Songs your parents didn't allow

Subject: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Azizi
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 04:27 PM

Do you remember any songs that your parents didn't allow you to sing?

The Ching Chong Chinaman thread reminded me of "The Little Bald headed Chinese" song. When I was little I thought my mother didn't want my sisters and me to sing that song because it made fun of some one's race, and it was "nasty". By "nasty" I meant the "peed in the sink" line {see words that follow}. It wasn't until I got older that I realized that my mother also didn't like the sexual overtones of the song. But as a young child, the sexual implications of the line about the Chinese man "pulling down his pants" went right over my head. I thought that the man was doing wrong because you weren't suppose to go to the bathroom or get ready to go to the bathroom in public...

Here's the words to that song as I remember them:

My mother she told me to open the door.
The little bald headed Chinese nese nese.
I opened the door.
He fell on the floor.
The little bald-headed Chinese nese nese.

My mother she told me to get him a drink.
The little bald headed Chinese nese nese.
I gave him a drink.
He peed in the sink.
The little bald headed Chinese nese nese.

My mother she told me to give him a dance.
The little bald headed Chinese nese nese.
I gave him a dance.
He pulled down his pants.
The little bald headed Chinese nese nese.

My apologies to Chinese;I mean no disrespect. Also, I think that sometimes adults "get" the full intent of some songs much more than children, and sometimes they don't explain to children the real reasons why a song is a "no no".

Another song that I remember my mother not wanting my sisters and me to sing was "Mama Look A Boo Boo". She didn't like that song for pretty obvious reasons. But we liked the song because of the
"Boo Boo" phrase and because we did realize it was kinda naughty. I think this is a song recorded by Harry Belafonte, or at least it's a calypso song.

Here's the words as I remember them:

I wonder why nobody don't like me.
Or is it the fact that I'm ugly?
My children they don't like me no more.
A hey they say it at the door.

Mama look a boo boo.
She shouts,
"Daddy's your daddy.
Shut up your mouth!"
Oh no! My daddy can't be ugly so.

Shut your mouth.
Go away.
Mama look ah boo boo day.
Shut your mouth
Go away
Mama look ah boo boo day.
--

Does anyone have any memories like this that they want to share?

Thanks.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: MMario
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 04:30 PM

the only ones I can think of that were "banned" in our house were "Duke of Earl" and "splish splash I was taking a bath" - both becuase we would sing them for hours on end if we got started.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: The Borchester Echo
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 06:04 PM

I really loved Duke of Earl by Gene Chandler when I was a child but I had no idea what is was about.

In another forum. someone posted the words of a twee Scottish song Kelvingrove with a reference to the much more down-to-earth text of The Shearing's Nae For You from which the tune was nicked. It reminded me of a long-forgotten incident of being thrown out of school choir practice for singing The Shearing lyrics when we should have been doing Kelvingrove.

I imagine the parents would have banned most of the ballads we were getting into had they realised what their subject matter actually was.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Janie
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 06:34 PM

I don't recall any songs that were banned. However, we were prohibited from buying or playing any Joan Baez or Bob Dylan because of their anti-Vietnam war stances. I didn't begin to be able to listen to them until I started college in 1969.

Janie

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Lighter
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 06:42 PM

Didn't affect me especially, but about 1959 the song "Mack the Knife" was banned from US TV because of its presumed mystical power to quickly turn kids into murderous delinquents.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: JenEllen
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 06:55 PM

Not exactly banned, but I had hippie parents with consciences who played Jim Croce. We were allowed to sing along, except for the "Baddest man in the whole d@mn town"-line in Leroy Brown. To this day I still sing along and leave a gap where the swear would be, just 'cause my mamma said to.
~JE

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Sorcha
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 07:55 PM

Don't recall anything being banned....my dad sang Mamma Look a Boo Boo to me....and we all sang Bad Leroy. They probably would have banned anything with the F word, though.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Amos
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 08:10 PM

My folks encouraged anything short of "Keep on Trucking Mama" and "The Balls of Kerremuir" or however you spell it.

