl wrote, ““Dickie sounds like he has made an excellent acquisition having found you. In ancient Egypt cats were worshipped as gods -- and they have never forgotten it.”
Sjmilarly, Steve wrote, “Happy to hear you have been adopted by a kitten. Yes, things get broken. Including my treasured statue of Our Lady of Montserrat, brought back from Spain. No doubt a victim of the jealousy of the primordial Egyptian cat goddess, acting through one of her familiars.”
Isabel Gibson: “Your opening reminds me of the line: ‘Dogs have owners; cats have staff.’ Having shared houses with both, I tend to agree.
“Your ruminations on guilt speak to the human condition. Even absent any malicious intent, our actions can hurt others. Maybe that's what original sin is.”
Marilyn Josefson: “I too love cats, and certainly enjoy their independent natures. They also know how to love us in their own special way. Dickie sounds like a little sweetheart; he is quite like many of us...”
I don’t usually print comments on other readers’ comments; the verbal jousting can get prolonged forever. I’m breaking my own rule with this letter from Laurna Tallman: “It is gratifying to see the responses to your ‘time to stop pretending’ piece. Taken together, the letters affirm the ministry you have extended to your readers and listeners over your lifetime. I hope those expressions of assurance, gratitude, and insight help you to reassess your concept of ‘ministry’ that exists as fully outside of ordination as within.”
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Psalm paraphrase
The lectionary calls only for verses 10-16 of Psalm 81. It feels like too little, like getting a single prawn in a seafood casserole. When I wrote this paraphrase, I was thinking of those occasions on which we humans celebrate unconditionally, and I put it in the context of a mother watching her child graduate from college.
1 My heart is so full, I cannot make a sound.
2 But surely the air shimmers with excitement;
the lights glow brighter;
the cobwebs vanish from the corners of this vast and musty auditorium.
3, 4 This is our special day, the day we have awaited so long.
7 For all these years we have struggled.
We have made payments.
We skimped and scrounged, we pushed and prodded.
5, 6 And now it is done!
We have succeeded!
We have reached our goal;
life will never be the same.
And God asks:
8 In your celebration, where is there room for me?
In your joy, what credit do you give to me?
9 You have made your goal an idol;
you have let it take over your lives.
10 I am the one who has watched over you.
I am the one who sustained you through the tough times.
I fed you and nurtured you and kept you going.
I am the one; I am God.
11 But you were obsessed by your own concerns.
12 So I left you alone, to do it your way.
I did not interfere.
13 If only you had paid as much attention to me as to your goals.
14 I would have given you many more times to rejoice along the way.
15 It would have been much less of a struggle.
16 This moment would be just as sweet, with no lingering bitterness.
You can find paraphrases of most of the psalms in the Revised Common Lectionary in my book Everyday Psalmsavailable from Wood Lake Publishing, info@woodlake.com.
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TECHNICAL STUFF
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PROMOTION STUFF
To use the links in this section, you’ll have to insert the necessary symbols. Some spam filters have blocked my posts because they’re suspicious of some of the web links.
Wayne Irwin's “Churchweb Canada,” an inexpensive service for any congregation wanting to develop a web presence, with free consultation. http://wwwDOTchurchwebcanadaDOTca He’s also relatively inexpensive!
I recommend Isabel Gibson’s thoughtful and well-written blog, wwwDOTtraditionaliconoclastDOTcom. She also has lots of beautiful photos. Especially of birds.
Tom Watson writes a weekly blog called “The View from Grandpa Tom’s Balcony” -- ruminations on various subjects, and feedback from Tom’s readers. Write him at tomwatsoATgmailDOTcom (NB that’s “watso” not “watson”)
ALVA WOOD’S ARCHIVE
I have acquired (don’t ask how) the complete archive of the late Alva Wood’s collection of satiric and sometimes wildly funny columns about a mythical village’s misadventures. I’ve put them on my website: http://quixotic.ca/Alva-Wood-Archive. You’re welcome to browse. No charge. (Although maybe if I charged a fee, more people would find the archive worth visiting.)