Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs

Subject: Pogo's Songs
From: GUEST,Tom Brady
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 09:35 AM

The late, great Walt Kelly wrote a number of song parodies for his comic strip "Pogo". I'm looking for the lyrics to "Good King Sauerkraut"; a parody of the Christmas carol"Good King Wenceslaus". I've found a number of his other songs, like "Deck the Hall With Boston Charlie", but can't find this one.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Charley Noble
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 10:10 AM

You mean the king who "looked out on his feet uneven"?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: GUEST,PaulM
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 10:16 AM

There only appear to be a few lines. See this thread from rec.music.folk

Paul

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: MMario
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 10:25 AM

I found this:

Good King Sauerkraut Looked Out
on His Feets Uneven
While His Nose Jus' run About,
A-Sniffin' and A-Sneezin'

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 02:38 PM

That's not "Deck the Hall with Boston Charlie"; it's "Deck us all with Boston Charlie". Don't mess with the classics, please.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 02:54 PM

Norah's Freezing on the trolley...
Jerry

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: musicmick
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 08:37 PM

In fact, the song continues, "As the snoo lay 'round about/ All kerchoo achievin'" When Albert is asked, "What's snoo?" he replies, "Not much. What's snoo with you?" I owned every Pogo book and I read the column every day. Walt Kelly was to cartoon humor what Bela Fleck is to 5 string banjo. I miss them all, Howland P. Owl, Miss Mamzelle Hepzibah, Churchy La Femme and those three brothers, Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred. Mike Miller

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 08:52 PM

we have had a number of posts about our dear, lamented possum and his buddies...and I have scanned and posted a couple of classic pages (like the one where they get to crying over 'Barbry Allan')..Walt KNEW that stuff!....

and yes, that's all there was to the Good King Sauerkraut bit..one verse and a little routine

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 08:55 PM

Ah, yes! And don't forget Bun' rabbit celebrating every holiday... I especially remember St. Swithin's day.. looked it up, and there is a religious Holiday for St. Swithin. Don't tell our flaming Guest. He'll ask if he is supposed to care. Of course, you are, Stoopid. And what about the Blue Muslins? Don't get me started..
Jerry

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Midchuck
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 09:12 PM

Do you remember the line "GOOD, THOUGH!"...about 20 years before Utah made it famous?

Peter.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: musicmick
Date: 02 Feb 02 - 10:21 PM

I thought that Kelly's best folksong allusion was in the episodes featuring Pogo, Owl and Churchy as three traveling musicians. Albert was pretending to be a donkey named Maxwelton. He wanted to join the band as a singer because, as he explained, " Maxwelton's brays are bonny! " It was the funniest line I've ever read in a newspaper strip.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: KAS
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 02:29 AM

He really did know this stuff. Except for a few skinnily repackaged early strip collections, Kelly's books are pretty much all out of print (why?! rowrbazzle!), but if you're lucky enough to find any of them used, there are lots of hidden gems -- references to all kinds of songs, snatches sung by characters, and pages devoted to original Carrollian verse.

Kelly collected a bunch (set to music by Norman Monath) in a hardback book called Songs of the Pogo (Simon & Schuster, 1956). It does not include Good King Sauerkraut, but it ends with the first verse of Boston Charlie. The arrangements are simple, for piano and voice. Folk songs and traditional singing get much play in the introductions, and there's plenty of lore attached to each. From the jacket copy:

"This book contains words and music of 30 songs, suitable for as many occasions -- birthdays, clandestine trysts, medical checkups, elevator rides, evenings at the public library, police raids, music-to-pay-last-year's bills by.... It is the intent of this book to make people leave the TV sets of bars and grills to gather, singing once again, about the old family upright, and then soberly to return to the bars and grills and think things over."

There was a record album made of Songs of the Pogo as well, but it's even harder to find than the book. Anyone?