A

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: GUEST,milk monitor
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 08:13 PM

Judge Dread's Big Six....I learnt all the words at age 5/6, thanks to a neighbour's older brother playing it incessantly.
I thought it was a nursery rhyme because it mentioned Little Bo Peep and Little Boy Blue. I can still see the parents jaws hitting the floor. My first and last rendition.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Joe Offer
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 08:20 PM

We were absolutely forbidden to sing "99 Bottles of Beer" in the car. I acknowledge that I am the singer who inspired my parents to issue that edict.
They did think it was kind of cute when I'd lead my brothers and sisters in beer commercial jingles.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 08:34 PM

My Dad disliked Elvis and would turn off the radio. Mom used to tell a story about when I was a tiny tyke that if the radio came on with Elvis that I announced "noise!" and idignantly turned it off. [BG!] I got over it, but I don't think Dad ever did!

I have a copy of a tape recorded off of KRAB-FM in Seattle with my dad and Don Firth and Bob Nelson (Deckman) on which I remember Bob singing a Bob Dylan song "just to rattle John's cage." I thought that was pretty funny. Dad's forehead probably turned kind of red. :)

SRS

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Joybell
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 08:38 PM

Azizi, that's a great version of "Old Shoes and Leggings". We've never seen it before. Thank you. My American husband learned the more usual version in the 60s from a record by a Maine lumberjack. Interestingly my True-love substitutes your "peed in the sink" line when he can. The way he learned it was "fell in the sink".

No songs were banned in our place except by me. I don't recall trying to sing anything offensive though. I was a little tyrant when I was little and I have always hated baby-talk songs - songs with choo-choos, baa-lambs, moo-cows and the like. I refused to have them around me. I've never liked "Froggy Went a'Courtin'" type songs either. Shape-changers OK though. Very OK!

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Susan A-R
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 09:01 PM

Hey, my Mom taught me

We may be brown skinned babies, but what do we care
We've got them well built chassis and a do or die air
We've got the hips that sank the ships of England, France and Peru
And If you're Like Napoleon it's your Waterloo

Let's take a fifteen minute intermission in your V8
I'd like to make it later but I've got a late date
And since my motto's always been gone with the wind, let's breeze it tonight
I've just called up to tell you that I'm ragged but right


and

You wore a tulip, a big yellow tulip
And I wore a big red rose
The green house was burning and my house was burning
And there was no time for clothes
Next day the Jury condemned us with fury
For being so exposed
I said Judge "quit your stalling The petals are falling
from his Tulip and my red rose

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Cluin
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 09:28 PM

McLean & McLean's "Fuck Ya" and their version of "The Fox".

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Cluin
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 09:34 PM

Oh yeah, and their "Dolly Parton's Tits".

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: sharyn
Date: 30 Sep 04 - 10:28 PM

We were not allowed to play the recording "Christmas with the Happy Crickets" except for the twelve days of Christmas. This rule went into effect because all three of us LOVED the album as soon as we got it, played it incessantly and went around holding our noses and singing selections from it. They sounded sort of like Alvin and the Chipmunks, only more obnoxious. The worst song (our favorite) started:

Christmas, Christmastime is here,
Time for toys and time for cheer.
We've been good the whole year past --
Hurry, Christmas, hurry fast.
{I) Want a train that loves the loop
_______ wants a hula hoop.
I can hardly stand the wait.
Please, Christmas, don't be late.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Azizi
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 12:23 AM

Hey all!

After watching the debate, I decided to check in and was delighted to see the posts.

Thanks for sharing your memories.

I have a question for Joybell: Is "Old Shoes and Leggings" the real name for "The Little Baldheaded Chinese" song? Also you wrote about a Maine lumberjack who recorded this song in the 1960s. Do you know the singer's name?

As the world turns, this subject is not important at all. But sometimes, trivia is better for the soul than being "heavy".

Keep'em coming!

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Bert
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 01:05 AM

We were never stopped from singing anything.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: iamjohnne
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 01:06 AM

As a child I don't remember any songs being banned. As a teenager, anything by the Fugs or Doug Clark and the Hotnuts was not allowed.

"oh nuts hot nuts
You get 'em from the peanut man
Nuts hot nuts you get 'em anyway you can"

See the man over by the wall
He ain't got no nuts at all
Nuts hot nuts you get 'em from peanut man
Nuts hot nuts, you get 'em anyway you can.


I guess you can get the picture. The words get more and more baudy as the song goes on.

