Oh yeah. My old man was a HORRIBLE singer. His favorite tune to torture by was “I’m Looking Over a Four-Leaf Clover.” When I was about 7 or 8 I was delighted to learn of the following parody…
I’m looking over
My dead dog Rover
That I over-ran with the mower
One leg is missing
The second is gone
The third leg is scattered
All over the lawn
No need explaining
The last remaining
Is down by the cellar dooooooor…
I have a vast repetoire of bizarre old folk songs that I regale my kids with, picked up from the big Harry Smith collection and bound volumes of that old folkie magazine that people used to carry around Greenwich Village in their banj cases back in the early '60s, I forget the name of it at the moment.
Also, since my son is named “Quinn,” he gets Dylan’s “Quinn the Eskimo” a lot, plus other Dylan tunes…and the Grateful Dead is always handy, especially at bedtime when lullabies are needed. ChiefScott, I assume you’ve relied on “Brokedown Palace” and “We Bid You Goodnight” in the past, too?
My dad used to sing these goofy ass songs that I can’t remember the words to, but a lot had to do with sleep, or waking up. He still does goofy stuff in speech and jokes, and I think I’m corrupted with about half a zillion stupid habits.
BTW, my dad has an ok singing voice, but my mother could kill a cat with hers.
My dad has a good singing voice. He was in a barbershop chorus while I was growing up, so we’d usually get bits and pieces from BBS songs.
It’s been a couple months since I visited my parents, so I don’t know if he’s still got the habit of walking around singing. But it doesn’t matter, because now I walk around singing songs (including the stupid ones I make up). If my future kids are lucky, I won’t embarrass them too badly.
My dad’s specialty is mangling the words to current (and some not so current) songs, getting fixated on just a line or two, and singing it over and over and over again until the Pope himself, were he present, would lose patience and ask him to put a sock in it. At which point Dad will look indignant and say, “Can’t I even sing if I want to?”
30 seconds later he’s back at it. I love my Dad.
ChiefScott, “Boop boop!” made me think of my dad as soon as I read it, because many of his “remakes” revolve around just that phrase. To wit, “Sonny, thank you for the boop boop doo doo doo!” He also used to refer to my brother’s Nintendo usage as “playing with that beep beep boop boop.”
My dad never sang, but my grandfathers and my uncles did. I can’t remember the words though
One had something to do with a duck’s brother.
And this gem (To the tune of “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
*Well I wear my silk pajamas in the summer when it’s hot
And I wear my flannel PJs in the winter when it’s not
And sometimes in the summer
And sometimes in the fall
I jump right in between the sheets with nothing on at all
Glory Glory Hallejuah,
Balmy breeze is blowing through ya
Glory Glory haleejual
I jump right in the sheets with nothing on at all.
*
There’s more but I can’t remember.
As he’s my dad, I can share that your fellow Doper sings any Groucho song from Marx Brothers movies. That, and songs from Loony Tunes cartoons.
For instance:
A Groucho song from *Animal Crackers
Hello, I must be going.
I cannot stay, I came to say
I must be going.
(Something, something, I forgot the words, something)
But I must be…
Going.*
He also sings the patter songs from Gilbert & Sullivan operaettas from time to time.
I am the very model of a modern major General.
I’ve information vegtable, animal, and mineral…
Tim - Your dad sounds like mine. My mom was always pissed at him for making up songs. He made up dirty lyrics to songs on the radio while on the way to the hospital when my mom was going to give birth to me. She about killed him. They’re funny though. Other than that, a couple of his favorites were “On the Rag Again(sung to On the Road Again” and “Barnacle Bill the Sailor”.
My dad is a GREAT singer! He writes his own music and sings the songs for us. When I was little, we used to sing “Puff the Magic Dragon” together. That and “Moonshadow” by Cat Stevens.
The worms go in and the worms go out
the ones that go in, are long and thin,
the ones that come out, are fat and stout
your brains come tumbling down your spout
PapaRiddles has his own language of songs that I have been able, through diligent observation over the years, to decypher. However, as PapaRiddles short term memory failed him years ago, he no longer remember any words to any of the songs. So he hums them. It goes something like this.
When he’s nervous:
la la laaa
la la laaa
la la laaaaaaaaa
That’s amore! (emphasis on the last laaaaaaa)
When he’s annoyed and wants to say something, but knows that anything he’ll say will just make the situation worse:
ZIP-ity doo dah!
ZIP-ity DAY.
la la laaa
la la laaa la la laaaa.
Other than that, he’s a Dylan fan, and has no sense of pitch. So anything he sings ends up sounding like Dylan. This is always a bit hit at the Christmas Eve church service, when my sister and I have an ongoing battle attempting to make the other laugh first, thereby illciting the dreaded hiss from MamaRiddles. (hey, you have your Christmas traditions, we have ours.) anyhoo, Silent Night by way of Bob Dylan, by way of my dad, is always a hit.
Siiiiiiiiilent Niiiiight!
HOOOOOOOOly Niiiiight!
That one’s more of an audio joke, though.
My father and uncle were in a Doo-wop group. They used to sing silly songs in 4 part harmony and make it sound so beautiful. One I remember:
Hurry up (Sha-boom, sha-boom)
with the toilet paper (Sha-boom, sha-boom)
'Cause I’m constipated (Sha-boom, sha-boom)
I gotta take a shhh. . .
Don’t tell nobodyyyyyyyyy
My dad had “I knew a girl from Kansas City / She had freckles on her do-wah-diddy.” Now I’m the dad, so when my daughter starts singing the Thong Song I pull out my comb and some paper for the International Submarine String band’s arrangement of “The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze.” Another guaranteed room-clearer comes from the old Captain Kangaroo show:
“I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch
an onion patch,
an onion patch.
I’m a lonely little petunia in an onion patch,
and all I do is cry all day.”
But for truly grisly occasions, I’ll sing the HAL version of “A Bicycle Built for Two.” How Iwish that my local radio would carry the Anoying Music Show out of Chicago.
Oh - tatertot: try this version:
“Sharks eat eals
and whales eat eals
and little sharks eat oysters.
A squid’ll eat oysters too,
wouldn’t you-oo?”
pepperlandgirl - since your relatives seemed to favor parodies of patriotic songs, I’m guessing that the “duck’s brother” song was this parody of “Stars and Stripes Forever” (which has quite a few alternate versions):
*Be kind to your web-footed friends,
For a duck may be somebody’s brother.
Be kind to the denizens of the swamp,
Where the weather is cold and damp.
Be kind to your web-footed friends,
'Cause they quack and they fly and they swim.
And if you are kind to them,
Then they may be incredibly kind to you.*
My own father usually starts off with a normal rendition of a song, and then gradually alters the words to be more and more silly. One of his favorites to play with is “The Lonely Goatherd” from The Sound of Music, probably because it allows him to yodel.
We drove across the country several times, and I don’t think a day in the car ever passed without “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad” and “She’ll Be Coming 'Round the Mountain” each being sung at least once.