I'm not sure if this is still available, but in 1992, Kelly's widow Selby Daley Kelly published Pogo Files for Pogophiles: A Retrospective on 50 years of Walt Kelly's Classic Comic Strip (Spring Hollow Books, Richfield, MN, ISBN 0-945185-03-0). It includes a chapter called The Swampy Bard: Songs and Poetry, a brief section on the Christmas carol parodies, including a historical overview of Deck Us All With Boston Charlie with several verses, and Kelly's original carol Bright Christmas Land. I think if there were any more of Good King Sauerkraut, we'd see it here, but yeah, it does seem to exist only for the joke. In one strip, Churchy LaFemme (on his way to carol rehearsal) starts to sing it, but doesn't make it past the first line before he's asked to try that other one:

Under Thursday of Crispness,
MacTruloff sanity
Three wench friends
Tudors above
An' the parson up a psaltree.


Ken

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Naemanson
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 11:28 AM

I have a copy of the POGO album. It includes some great stuff but it's been a while since I dug it out.

Remember Churchy and his "Friday The Thirteenth comes on a Wednesday this month!" I still do that every time I turn the calendar page.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 01:30 PM

And "When you starve with a Tiger, the Tiger starves last."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: RangerSteve
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 05:39 PM

Fearless Fred, the footpad dread, set fire to his mammies bed.

Was there more to this poem?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Charley Noble
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 05:50 PM

I also have vague memories of what happened to Ol' Free Speech, that surly hound created by Mr. Kelly that kept all them varmints at bay by barking all night. Seems like his owners got tired of losing shut-eye, did Ol'Free Speech in, and then were surprised to find themselves overrun and et by varmints. A lesson for today?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Mark Clark
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 06:38 PM

And the “original” source for Deck Us All turned out to be “Bark Us All Bow Wows of Folly.”

      - Mark

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: toadfrog
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 07:47 PM

DECK US ALL (with Boston Charlie) is on the DT, HERE. I have seen a lot of King Sauerkrauts on forum, but can't find them just now. They may become accessible when they next update forum.

More Walt Kelly snatches appear HERE, and HERE

Mr. Friedman is in error about how Walt would have wrotten Home on the Range. He did write:

Oh! give me a home,
Twixt Buffalo and Rome
Where the beer and the canteloupe lay . . .

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 07:48 PM

"Fearless Fred, the footpad dread, set fire to his mammies bed. " was there more?

not exactly...there was a routine where it was part of a set of things Albert was practicing...for example,

"Oh, Mamie minded Mama till one day in Singapore,
A sailor man from Turkistan came knockin' at the door"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: dick greenhaus
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 10:37 PM

"My banjo and me is completely unstrung
The rungs on the ladder rung three...
Do nor wrangle the wrongs of Rangoon, dear
Cause the Gangrene has set out to sea...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 03 Feb 02 - 11:16 PM

well, I am glad to see you made it home safely, Dick..*grin*

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: musicmick
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 12:28 AM

I remember that there was a second version of Deck Us All With Boston Charlie. The dog, whose name was (excuse my spelling) Beauregard Bottomly, started one with, " Bark us all bow wows of folly " Maybe, one of you can dig up the rest of that classic.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Haruo
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 01:46 AM

A second version, or a second verse? There definitely were multiple verses. At least three were in a church Christmas carol booklet I put out maybe 10 years ago. I'll see if I can dig it out, if you mean verses, not "versions".

Liland

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: lamarca
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 10:55 AM

Don't know if this will work as a link, but here are the results of a search for used copies of "Songs of the Pogo" on www.bookfinder.com (I already have a copy...). If the link doesn't work, just enter Songs Pogo in the search engine!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 11:56 AM

If I remember correctly, that was Beauregard Bugleboy. And leave us not disremember Grundoon, the li'l groun'chunk chile wot clamped his li'l teeth on someone's (usually Albert Alligator or Churchy la Femme's) finger and dangling there for about two weeks' worth of strips (I never seed a groun'chunk in a diaper afore or since).

Pogo for President!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 01:07 PM

"Bark Us All" was sort of 'referred to' a couple times, and sung partially once; never, I believe, as completely as "Deck Us All"...I will see if I can find in my 8-10 Pogo books the lines.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: musicmick
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 04:06 PM

Yes, Don Firth, his name was Bugleboy. I disremembered. I, also, kind of liked those villains, Deacon Mushrat, Wiley Cat and Sarcophegus Macabre. Was Wiley patterned after Br'er Bear in Disney's SONG OF THE SOUTH? Who remembers the rest of the song that included the line. "My Anna played piano on a hunk of two by four"?