Johnne

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: GUEST,zonahobo
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 03:03 AM

My High School Principal (Mr. Coffin -- name suited him) banned my rendition of Bob Dylan's "On the road again" for a talent show in 66. I think our little folk quartet did "Blowen in the Wind" instead and won the contest. That was pretty much the peak of my musical career. Downhull ever since .. still have fun with music though!

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Jeanie
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 03:16 AM

I was never banned from singing anything for content, but rather for *style* ! My various teddy bears etc. all had particular characters and voices and I used to act out shows with them. All fine, until I was given a fluffy toy pekinese dog when I was about six. I called him Chow and I had him speaking and singing with a magnificent Chinese accent. He went everywhere with me, tucked under my arm. One of my greatest delights at the time was to annoy my parents by announcing "Chow is now going to sing" - the more his voice got on their nerves, the longer he would sing - until banned. Great fun ! A few years later, Gene Pitney got into the charts, and I remember my dad saying "That's Chow singing." Certainly did sound like him. Cilla Black, on occasion, also showed signs of that special Chow quality, too.

- jeanie

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: MBSLynne
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 04:57 AM

Am I being naive? What's wrong with that Mama look a Boo Boo song?

My parents didn't ban songs, but Australia was very big on banning pop songs from air play. We all particularly liked "I can't control Myself" by the Troggs and "Bend it" by Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Titch because they were banned. Then, of course, there was "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane, though they completely missed "Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds"

Love Lynne

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: erinmaidin
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 06:35 AM

I can remember my father sailing two record albums (back in the days when they were big, black and round) out the front door altogether. One was Woodstock, which I could sort of understand because of the Fish cheer..etc....but Jesus Christ Superstar?!!!! We never have sorted that one out.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Mooh
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 07:27 AM

Not much was banned, and we sang all the time. Dad's high blood pressure made him a tad irritable so singing the same thing ad infinitum would earn at least a scowl or a good bellow if we pushed it too far. The old guy had a mind like a vault, and could recite irreverent lyrics to a zillion hymns, he being the eternal choirboy. Other songs he actually encouraged, from Great Green Gobs to Rudolph The Red-Nosed Cowboy, with his own disturbing bent. Pop music was never in the picture, secular music beyond 1960 being beyond the folks' interest.

Naughty words were discouraged, but it was because the folks always felt there was a better and more clever way of saying the same things.

Dad would have loved this discussion. God, I miss him!

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Mrrzy
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 10:55 AM

Mom, who listened basically only to opera, would claim headache and ask us to turn off "that boom boom music" whenever her daughters would play anything even remotely resembling rock and roll. She would occasionally allow Dad to play bluegrass, and we were allowed to listed to folk, especially if the singers had been blacklisted like the Weavers (pa was an unabashed socialist).
To go back a further generation...
Dad used to sing a silly song that went There's a german on the grass with a bullet up his ass, pull it out, pull it out, boy scout, because he was whopped by HIS mother for singing it as a child... and we also had some Russian Red Army band music that included the israeli national anthem (or, I guess, the song that became the israeli national anthem) and Dad would sing I had a little candy store to the tune to really upset her. And once I found something that parodied the French national anthem, La Marseillaise, which I thought she would find funny, and she again got really upset, you don't make fun of La Marseillaise in front of people who lived through WWII, I guess. (We all cry watching Casablanca when they sing La Marseillaise and drown out the Germans.)

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: GUEST,Augie
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 12:41 PM

Not much was banned in our house except maybe "Louie, Louie", but I do remember our grade school music teacher back in the early 1960's losing her job after teaching us Dylan songs in school.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: MMario
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 12:48 PM

Joe - you weren't allowed to sing '99 bottles'? *WE* used to sing "500 Bottles of Beer on the wall" (we would take turns singing verses)

Subject: Merlin the happy pig
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 12:57 PM

What're the lyrics?

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: PoppaGator
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 02:24 PM

sharyn --

Those "Happy Crickets" you were forbidden to listen to out-of-season didn't only *sound* like Alvin and the Chipmunks, they perfomed Alvin's first big hit word-for-word ("Christmas, Christmas time is here ..")

"Alvin" and his backup-singing rodent buddies were speeded-up multi-tracked vocals recorded by one David Seville, who made cameo appearances in his unadulterated voice as the Chipmunks' long-suffering pet owner.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: mg
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 02:51 PM

My father hated Scandinavian music and I just loved listening to the Scandinavian hour. He said, how can you stand it..it has one note and one beat and only a Norski could like it. I used to sneak down into the basement with the radio to listen to it on Sunday mornings. mg

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Rapparee
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 03:36 PM

We were forbidden nothing. If my mother found it obnoxious she'd just tell us to shut up. Usually this only occurred when she had been driving four screaming, fighting kids for an hour.

