Req: Gooney Bird Song

Subject: Gooney Bird Song
From: GUEST,email from Ted Warmbrand
Date: 08 Oct 22 - 09:38 PM

Hi Joe ...stumped again…in the 1950s there was a novelty song

First verse (as best I rercall):

Once there was a gooney bird
Who lived in a big bell tower
And every time the bird would sing
The bellsl would ring the hour
He’d open up his little mouth’
And gayly start to sing
When the great big bell went “BING BANG
The middle sized bell went CLANG CLANG CLANG
The tiny little bell went TINGALINGALING
And nobody ever heard that gooney bird sing

(Third verse has a happy ending…but I can’t find it )

Who wrote and sang it? Where can I hear it again?

Ted

Subject: RE: Req: Gooney Bird Song
From: Joe Offer
Date: 08 Oct 22 - 10:27 PM

Hi, Ted -
Well, I didn't have any luck, but I had a good time looking.

The wonderful Lois Lowrey has a whole series of books about a girl named Gooney Bird: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bE_AsB6zFiY

And I don't know who Lomax is, but she's got a recording of "Mother Gooney Bird" (which I know as "Father Abraham"): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMAw0LQiMXQ

And Oscar Brand had one about the DC-3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQsNWoP4eLM&t=5s

Subject: RE: Req: Gooney Bird Song
From: GUEST,cnd
Date: 09 Oct 22 - 07:55 AM

A very different novelty song about a Goony Bird: Dory Langdon - Gooney Bird (1957)

No luck so far but I'll keep looking

Subject: RE: Req: Gooney Bird Song
From: cnd
Date: 09 Oct 22 - 08:12 AM

I've found a novelty bird song about a Dolphus Bird by Jackie Kannon where the bird couldn't fly because it had no wings (Billboard, June 24th, 1957, p. 56) -- does that sound familiar? A report in XXXXX wrote "The cry of the Dolphus bird keeps things pretty exciting" (Cash Box, July 6th, 1957, p. 17). No luck on finding either a sound clip or the lyrics, but there's several other recordings of his online. Maybe the voice will sound familiar?

Subject: RE: Req: Gooney Bird Song
From: cnd
Date: 09 Oct 22 - 08:29 AM

Oops, the XXX above was meant to be replaced by "Cash Box," obviously.   What I get for not proof-reading...

Credit to Chris Setari on the Facebook discussion on this song, though, who discovered the answer late last night. (link)

The song is THE GOONIE-BIRD SONG by FRANK LUTHER. Written by George Kleinsinger and Joe Darion from 1951 (link)

listen

Subject: RE: Req: Gooney Bird Song
From: MaJoC the Filk
Date: 10 Oct 22 - 09:10 AM

Side issue: I understand (a segment of a *long*-ago children's TV programme) that Gooney Birds are what happens when albatrosses land on Midway Island in the Pacific, and proceed to try to nest in the middle of the USAF air strip. (Standing orders are to pick them up and move them to the side of the runway just before Something Serious takes off or is about to land. They appear to not object to this, and usually stroll back again.)

Picture a rear-end shot, apparently in slow motion, of a huge bird trying to take off, with its feet dangling, and a nasal voice instructing: "Gooney Bird One, retract your undercarriage. I repeat: Gooney Bird One, retract your undercarriage." And at the end of the segment, when the Gooney Birds are all in the sky, "they become albatrosses again," says Johnny Morris.

Subject: RE: Req: Gooney Bird Song
From: cnd
Date: 11 Oct 22 - 08:23 AM

Funny how random kids TV shows will stick with us like that...

Just for thoroughness, I've transcribed the lyrics from the archive.org link above. The last line of the chorus, denoted in brackets, changed slightly on each iteration of it.

THE GOONIE-BIRD SONG
(George Kleinsinger and Joe Darion)

Oh, once there was a goonie bird who lived in a big bell tower
And every time he tried to sing, the bells would ring the hour!
He opened up his little mouth and gayly flapped his wings

CHORUS
Then then great big bell went boom, bang
The middle-sized bell went clang-clang-clang
The little, little bell went tingle-tingle-ting
[And nobody heard that goonie bird sing]

He met a lady goonie bird and he began to woo her
He said "I'll make a lovely song, and I will sing it to her"
But when he opened up his mouth and started in to sing

CHORUS [And she never heard...]

The lady bird, she said to him, "I never cared for singing
But how I love your lovely voice, it sounds just like bells ringing"
And so he put a wedding band upon her pretty wing

CHORUS [And they were wed one morning in spring]

Boom, bang, clang-clang-clang, clink-clink-clink-clink-clink
They lived there without a care though nobody ever heard
That goonie bird sing
That goonie bird sing
That goonie bird sing
That goonie bird sing