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: DougR
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 06:28 PM

"Nora's freezin' in the trolly, walla walla wash and kalamazoo"

I loved that comic strip. Bloom County too. Now they are both gone, gone, gone.

DougR

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 06:32 PM

"My Anna played piano on a hunk of two by four"

ór

"My Anna played piano with a length of two by four"

was, I am 'almost' sure, simply one of the lead lines to

"A sailor man from Turkistan came knockin' at the door"....Walt seldom had Churchy or Howland or Pogo or Albert DO a complete song..(remember, most of these were in 3 panel daily strips).....and "Anna played pianna" was tossed in at a different time than "Mamie minded Mama"...maybe a year or two apart. ("Deck Us All" was done in various degrees of completeness on various occasions.)

Part of the point of what Walt did was; that people mess up, forget, change, invent and mis-hear stuff...the characters were forever amusing us by being us....

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: catspaw49
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 06:42 PM

The three versions of "Deck the Halls as listed by one Pogo nut:

The most famous version:
Deck us all with Boston Charlie, Walla Walla, Wash, and Kalamazoo!
Nora's freezin' on the trolley, Swaller dollar cauliflower Alleygaroo!

Don't we know archaic barrel, Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou.
Trolley Molly don't love Harold, Boola Boola Pensacoola Hullabaloo!

Then there is Beauregard's version:
Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Polly wolly cracker n too-da-loo!
Donkey Bonny brays a carol, Antelope cantaloup, "lope with you!

Hunky Dory's pop is lolly gaggin' on the wagon, Willy, folly go through!
Chollie's collie barks at Barrow, Harum scarum five alarum bung-a-loo!

We also have this third version:
Duck us all in bowls of barley, Ninky dinky dink an' polly voo!
Chilly Filly's name is Chollie, Chollie Filly's jolly chilly view halloo!

Bark us all bow-wows of folly, Double-bubble, toyland trouble!
Woof, Woof, Woof!
Tizzy seas on melon collie! Dibble-dabble, scribble-scrabble!
Goof, Goof, Goof!

Spaw

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: RangerSteve
Date: 04 Feb 02 - 08:07 PM

I just remembered Churcy singing a lullaby: Twiggle twiggle lily starch, howie rumble woddy arch. Up above a high Ohio, like a dime on a piano.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Haruo
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 01:07 AM

I think the three listed by Catspaw49 were the ones that appeared in Fremont Baptist's Serenity Service Xmas Song Supplement or whatever it was called. They all look like I've sung 'em a million times in church.

Liland

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: musicmick
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 02:53 AM

Has there ever been a comic strip, or any other publication, that so artfully combined the literate, the classicly allusive, the gentility and the downright hilarity of Pogo? Walt Kelly wrote that he never considered himself a satirist. He felt that the limitations imposed by the vastness of his readership, forbade such subtlty. He compared himself, unfavorably, to Jonathan Swift. Well, I've read Gulliver's Travels and, maybe it's just me, but I didn't think the Liliputians were as funny and clever as those three bats, Bewitched, Bothered and Bemildred, upon being told that something (I disremember what) was, both, typical and new, said, individually and in sequence, "Typical?", "New?", "And Tyler, too?"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 10:40 AM

If I'm remembering the right character, Wiley Cat was a caricature of Joe McCarthy, of evil memory.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: SharonA
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 11:02 AM

Most of Kelly's satire and plays-on-words went over my head as a kid looking at the comic strip, but I never failed to read it just because of the wonderful artwork. I vaguely remember the bats and the groundchuck, but of course I remember Pogo, Albert and my favorite, Churchy.

Like Naemenson, I still check the calendar to see which day of the week Friday the Thirteenth falls on each month! I do have a clear memory of those strips wherein all the animals hid in their homes and refused to come out when Friday the Thirteenth fell on a Friday.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Naemanson
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 12:27 PM

Bazfaz on them as made POGo go away.

Rowrbazzle!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 12:58 PM

Right, Wiley Cat was modeled after Sen. Joe McCarthy, believe it or not! Kelly did get his licks in from time to time.