We sang things like "Red River Valley" and "Down in the Valley" and "Comin' round the mountain" and "Bastard King of England" and "Golden slippers" and "Darktown strutters' ball" in the car and at home. We had no idea (really!) what a "Darktown Strutter" was or even what "Darktown" was. We thought it was someplace far away, like near Moline or Chicago.

I have to admit, though, that we were pretty insular....


(I'm just kidding about the BK of E. I didn't learn that until I was, oh, 12 or 13.)

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: SINSULL
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 04:08 PM

My niece and nephew, well into their 40s, still laugh about continous playings and singalongs to Duke Of Earl and My Boomerang Won't Come Back.

Nothing was ever banned in my house that I can remember but in the third grade I was told by Sister Blister to "take the next train out of Baltimore" or fail my oral music exam. The Boston Burglar was banned. I still don't understand why.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Joybell
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 07:45 PM

Azizi, True-love (aka Hildebrand) says he's forgotton the name of the singer of "Old Shoes and Leggings" but he says it seemed to be a field recording. There are several references to "Old Shoes and Leggings" on the web but so far I can't find the lyrics.
I've wondered if it connects somehow with the English song about the Knight who visits three sisters, who let him in, give him a bed and then soft pillows. He and winds up asking one of them riddles, connecting it with the riddle songs. This one is called either "There were Three Sisters" or "Jennifer Gentle" It's here in the data base. I'm just wondering, though. Malcolm Douglas might be the one to ask about that.
Hmm! Just got to humming the tune to "Old Shoes and Leggings" and I can slip into "An Old Man Came a'courting Me..." Tangles! Tangles!!
As soon as H wakes up I'll have him post the lyrics. Regards, Joy

Subject: Lyr Add: OLD SHOES AND LEGGINGS
From: Joybell
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 08:04 PM

joy's partner here, with what i can remember of the song:

old ______?_______* came courting one day
all three girls wouldn't have him
came courting one day and we wished him away
with his old shoes on and his leggings

mother told me to give him a chair
all three etc
i gave him a chair and he jumped in the air
with his etc

mother told me to get him a drink
i got him a drink and he sat in the sink

show him the saw
danced rye straw

put him to bed
stood on his head

send him away
left us to stay


* i sing "old fiddle-faddle"

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Azizi
Date: 01 Oct 04 - 08:50 PM

Thanks Joybell and Hildebrand!

I guess I don't need to ask how old {Somebody So & So} became a racially stereotyped baldheaded man.

However, one of my points in my original post was children don't always get the racial {sexual etc.} overtones of these types of songs.

I'm glad that this thread includes memories of parents and teachers forbidding songs for other reasons.

Reading posts like these can help people realize that we actually do have alot in common.

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Bat Goddess
Date: 02 Oct 04 - 05:23 PM

I got yelled at a couple times for singing the title song from "Marat/Sade" ("The Persecution and Assasination of Jean-Paul Marat as Performed by the Inmates of the Asylum of Charenton under the Direction of Monsieur de Sade") --

"Four years after the revolution
And the old king's execution
Four years after remember how
Those courtiers took their final bow.

String up every aristocrat!
Out with the priests and let them live on their fat!"

Four years after they started fighting
Marat kept on with his writing
Four years after the Bastille fell
We still recall the old battle yell --

Down with all of the ruling class!
Throw all the generals out on their ass!"

I think if my mother heard me sing it now forty years later, she'd still get upset. Let's just say we don't discuss politics . . .

Linn

Subject: RE: Songs your parents didn't allow
From: Rabbi-Sol
Date: 03 Oct 04 - 01:16 PM

The racist nursery rhyme "Why My Nigger Baby" was banned for obvious reasons. Also, being brought up in a strictly Orthodox Jewish home, all Christmas carrols or any song pertaining to or mentioning Jesus was absolutely off limits. However, my mother did sing Irving Berlin's "Easter Parade", which she claimed was not a religious song but a song about a parade on Fifth Avenue.
                                              SOL ZELLER