DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa (D Latham/M Jaffe)

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 19 Nov 05 - 06:05 AM

Subject: RE: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Hawker - PM
Date: 03 Sep 01 - 06:45 PM

I remember the muppets doing a superb rendition of this song!
Lucy


Hawker..if you are still here (your post was in '01)... That album was MUPPET SILLY SONGS a terrific album indeed that included kermit singing Lydia the Tattoed Lady. I used to babysit for a little boy named Quinn when I was in Grad School. I had him all day 2 days a week and the only way i could get him to sit still and eat lunch was to put on MUPPT SILLY SONGS.

There was a catch however. if 'I'm my own Grandpa' came on whilst he was eating his soup, he would wait for the chorus and the start banging the spoon, full or empty, on the highchair tray, singing along with the chorus at the top of his lungs! Alphabet soup all over the kitchen!

Those were fun days. I highly recommend that album which I'm sure can be obtained on CD by now, to anyone with a small boy. The songs are just perfect for them. There's even one called 'The Worm song'

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,AJP
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 01:31 AM

Moe Jaffe was my father. And, yes indeed, he and Dwight Latham did write "Grandpa." The Website cited (no pun intended) contains material written by my brother Howard in honor of the centennial of my father's birth. It was put on the Net by our niece, Debbie J.

Lonzo and Oscar were only the first of a long line of charlatans who have erroneously claimed that they wrote the song. For some peculiar reason, several people have assumed it was public domain and attempted (with some initial success) to publish it under their own names through BMI. BMI should have checked and seen that it was an ASCAP song. After being threatened with several lawsuits, they now acknowledge that it is not their song.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 21 Nov 05 - 01:41 AM

Guest AJP, would you please become a member here at Mudcat, and PM me.
I'm one of the people who mistakenly recorded the song as Public Domain, on the word of other musicians who told me it was Traditional. This was over 23 years ago, before the Internet, when songs and authors were not as easily tracked down as they are today.
I'd like to rectify the situation.
Thanks.

Seamus Kennedy

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,Dave Hemsworth
Date: 23 Apr 06 - 01:41 AM

Hey Louie Roy
Could you send me the mp3 to I'm My Own Grandpa.
My address is [e-mail]
cheers

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,Bob Coltman
Date: 23 Apr 06 - 07:04 AM

One of the best and earliest recordings of this (a 78 rpm c. 1947 or 48? which makes it shortly after this song was composed in '47) was by Grandpa (what else) Jones.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Kaleea
Date: 23 Apr 06 - 03:15 PM

I was at the Walnut Valley Music Festival in Winfield, Kansas when 9-11 happened. It was quite an unusual festival year, as you may imagine. There was not a lot of laughter going on. I was sitting with some old & new friends for the performance of the Prairie Rose Wranglers who had come to perform in the place of some who could not make it. (it was amazing how many folks loaded up the vans & trucks, as many could not fly, & headed to Winfield that year to help out)
The Wranglers sang some & told some of the usual Cowboy type humor which reaped little laughter. Then they went into "I'm My Own Grandpa." It was an old song which many had heard, but the Wranglers were mugging such faces & hamming it up that we started to laugh and just couldn't stop. Those gentlemen brought some sorely needed guffahs to all of us-for which we were tremendously grateful in a difficult time.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,Jim
Date: 24 Apr 06 - 11:14 AM

I first heard this song sung by Jimmy Dean, not the rebel without a cause, but the guy who used to flog sausages on TV. Another great version was Michael Cooney's (I'm not sure if it's available on record).

I used to teach music in public school and about 2 years ago I ran into one of my former students at a gig. She was all grown up with kids of her own, but she requested "that song about incest that you used to sing us in greade 4." I got her to listen carefully and she admitted that there was no incest in the song. I think only a public school secretary can fully understand it on first listening.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,GUEST: RHR
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 06:16 PM

hi-
I got here by googling for "I'm My Own Grandma" and Canova because I remembered that the 78 my dad used to play was by Judy Canova. Never heard of Esmerelda. Sounds like many, many people have covered it, which I did not realize until I came here.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 07:38 PM

"I can't say that this is Twain's text - but if Bill Foster says he saw a handwritten copy from 1829, I believe him. Bill is a very credible source."

Mark Twain was born in 1835.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Peace
Date: 18 Jun 06 - 08:10 PM

Only melody for it I have heard is here.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,janette
Date: 14 Nov 06 - 02:13 AM

funny! hehe! this is our assignment about relations anf functions!

its really a great song!