The Providence, Rhode Island newspaper that carried Pogo Possum recognized the squinty eyes, the five o'clock shadow, and ominous pronouncements and refused to run the strip whenever Wiley Cat appeared. Kelly responded by firing a little in-joke in their direction. A chicken (who's name I can't recall) appeared. Wiley Cat sez, "She's a Red! Worse, she's a Rhode Island Red! She mustn't see me here!!" For the next couple of weeks he was very much present in the strip, but he wore a bag over his head! The paper still wouldn't publish it.

I Go Pogo!!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 01:34 PM

Click here and scroll down.

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: SharonA
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 02:25 PM

Don Firth: That site ("Cover to Cover") is lots of fun (not to mention its link to the "I Go Pogo" site). Thanks!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Troll
Date: 05 Feb 02 - 11:41 PM

The chicken was probably Sis Boombah, a female PE teacher.

troll

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Don Firth
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 11:46 AM

Aha! I vaguely recall that she wore gym shoes!

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: catspaw49
Date: 06 Feb 02 - 12:52 PM

Anyone recall the name of the Mao character? He was a short, fat, oriental looking guy who rode a giant dinosaur......He appeared with the Lone (Loan) Arranger, a centaur with LBJ's head and a big Stetson.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 09 Feb 02 - 10:07 AM

These are, strictly speaking, not songs but poems, from "Pogo's Sunday Punch," by Walt Kelly, 1957.

The first poem appears after the table of contents, but before the first Pogo story, suggesting it is meant as a dedication. It is accompanied only by 2 small drawings of puppies.

TO THE EVERYDAY CHILD

Tell me, friend, so
Meek, so mild,
Who is not
A Monday child?

Tell me, tell me
Who is not
Who is not
A Tuesday tot?

Whisper, whisper
Just for fun,
Who is not
The Wednesday one?

Tell me, tell me,
All forlorn,
Who was not
On Thursday born?

Tell me only,
If you wish,
Who is not
A Friday fish?

You can ponder,
And you may,
Who is not
Of Saturday?

Sing me, pray thee,
Sweet and wild,
Who is not
A Sunday child?

The following poems appear, not as part of any story, but in two separate sections called "Stuff and Nonsense" and "More Stuff and Nonsense." They are all accompanied by drawings, but I have not described the drawings except in one instance where I think they help clarify the meaning of the poem. I have chosen only a few of the more memorable, or coincidentally relevant, poems.

MOON OVER MAMIE

O, Mamie minded Momma
'Til one day in Singapore
A Sailorman from Turkestan
Came knocking at the Door.

The way he knocked
On knob and lock
It shook her to the core.
She eyed the clock
Twixt tick and tock
And sighed a snappy snore.

"Raise Raise the Raisin!
No Rising Ruse will reign
With bitter pitter patter
Upon My windowpane!

"Oh, please no longer potter
Upon my poppa's pane."
Mamie mocked the Merchantman
Who knocked with might and main.

SONG OF THE MOON

Now that the star
Has replaced the horse,
You must hitch your wagon
To something, of course.

Choose something controlled.
No thing that'll bite,
Something nice in a regular
Pink satellite.

A platform for space
A firm form for face
In the Mondalite,
Tuesdalite, Wednesdalite chase.

At a Thursdalite,
Fridalite, Satellite pace.
(The blue laws prevent
any Sundalite race.)

[The drawings accompanying the above poem show (1) Churchy on roller skates, wearing a Russian-style fur hat and coat, being pulled by a bear; and (2) Churchy, in the same hat and coat, standing in a floating teacup, looking outward and downward at stars, while the bear floats on a tether.]

THE PRINCE OF POMPADOODLE

The Prince of Pompadoodle
Lived behind a castle wall,
Behind a moat, behind a guard
Of twenty soldiers tall.

The Prince of Pompadoodle
Was the safest man alive.
Each day he wrote how long he'd lived
And multiplied by five.

The Prince of Pompadoodle
Would survive, he did decide,
Five times as long as he had been
Alive before he died.

The Prince of Pompadoodle
Called in the castle sage
For his advice in this pursuit
Of long and fulsome age.

The Prince of Pompadoodle
Heard in horror from this friend
That somewhere in the palace
Was a cur who'd seek his end!

