# I love to sing-a about the moon-a and a June-a **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [January 19, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259 "2011-01-19T23:46:36Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [January 19, 2011, 11:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/1 "2011-01-19T23:46:36Z")
In that weird way that a conversation can sometimes go, my cubicle-mate and I went from The Thompson Twins to Owl Jolson. On the way there we found out that [“Drink to me only with thine eyes”](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drink_to_Me_Only_with_Thine_Eyes) has its own wiki page. Which bought us right back to [I Like To Singa.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=akAEIW3rmvQ) I asked him where he first saw the cartoon short. He said, “On TV. As a kid. On some. . . show.” Since we are around the same age and grew up in the same area, I wondered which show. I first saw it as an adult. My father bought my then pre-school children a 12 hour(!) videotape (remember those?) filled with very old cartoons. Little Audrey was on it as was Little Lulu. Very, _very_ early versions of Bugs Bunny, Elmer Fudd and Daffy Duck. And tons and tons of Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes with the bouncy sing-a-long bal. Man, I wish my kids hadn’t watched that thing till it broke. When I was young I watched The Bugs Bunny Show ([with this theme song](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F-t8PngHgWY)) but I do not remember them showing cartoons from the '20s and 30s on it. Nowadays the whippersnappers have Cartoon Network and Boomerang. Do you remember seeing really old cartoons on TV? Do you remember when and where and the name of the shows? I’d love to peek at them. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 12:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/2 "2011-01-20T00:03:43Z")
They weren’t really old when I watched. 🙂 Cartoons were generally shown on local kiddie shows, who would buy packages of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies (like **I Like to Singa** ). The names of the shows would vary by area. Back then, one of the New York City stations would have Terrytoons’s “silent cartoons,” with Farmer Al Falfa, many dating from before sound. Nearly all the cartoons on the air were theatrical ones that were syndicated. **Crusader Rabbit** was the first one produced for TV (children’s shows made for TV before that used puppets – **Time for Beany, Diver Dan** etc., and both types were being produced into the mid-60s). The tape you’re talking about probably contained theatrical cartoons that were getting one more recycling. ---
**Author:** ![Claude\_Remains](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/898d66/32.png) [@Claude\_Remains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Claude_Remains)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/3 "2011-01-20T00:09:35Z")
I remember when [Cartman](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDt0tXv50jc) sang it after getting an alian anal probe. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 12:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/4 "2011-01-20T00:36:36Z")
As a kid (in the 70s) I saw cartoons on TV, both on The Bugs Bunny Show that the OP mentioned, and in the mornings when the local station and/or cable superstation showed half-hour blocks of cartoons as “Bugs Bunny and Friends” or something like that. I don’t remember seeing the Owl Jolson cartoon, but there are plenty of other specific cartoons that I do remember seeing. I saw the Owl Jolson cartoon that the OP refers to, _maybe_ for the first time, relatively recently as an adult on one of the “Looney Tunes Golden Collections.” ---
**Author:** ![Electric\_Warrior](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/ee7513/32.png) [@Electric\_Warrior](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Electric_Warrior)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/5 "2011-01-20T01:40:17Z")
I’ve seen that cartoon. The tune immediately popped into my head as soon as I saw the title. I am 20 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/6 "2011-01-20T01:46:32Z")
I grew up watching those old cartoons. One thing I only caught onto recently was that the father owl in _I Love to Singa_ says what sounds like “You think you’re Chrysler?” But he isn’t referring to the car company or its president – he’s really talking about violinist _Fritz Kreisler_, who was famous back then. (How many famous violinists can you name today?) Kreisler was particularly interesting because (as I’ve read the story) he couldn’t find enough solo violinist pieces, so he wrote his own in the style of other composers. The Wikipedia page calls these “pastiches”, but other sources say that he passed them off as the real compositions of famous composers > [@](#): > > Type: Musical Hoax. > Summary: The musician Fritz Kreisler claimed that works he had written himself were actually “lost classics” written by famous composers. > > Fritz Kreisler During the early twentieth century, Fritz Kreisler was considered to be one of the leading violinists of his time. Part of his popularity stemmed from the fact that he had rediscovered many ‘lost classics’ by famous composers. He explained that he had found these works tucked away in various libraries and monasteries throughout Europe. > > He would play these lost classics (which included pieces by masters such as Pugnani and Vivaldi) during his concerts, much to his audiences’ delight. This became a signature part of his act. Over time many of these works became quite popular in their own right and entered the repertoire of other performers besides Kreisler. > > By the time he was approaching the age of 60, Kreisler could look back on a highly successful career in which he had won acclaim and accolades, even though it was acclaim for playing other people’s work. > > Then on February 2, 1935, his 60th birthday, the New York Times music critic Olin Downes sent him a cable wishing him a happy birthday. In the