The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #1617 Message #3779360
Posted By: Joe Offer
17-Mar-16 - 01:15 AM
Thread Name: Lyr: Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts
Subject: RE: Lyr: Great Green Gobs of Greasy Grimy Gopher Guts
Here's the review from allmusic.com of Tom Glazer's 1963 album, On Top of Spaghetti:
Tom Glazer's "On Top of Spaghetti," a rewrite of "On Top of Old Smokey," is one of the left-field pop hits of the '60s, having reached the Top 15 in 1963. The accompanying album is in the same vein, with Glazer and a banjo performing song parodies with a choir of kids. The remakes of familiar songs are given preposterous lyrics that constitute children's music only in the Shel Silverstein sense. For example, "Dunderbeck" is about a man who invents a meat grinder that turns all the neighborhood cats and dogs -- and finally Dunderbeck himself -- to sausage, and the tongue-twisting rendition of "There's a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea" is so crazy it could have come off a They Might Be Giants' children's album. You might be getting the impression now that On Top of Spaghetti is pretty cutting-edge for children's music in 1963, and it is, but it isn't unprecedented -- Homer & Jethro's "The Battle of Kookamonga" seems to have influenced, or at least have been a precursor to, the songs heard here, particularly "From the Halls of Montezuma (To the Shores of P.T.A.)." Before the tradition of great subversive children's entertainers like Soupy Sales and Shel Silverstein, Glazer was already making children's music that adults could enjoy as well.
I'd swear I learned "Spaghetti" and "Gopher Guts" while I was in grade school, and I graduated from 8th grade in 1962 and went to high school, where we sang cool stuff and wouldn't be caught dead singing these kids' songs.
I'm still having a hard time believing that Tom Glazer composed these. The "On Top of Spaghetti" I knew was very similar to the lyrics Glazer sang on his recording. The "Gopher Guts" we sang was much simpler:
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
Greasy grimy gopher guts
Greasy grimy gopher guts
Great green gobs of greasy grimy gopher guts
And me without a spoon.
I don't know the name of the tune. We also sang "Here we sit like birds in the wilderness..." to the same tune, but I'm sure there are many others that use that tune and I should know what the root song is.
So, maybe Glazer wrote the "mutilated monkey meat" stuff and the verses, but not the original. Or maybe he wrote the whole damn thing, and I've been foiled again.
-Joe-
I posted the above last night, but couldn't think of the tune until this morning, when I was on the phone with Robert Rodriquez. Of course, the melody is "The Old Grey Mare."