The Prince of Pompadoodle
Scarce could credit a belief
His years might soon be sneaked away
By some ungrateful thief.

The Prince of Pompadoodle
Sent his every friend away
And sat alone, safe, locked alive,
To count another day.

The Prince of Pompadoodle
May hoard each empty hour,
But none can know; no word comes from
The silent stony tower.

TO PRINCESS MARGARET ROSE

The last photograph and a half of you,
Over four million miles of sea,
Broke a heart already unsteady
Over six million miles of sea.

We've suffered,
We've suffered much with you,
Over nine million miles of sea (more or less)
None the less we are ready
Over ten million miles of sea.

With the old and the new
And the borrowed and blue
Over twelve million miles of sea,
We'd give up the throne
(Had we one of our own)
And invite the family to tea.

But what would we do with the children?
And what would we do with the sea?
We'd really no notion
There was so much Ocean.
Love and kisses, the Mrs. and me.

THE OLYMPICS

We salute you, oh, games of the ages
But the game of an age turning gray
Was when I carried the torch on Veronica's porch
In the city of Athens, Ga.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 09 Feb 02 - 02:22 PM

In about 1962, we had a party, attended my some members of the English Dept, at my college. One of the 'events' was a poetry explication contest, in which everyone was given a copy of the following and asked to write an explication/analysis of it in 15 min or less: I wish I had saved the efforts!

"Evening is dawn;
And night unknown
But here in the morn
The mists are grown;
And only the loon
Will laugh alone;
And only the the lone
Are lorn."

Title: One Small Score for Two Brown Eyes
(Quick, my love, fetch the torch, There is no longer dark.)

Porkypine, 1955

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: musicmick
Date: 09 Feb 02 - 10:26 PM

I am, strangely, warmed by knowing that so many of my fellows remember and revere the gentle genius of Walt Kelly. I have never read another author (with the possible exception of Mark Twain) who, so skillfully, blended philosophy, political satire and word play. He must have been the premier humorist of the 20th century. At the start of each book, Kelly wrote a forward that was, both, funny and inciteful.I never tire of quoting the closing words of one of those forwards, "We have met the enemy and they are us."

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Whippoorwill
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 01:13 AM

Well, I've seen it in print and I still don't believe it. I remember the last line of "Boston Charlie" as:

"Boola, boola, Saskatoola, Mullagaroo."

I thought Pensacoola was a Florida soft drink.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: GUEST,Fred
Date: 10 Feb 02 - 02:22 AM

And as folk singers, who can forget



Ma Booney Lice Soda Devotion?, as sung by Churchy, proving to Albert that "us armadillos sing."



"Ma bonny lice soda devotion!

Ma booney life saver D.C.!

McBoniface rover commotion

Oh, brickbat Mahoney Toomey!"



And also, who can forget the Jack Acid Society Black Book? But the pig looking like Kruschev and the dog looking like Castro were in Instant Pogo, with the Deacon and Mole being the Jack Acid Society and with Wiley Cat hunting the pig. Wiley and the Deacon show up as Klanners (oops! I mean as the Kluck Klams) in The Pogo Poop Book. It also includes a series called Late Early Poop on the Jack Acid Society.



What a mind the man had!

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: musicmick
Date: 11 Feb 02 - 01:53 AM

You guys have shook my neuritis and nostalgia to the very core. I am avid to relive my stirring days of yesteryear. Who, among you, knows where I can replenish my long lost cache of Pogography? Are those great books still in print? If not, can somebody print 'em? Expiring minds want to know.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Feb 02 - 01:38 PM

Pogo books are like old baseball cards or rare songbooks....people seldom part with them except by death or big $$$$...they were reprinted, but not recently, as the potential market (i.e., expiring minds) is decreasing. You see them on Ebay, at a few old bookstores..etc....I have about 8 'originals'...including one duplicate which I 'might' be persuaded to part with...

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Pogo's Songs
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 14 Feb 02 - 10:29 AM

I've read this thread in bits and pieces, so I'm not real sure, but I don't think anyone has mentioned this one:

Row, row, Rover both,
Gently Don Extreme
Marilyn, Marilyn, Marilyn, Marilyn
Lie fudge Esther theme!

Dave Oesterreich