cable she jokingly asked if he himself was actually the composer of all those ‘lost classics’ that had made him so famous. To her shock, he casually responded that, in fact, he was. > > The revelation shocked the music industry. Half the industry heaped scorn on him for the deception, while the other half praised him. But Kreisler remained unrepentant and unperturbed. He pointed out that it should make no difference who wrote the works as long as people enjoyed them. He also claimed, quite rightly, that no one would have paid any attention to these works if he had identified them as his own. The public apparently agreed with him, because his popularity remained undiminished after the scandal. [http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Fritz\_Kreisler/](http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Fritz_Kreisler/) > **[Fritz Kreisler](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fritz_Kreisler)** > > Friedrich "Fritz" Kreisler (February 2, 1875 – January 29, 1962) was an Austrian-born American violinist and composer. One of the most noted violin masters of his day, he was known for his sweet tone and expressive phrasing, with marked portamento and rubato. Like many great violinists of his generation, he produced a characteristic sound which was immediately recognizable as his own. Although it derived in many respects from the Franco-Belgian school, his style is nonetheless reminiscent of t ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_A.Robrin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sam_a.robrin/32/14497_2.png) [@Sam\_A.Robrin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_A.Robrin)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/7 "2011-01-20T01:58:54Z")
I watched all those great cartoon shorts on TV in the late 1950s and early 1960s–and can even sing the lyrics to the Loony Tunes and Merry Melodies themes! ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 3:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/8 "2011-01-20T03:48:24Z")
I know I saw the Owl Jolson cartoon on TV in the late 70s/early 80s. There were a couple of stations that played blocks of those old cartoons in the morning and in the early afternoon after school let out. The old Merrie Melodies, Tom & Jerry, Looney Toons… Looking around, I found [this](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nv3kZ0XYfWU). “Time for Spring, I say!” Boy, they made cartoons beautiful back then. ---
**Author:** ![kenobi\_65](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kenobi_65/32/13178_2.png) [@kenobi\_65](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kenobi_65)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 4:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/9 "2011-01-20T04:20:10Z")
I remember originally seeing the Owl Jolson cartoon, among many other Warner Brothers shorts, on “The Ray Rayner Show”, a weekday morning kids’ show on WGN in Chicago during the late 1960s and early 1970s. I moved from Chicago to Green Bay in 1975; there, WBAY had a weekday afternoon show (ISTR it ran at 4pm). It was a half-hour show, enough time to show 3 WB shorts, with lots of commercials crammed in between them. At that same time, ABC had a Saturday morning show in which they’d show WB cartoons (that’s the last link which the OP mentions). They would intersperse the older theatrical shorts with little bits featuring Bugs, Daffy, etc. appearing as sort of vaudeville performers. That show, as I recall, only ran the later WB shorts (from the 1950s and 1960s – you got lots of Road Runner and Speedy Gonzalez). ---
**Author:** ![Cat\_Whisperer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cat_whisperer/32/4839_2.png) [@Cat\_Whisperer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cat_Whisperer)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/10 "2011-01-20T04:28:54Z")
[Oh, lolcats, is there nothing you can’t do?](http://cheezburger.com/View/1384368384) ---
**Author:** ![Colibri](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colibri/32/1841_2.png) [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/11 "2011-01-20T04:36:28Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Back then, one of the New York City stations would have Terrytoons’s “silent cartoons,” with Farmer Al Falfa, many dating from before sound. I remember those well. Also the early Betty Boop cartoons. ---
**Author:** ![dwyr](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dwyr/32/363_2.png) [@dwyr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dwyr)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 8:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/12 "2011-01-20T08:03:24Z")
I was at work one night playing the second selection [here](http://www.archive.org/details/AlJolson-1930sCollection-171-177), when my considerably-younger-than-me, twenty-something coworker was passing by. She heard the music and stopped to ask me if it was the same song from “that cartoon”. She’d never heard of Al Jolson but she knew the singing owl. This just tickled me no end for some reason. Generations connected by cartoons. ---
**Author:** ![minlokwat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/minlokwat/32/2844_2.png) [@minlokwat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/minlokwat)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 11:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/13 "2011-01-20T11:22:37Z")
I remember seeeing **I Like to Singa** but can’t remember specifically when. Let me pull up my rocking chair grab some prune juice and explain. Back in the day, the Saturday morning kid-vid line-up was more more rigidly set. In the 70’s the classic era of Loonie Tunes (called the Bugs Bunny / Road Runner Hour) was a staple feature and there were the newer offerings such as Fat Albert, Hong Kong Fooey, Scooby Doo among many others. Each year featured a different line-up and Saturday mornings were spent in front of the tube alternating between the three big network channels. Sunday mornings were a complete hodgepodge. The quality cartoons were reserved for Saturday network TV and Sundays were a vapid serving of leftovers. You got Johnny Quest which nobody really liked, Popeye and Sinbad cartoons mixed in and older versions of Looney Toons (the ones where Bugs and Elmer look decidedly different) with some Three Stooges occassionally thrown in. These you had to find on the auxillary channels as the big three would run their Sunday morning news programs. My guess is that I must have seen I Like to Singa during one of the Sunday free-for-alls that offered the occassional bright spot amidst a sea of dissatisfaction. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/14 "2011-01-20T13:17:12Z")
