I learned it from Kidsongs. Each repetition gets quieter, but you yell the name, along with “Da da da da da da da” or similar.
Somehow, they connected it with Old MacDonald’s farm. But there was always that one song that didn’t seem to fit the theme.
Ever find a recording of it? I’d love to hear it. I kinda wonder how the verse sounds.
Yes. Born 1979, Ohio.
Not yet, but becuse of this thread I’ll renew my efforts to find it.
I graduated from high school with John Jacob.
and his song.
That was a standard kid’s song when I was growing up (1960’s, Seattle area). I also remember the second line as “That’s my name, too” . We finished off with a line of “Tra la la la la” or “Dum dee dum dee dum”
We just repeated the same words over and over again. Besides being fun to sing, it had the extra benefit of driving our parents crazy.
Same here, SF Bay Area in the 50s.
Yes. I was a kid in the 1950s/60s in Indiana and heard it often.
Yes, born 1983 in Raleigh, NC.
There are more lyrics: “Ba da da da da da da…”
mmm
The earliest reference to it that I know of is, it was sung on an episode of The Andy Griffith Show when it was still in black and white, so it would have been around 1965. It was actually sung slightly differently from how I learned it; normally, while each verse gets softer and softer except for the part between the verses, in this one, most of the second verse is quiet, but when they get to “the people always shout,” they shouted the name.
The only other time I saw it on TV was an episode of One Day at a Time, where it was done the usual way.
Success!
It didn’t help that this version is called JJJ-SMITH, especially when the singer sings JJJ-Schmidt.
It holds up better than I would have suspected.
Good heavens! I had no idea the song had all those verses – all we ever knew was the chorus. What a revelation!
I could have written this post but I would have to amend it to read “I grew up in upstate NY, Connecticut, New Jersey and Florida in the 1970s and early 80s.”
Where I used to live, my apartment manager’s small daughters would sing that when they saw me. ('Cause, you know, ‘John’.)
I believe I learned in in 4-H camp in the 40s.
Yup. Grew up in New England in the 60s.
It doesn’t scan. Not enough syllables.
We used to sing that song on the bus to day camp, back in the mid-'50s.
We also sang a variation of “Hagalina Magalina . . . .”
We learned this and other camp sort of songs, such as “I Love the Mountains” and “Rise and Shine and Give God the Glory Glory” at PS 24 in the Bronx, early 70’s.