Continuing with the obscure music theme of late, I present six of the best forgotten novelty records. I mean no disrespect to Weird Al or Ray Stevens, but you won’t find their wacky comedic songs on this list. These strange tunes are by acts that few people will know. Let’s dig them out of oblivion for a moment and enjoy them as we should.
“Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Backseat” by Paul Evans & The Curls (1959)
Paul Evans sings about his friend, Fred, who is riding in the back seat of Paul’s car with seven little girls. (To avoid any unsavory implications, we will assume that “little girl” is '50s slang for “consenting female who has attained a minimum age of 35 years.”) Paul mentions that the girls might be more comfortable if one or two of them would move to the front seat with him. In unison, they tell him to shut up and watch his driving and not pay any attention to what they and Fred are doing.
I’d like to know more about these characters and the whole situation inside of that automobile. Perhaps Fred is a stud of mythic proportions, like Genghis Khan or Brigham Young. If so, he likely has hundreds of descendants today. The other possibility is that Paul’s deodorant wasn’t working very well, so no one wanted to ride up front.
Regardless, it’s a cute little song that begs for a sequel. Maybe we can hear about Paul spending the next day in his back seat with some cloth rags and a can of Woolite.
“I’m a Nut” by Leroy Pullins (1966)
The history of novelty music includes many songs that would be controversial, and probably cancelled completely, if they came out today. For example, it used to be entirely OK to ridicule the customs of native peoples. In 1960, two songs containing faux Indian war chants – Johnny Preston’s “Running Bear” and Larry Verne’s “Mr. Custer” – actually went to #1 on the U.S. charts. The following year, comedian Charlie Drake scored an international hit about a misfit aboriginal Australian, “My Boomerang Won’t Come Back.” And in 1982, Frank Zappa and his daughter Moon parodied the primitive teen tribes of the California suburbs with “Valley Girl.”
It was also once acceptable to make fun of anyone whose sexuality differs from the median. One doubly offensive 1993 song, “Eskimo” by Corky & The Juice Pigs, perpetuated dubious stereotypes by depicting a gay Eskimo who longs for “a decent pair of whale skin tights.” I don’t personally know any gay Eskimos, but I bet they wear blue jeans like everyone else.
Our society has since learned to be more sensitive. We now know that it’s a cruel act of cultural appropriation to make tomahawk motions at a sporting event, stay at a wigwam-shaped motel, or use smoke signals to place a DoorDash order. We understand that a burly lumberjack who wears women’s clothes should be praised for his individuality, not mocked with a Monty Python song. And we have discovered that mental illness is not the fertile source of comedic material that it once was. If you are one of the three people who still thinks that (the recently deceased) Napoleon XIV’s “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” was funny, you need to knock it off right now.
But let’s not toss “I’m a Nut” onto the burn pile with all of the other politically incorrect novelty records. Leroy Pullins’ “nut” character isn’t the kind of person who needs therapy or medication to get through the week without an emotional breakdown, like 90% of the population. He also isn’t a deranged, violent lunatic like the other 10%. His psychological disturbance merely causes him to ponder dumb questions, like whether an underwater scuba diver gets even wetter than usual when it’s raining at the surface. And he periodically erupts into a stream of nonsense syllables: “Dee ba de bi biddly bomp boodle bah da bum ba da dump.” He may be a psycho, but he’s the kind of inoffensive psycho who you’d like to have a beer with. We don’t want GlaxoSmithKline giving him a pill that will change his personality just to make him a more productive worker.
“My Brother Threw Up on My Stuffed Toy Bunny” by Barry Louis Polisar (1977)
As one of those punchable '80s/'90s boy bands would say, this one’s for the children. The children of the world. Specifically, this song is the perfect lament for any child with a younger sibling who constantly ruins valuable possessions. I was once that child, so I can relate to it. So can my friend whose sister sat on her newly purchased 45 RPM record of Paul Anka’s “(You’re) Having My Baby.”
But please be selective when you play Polisar’s tunes for your children, because not all of his songs are innocent tales of rabbits being vomited upon. “The Apple of My Eye” is the horrific story of a man being chased by a gruesome female cyclops with a green head and warts on her nose. She winds up mating with him and having six half-cyclopean kids. This is the stuff of nightmares! Not even Paul Anka would celebrate the gestation of a cyclops fetus.
“Bedrock Rap / Meet the Flintstones” by Bruce Springstone (1982)
The theme from The Flintstones is one of those pop standards that every respectable musician should attempt at some point in their career. For example, the B-52’s recorded a version of it for the Flintstones movie. Weird Al made up new Flintstones lyrics and set them to the tune of a Red Hot Chili Peppers song. However, one major rock star has stubbornly refused to regale us with any Bedrock-themed music, despite having millions of fans who would buy it in an instant. I am, of course, talking about Bruce Springsteen. For whatever selfish reasons, The Boss has never had any interest in singing about the prehistoric lifestyle of Fred, Wilma, Barney, and Bamm-Bamm.
Thank God we have Bruce Springstone. His live-ish version of “Meet the Flintstones,” complete with a long spoken intro to build up the suspense, rivals anything that we’ve heard from The E Street Band. And the flip side of his record is excellent, too. Springstone belts out “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” including the verses that are always omitted whenever the classic tune is sung during the seventh-inning stretch. These long-lost lyrics tell the tale of baseball fan Nelly Kelly, who sounds like she could be one of the mysterious characters in Springsteen’s “Blinded by the Light.” She would make more sense than Little Early Pearly in her curly-whirly.
“Carol Brown (Choir of Ex Girlfriends)” by Flight of the Conchords (2009)
A Flight of the Conchords song would never appear on a list of obscure novelties in New Zealand. The comedic duo is a household name in that country, even better known than the mayor of Wellington or that dude who was in the band Crowded House back in 1987. But I am confident that no one from New Zealand will ever read this blog, so I can justifiably call one of their most famous songs “obscure.”
“Carol Brown” is, in a way, the reverse of Paul Simon’s “50 Ways to Leave Your Lover.” The singer tells us all of the ways that women have left him. For example, Mona told him she was in a coma. Felicity said there was no electricity. As he somberly recounts these break-ups, all of his exes form a choir to memorialize his many inadequacies as a boyfriend.
The lyrics are clever, but they beg the question: How did this nerdy loser get so much action in the first place? Was he the one riding in the back of Paul Evans’ car? He once even had a girlfriend named Persephone! That’s pretty cool, even if she dumped him after a week.
“I Just Pretend to Wash My Hands” by the Toilet Bowl Cleaners (2016)
The Toilet Bowl Cleaners have dozens and dozens of creative tunes on YouTube, with titles like “The Dog Has Diarrhea,” “Ear Wax Smells Good,” and (one of my all-time favorite titles) “Jason Derulo Probably Announces His Name Before Pooping in a Public Bathroom.” While most of these are worth a listen, “I Just Pretend to Wash My Hands” stands above the rest because it is not just a novelty track. It is also a protest song, targeting those busybodies who militantly demand that we scrub at the sink for thirty seconds after using the toilet. Consider these great lyrics:
There’s way too much germ phobia
Especially for germs that come out of ya
They didn’t hurt me while they were inside
If they end up on my hand I’m gonna wear 'em with pride
That’s the spirit! Just don’t get this guy started on masks and vaccines.