I mentioned above that some of the local stations would offer those old cartoons as morning and afternoon fare. I believe that we saw them on WPIX, a NYC station, even though we were in central PA. WPIX was carried on our cable line-up, and I do remember that after school was Magic Garden, that PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX! video-game-by-phone thing, and the old cartoons. ---
**Author:** ![PoorYorick](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ecccb3/32.png) [@PoorYorick](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PoorYorick)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/15 "2011-01-20T13:18:09Z")
> [@dwyr](#): > > I was at work one night playing the second selection [here](http://www.archive.org/details/AlJolson-1930sCollection-171-177), when my considerably-younger-than-me, twenty-something coworker was passing by. She heard the music and stopped to ask me if it was the same song from “that cartoon”. She’d never heard of Al Jolson but she knew the singing owl. This just tickled me no end for some reason. Generations connected by cartoons. I got sick of watching Scooby Doo movies and _Milo and Otis_ with my 4-year-old granddaughter, so I bought one of the the Looney Tunes collection CD’s so we could watch something _I_ liked. And to think, she didn’t even know who Yosimite Sam was. I feel so proud that I’m responsible for imparting some culture to the next generation. Surprisingly, she also loves _Princess Bride_. I thought she’d be too young. ---
**Author:** ![Sigmagirl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c89c15/32.png) [@Sigmagirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sigmagirl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/16 "2011-01-20T13:53:58Z")
I don’t remember ever seeing _I Like to Singa_, but I have it on my iPod and this thread made me get it out and listen to it! From [this](http://www.amazon.com/Thats-Cartoon-Merrie-Melodies-Looney/dp/B00005N836/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1295531489&sr=1-3) CD set. I want more, more, more. ---
**Author:** ![RitterSport](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rittersport/32/6326_2.png) [@RitterSport](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RitterSport)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 2:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/17 "2011-01-20T14:13:38Z")
For what it’s worth, that song was used in a South Park Episode, in the first season. I think it’s the one where Cartman gets probed by aliens and, among other side effects, it causes him to change his appearance and sing that song. That could be where some of the younger dopers remember seeing it. I’m not that young, but I don’t remember the original cartoon. ---
**Author:** ![Biggirl](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/biggirl/32/3294_2.png) [@Biggirl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Biggirl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 2:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/18 "2011-01-20T14:17:33Z")
> [@jayjay](#): > > I mentioned above that some of the local stations would offer those old cartoons as morning and afternoon fare. I believe that we saw them on WPIX, a NYC station, even though we were in central PA. WPIX was carried on our cable line-up, and I do remember that after school was Magic Garden, that PIX!PIX!PIX!PIX! video-game-by-phone thing, and the old cartoons. This, WOR and WNEW!(Metromedia New York FIVE!) It’s all coming back to me. Very early in the morning-- like 6 am, they showed exactly 3 old shorts. I hate mobile typing so forgive the bad spacing and formatting of this post. ---
**Author:** ![jayjay](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jayjay/32/6765_2.png) [@jayjay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jayjay)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/19 "2011-01-20T14:33:42Z")
> [@Biggirl](#): > > This, WOR and WNEW!(Metromedia New York FIVE!) It’s all coming back to me. Very early in the morning-- like 6 am, they showed exactly 3 old shorts. Now that I think about it, we got WOR on our cable, too, so it was probably both of those stations we watched the cartoons on. (Both of them also had the Broadway ads, too…I remember ads for Cats, Evita, La Cage aux Folles…hmmm. I wonder if I can blame turning out gay on WPIX?) ---
**Author:** ![Wheelz](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wheelz/32/5718_2.png) [@Wheelz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wheelz)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2011, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259/20 "2011-01-20T15:10:58Z")
> [@Claude\_Remains](#): > > I remember when [Cartman](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sDt0tXv50jc) sang it after getting an alian anal probe. About this same time (guess it must have been around 1997), Cartoon Network ran a “100 Greatest Cartoons of All Time” weekend, and _I Love To Singa_ was on it. That was the first time I recall seeing it, and Mrs. Wheelz and I both fell in love with it. I happened to have a videotape rolling so we watched it multiple times. No more than a month later, we watched _South Park_ for the very first time, and both busted a gut when the song came up. My wife’s exact words were: “NO WAY!!!” [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/i-love-to-sing-a-about-the-moon-a-and-a-june-a/568259.md?page=2)