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Susanne (skw)
Date: 25 Nov 06 - 10:45 PM

On the radio the other day I heard a song by the Viennese songwriter Hugo Wiener, sung by chanteuse Cissy Kraner: Eine verzwickte Verwandtschaft (Tricky relatives). Could it be ...? Yes it was. The last line was "I'm my own grandma".
Wiener died in 1993, and this song seems to be from the Seventies. I suspect it is an adaptation of our song above, though so far I haven't found proof one way or the other.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: oldhippie
Date: 26 Nov 06 - 08:47 AM

In addition to those mentioned, there are also recordings by Guy Lombardo and Steve Goodman.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Barry Finn
Date: 07 Apr 07 - 02:46 PM

"I can't say that this is Twain's text - but if Bill Foster says he saw a handwritten copy from 1829, I believe him. Bill is a very credible source."

Mark Twain was born in 1835.

So not only was Mark Twain's death great exaggerated but so was his birth.

Barry

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,Lucia Song
Date: 23 Sep 07 - 03:32 AM

Hello Louie Roy!
This is my email address: [e-mail]
Could you send that MP3 song to me?
I'm be very glad to receive it.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 23 Sep 07 - 11:15 AM

I sang this song at a kids's show earlier this year ( a lot of kids and grandparents there). The audience loved it, but the organizers got one complaint from a disgruntled patron who asked, "Why is Seamus Kennedy singing that filthy Irish song 'I'm my Own Grandpa?'"
You can't win 'em all.

Seamus

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Nigel Parsons
Date: 06 Oct 07 - 11:57 AM

This song could now be made even shorter following a news item in the Daily Telegraph Pensioner sperm donor for his 'grandchild'

CHEERS
Nigel

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,anonymous
Date: 11 Feb 09 - 02:46 AM

about the step-step thing above, i believe that two steps cancel out and become an in-law, and also, i have 2 stepuncles, so they do exist, (but saying "stepuncle larry" is too long, so i just call them uncles)

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,Jim Rolfs (pen name--Douglas Marshall
Date: 01 Aug 09 - 12:29 AM

I have a book, copyright 1883 and 1901, entitlie "Library of Wit and Humor" by Eli Perkins and Others. The cover of the book has a photo of Samuel Clemens who, of course, wrote under the pen name of Mark Twain. On the inside is a sketch of Melville D. Landon who wrote under the pen name of Eli Perkins. The "Many Others" includes Josh Billings (who was initially promoted by Eli Perkins), Bret Harte, and Eugene Field. Josh Billings, who's real name was Henry Wheeler Shaw, was probably the second most popular humorist, lecturer, and writer in the US in the latter 1800s.

On page 87 of the book is found a short piece entitled, "Very Closely Related" that goes like this:

"Well, Sam, I'll tell you how it is. You see, I married a widow, and this widow had a daughter. Then my father, being a widower, married our daughter so you see my father is my own son-in-law."

"Yes, I see."

"Then again my step-daughter is my step-mother, ain't she? Well, then, her mother is my grandmother, ain't she? I am married to her, ain't I? So that makes me my own grandfather, doesn't it?"

Many of the writings in this book are credited specifically to one or another of the contributors, but quite a few are not. The "Very Closely Related" piece is one of the ones that is not. If this book is the one the song idea came from, it's as likely that Eli Perkins wrote the own-Grandpa thing a Mark Twain. It does sound very much like Mark Twain's style, but I think it sounds more like Eli Perkins. Also, the last writer credited before this piece was Eli Perkins. It's impossible to tell for sure from this volume who actually authored the piece. Of course the source could have been a different book altogether.

This gives me an idea for a funny song about 19th humorists with pen names that wrote alike--maybe a guy named Arthur who's his own author. No, that's lame--hafta work on that.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: GUEST,guest, C. Payne
Date: 10 Apr 10 - 03:18 PM

I have been trying for 2 years to get a copy of the Muppet's tape (or CD preferably) called Silly Songs. It's an older one containg I'm My Own Grandpa, Lydia the Tatooed Lady, among others. Can you help?

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 02:41 AM

From Wit and Humor: A Choice Collection by Marshall Brown, John Wesley Beatty (Chicago: S. C. Griggs and Company, 1882), page 213:


SOMEWHAT MIXED.

