So what songs did you all enjoy singing in school back in the day?
Did anyone else sing “Bingo”? And then do the clapping part?
There was another called “Don Gotto” about a cat.
Another was “Cindy”. “Git along home, Cindy Cindy”
Any others?
Of those, I only know “Bingo.” We even did a German version of it, for whatever reason. (I think the music teacher was of German background, or something.)
I mean, as a kid we did the usual “Itsy Bitsy Spider” and “If You’re Happy and You Know It” and, on bus trips, “99 Bottle of Beer on the Wall” and all that stuff. I also remember lots of religious songs (I went to a Catholic school, my favorite probably being “On Eagle’s Wings” and “Make Me A Channel of Your Peace.”) Then for fun stuff, I distinctly remember “The Cat Came Back” as well as “Fun, Fun, Fun” by the Beach Boys.
The favorites for my students are “The Zoo Song”, “Down By The Bay”, and Woody Guthrie’s “Pick it Up”. They still dig “Bingo” and “Wheels on the Bus”.
clap clap NGO
Don GATO, silly. Señor Don Gato was a cat. On a high red roof Don Gato sat.
nuh. Never ran into that one.
• The “Whoopie Tie Yi Yo” sing, Git along little dogies, it’s yore misfortune and none of my own. All the verses, including “Oh, you’ll be soup for Uncle Sam’s injuns, it’s beef, big beef, I can hear them cry…”
• “Waters ripple and flow, on their way to the sea…”
• Something about being a horse. “Eat the grass upon the hill, drink cool water form the pool…” and “do you know this wobbly colt, standing side me {something}, soon a handsome horse will be, this shiny colt…”
• Columbia the Gem of the Ocean
As if on cue, I walk into the dining room and my 2 year old is on the iPad, listening to that song exactly at that verse.
Otherwise, I don’t recognize any of the other songs you’ve listed. So far, “Bingo” and “Wheels On The Bus” are the only songs mentioned in this thread that I’ve even heard of. Oh, and that reminds me, “Puff the Magic Dragon” was also a popular one in grade school, and I seem to recall “Yellow Submarine” also getting a lot of traction.
“Walking down Canal Street,
Knocked on every door.
God damn son-of-a-bitch,
I couldn’t find a whore.”
What? Not college?
“Bad, Bad Leroy Brown.” It had a cuss word in it.
Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree,
Counting all the monkeys he can see,
Laugh kookaburra, laugh kookaburra
That’s no monkey that’s me.
Also all the Christmas songs.
ETA Also The Happy Wanderer
“America” and “Here comes Peter Cotton Tail, hopping down the bunny trail, hippity hoppity Easter’s on its way…”
Later “A strapping young stockman lay dying, a saddle supporting his head…”, “There was a wild colonial boy…”, and “…Singing toorali-ollari-addity, We’re bound for Botany Bay…”
I remember we sang Rainbow Connection, When I’m 64, Yellow Submarine, and various other pop songs the teachers liked. Didn’t sing a whole lot of kids songs.
Estaba el señor don Gato
sentadito en su tejado,
marramamiau, miau miau,
sentadito en su tejado…
Wonder if it’s the same song, but I’m at work so I’ll have to try a youtube quest later. I don’t have memories of singing it at school; we did sing it during car trips, and when herding little ones (I usually was among the older kids in any group, so I’ve shepherded a lot of toddlers).
Oh yeah, Thanks…
The funnest part was the “Don Gato was a cat” and you said “meow, meow, meow”
“I adore you wrote the lady cat (meow meow meow) who was fluffy white and nice and fat (meow meow meow)”.
Various verses to the tune" here is to the bus driver".
“He drinks and he smokes and he tells dirty jokes”.
Weeeelll I stuck my head in a little skunk’s hole
And the little skunk said, Well bless my soul…
Black socks, they never get dirty
The more you wear them
The more they get sturdy
Sometimes I think of the laundry
But something tells me, “Don’t think of that yet”
I haven’t thought of this song in 40+ years. We have threads like these every so often and usually at least one song that had previously been totally forgotten gets jarred loose. This be that song. At least that was the version we sung on the bus. Round the campfire when no adults were around it was " . . .he’s happy, he’s jolly, he’s fucked up by golly".
I didn’t hear this one in school but had it on a record of childrens’ songs. This song seriously bummed me out! For those unfamiliar, here are the lyrics, which describe the many ways people try to “get rid of” this poor cat.
Here’s a kind of a curious one: my second grade teacher, Mrs. Miller, taught us Oh What a Beautiful Morning , which we would sing after saying the Pledge of Allegiance, and which I wouldn’t learn until decades later that it’s from the musical Oklahoma.
She also taught us
“Well I walked around the corner and I walked around the block
Then I walked right in to a doughnut shop
Then I picked up a doughnut rights out of the grease
And I handed the lady a five cent piece.”
There’s more but I don’t want to violate the copyright thingy.
We sang that Don Gato crap, too. I’m pretty surprised that it was something widespread and non-obscure, though. Then there was a song about defenestration (those were both in middle school.) In primary school, being in SC we sang Sandlappers and Carolina in the Morning.
What years were you folks who sang the “Don Gato” song around? Seems to be a popular tune. I was in grade school in the 80s, and never came across it. My kids are now in pre-K and day care, and I haven’t heard it from them yet, either. Is this like a 90s thing or something?
My whole sixth grade class sang “Dixie” every morning.
We were in southeast Missouri, and it was the 1990s, so this was perhaps a bit odd for a public school.
I also remember learning “Kookaburra” and “Waltzing Matilda”, and understanding both of them just fine, in early grade school.
“I’m bringing home a baby bumblebee, won’t my mommy be so proud of me…”
“Birdie, birdie, where is your nest…”