  "What's the matter?"
  "Sam, who am I?"
  "Why, you are yourself—Bob Harrison, ain't you?"
  "No, far from it."
  "Why, what's the matter?"
  "Well, sir, I am so mixed up I don't know who I am."
  "Don't take it so hard to heart."
  "I can't help it."
  "Well, sir, what's the matter?"
  "Why, I am married."
  "Married! Why, sir, you should be happy."
  "Yes, but I ain't."
  "Why, all married men are supposed to be happy."
  "Yes, but how many are so?"
  "Well, sir, as I said before, don't take it so hard; tell us all about it."
  "Well, Sam, I'll tell you how it is. You see I married a widow, and this widow had a daughter."
  "Oh, yes, I see how it is; you have been making love to the daughter."
  "No; worse than that! You see my father was a widower, and married that daughter; so that makes my father my son-in-law, don't it?"
  "Well, is that all?"
  "No; I only wish it was. Don't you see, my stepdaughter is my step-mother, ain't she? Well, then, her mother is my grandmother, ain't she? I am married to her, ain't I? So that makes me my own grandfather doesn't it?"
 

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 03:05 AM

From Alden's Illustrated Family Miscellany, Oxford, England, Vol. XII, No. 133, September 1865.

DOMESTIC PERPLEXITIES.—A correspondent of the Drawer is involved in domestic perplexities. He writes, "I got acquainted with a young widow, who lived with her step-daughter in the same house. I married. My father fell, shortly after it, in love with the step-daughter of my wife, and married her. My wife became the mother-in-law, and also the daughter-in-law, of my own father; my wife's step-daughter is my step-mother, and I am the step-father of my mother-in-law. My stepmother, who is the step-daughter of my wife, has a boy; he is naturally my step-brother because he is the son of my father and of my step-mother; but because he is son of my wife's step-daughter, so is my wife the grandmother of the little boy, and I am the grandfather of my step-brother. My wife has also a boy; my stepmother is consequently the step-sister of my boy, and is also his grandmother, because he is the child of her step-son; and my father is the brother-in-law of my son, because he has got his step-sister for a wife. I am the brother of my own son, who is the son of my step-mother; I am the brother-in-law of my mother, my wife is the aunt of her son, my son is the grandson of my father, and I am my own grandfather."

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa
From: Busy Lizzie
Date: 11 Apr 10 - 04:01 AM

Try Anthony John Clarke website!

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa (D Latham/M Jaffe)
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 18 Aug 17 - 12:29 PM

I was intrigued by the quote that Jim Rolfs posted awhile back, so I traced it via Google books, and it is exactly as he described it (except for the book title—but then maybe Jim had a later edition than this one, and the book was retitled).

I found it in Wit and Humor of the Age: Comprising Wit, Humor, Pathos, Ridicule, Satires, Dialects, Puns, Conundrums, Riddles, Charades, Jokes and Magic by Mark Twain, Robt. J. Burdette, Josh Billings, Alex. Sweet, Eli Perkins (etc.), (Lexington, Ky.: Huffman & Johnson, 1884), page 87.

Since Twain is the first author listed on the title page, it's easy to see how a bit of sloppy scholarship (or a poor memory) resulted in the quote being misattributed to him. I agree with Jim Rolfs that Eli Perkins was the more likely author of this piece that is unattributed in the original.

Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa (D Latham/M Jaffe)
From: Helen
Date: 25 Apr 22 - 06:22 PM

Thread #119   Message #4140151
Posted By: Helen
25-Apr-22 - 04:11 AM
Thread Name: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa (D Latham/M Jaffe)
Subject: RE: DTStudy: I'm My Own Grandpa (D Latham/M Jaffe)

I'll go back and read this whole thread but I just watched an Australian Sci-fi movie called Predestination. A couple of times in the movie someone was playing I'm My Own Grandpa on a juke box and it turns out that it is a core theme of the movie.

I'll have to watch it again to fully understand it all - like I had to watch Inception a couple more times. It was an interesting concept and I think it was worth watching.

Based on a story by Robert Heinlein called All You Zombies, and I'll now try to find it and read it.

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Hi Piers Plowman,

I've created a new thread, specific to our discussion on our favourite Sci-Fi and/or fantasy fiction authors:

BS: Sci-Fi and/or fantasy authors

I didn't want to sully a DTStudy thread with unrelated content.

---

I moved the unrelated content over to the new thread (click)
-Joe Offer-