Subject: Lyr Add: WHO PUT THE MUSH? (McCalman/Keir) From: Susanne (skw) Date: 12 Feb 00 - 05:55 PM For some reason the search engine refuses to bring up the recent thread on nonsense words in folk songs, and somehow I managed to miss this thread while it was 'active'. But I don't think it is too late to add the following gem: WHO PUT THE MUSH?
My baby said goodbye, she was a Paul McCartney fan
Who put the mush in the mush-a-ring-a-doo-dah
When we were alone (skiddle-idle-iddle-idle-iddle-idle-um)
Who put the don't in the Don't Get Married Girls
When we went to dance (disco me disco me disco me day)
Tell me more - tell me more - tell me more - ugh!
Who put the no in the no nay never
Any spelling mistakes are mine … [1974:] The tune [of the 'Dialogue between a Coal-Owner and a Poor Pitman's Wife'] came from Mr. J. Denison of Walker. The 'derry down' chorus indicates its antiquity - a relative of Henry Martin? Most songs with a 'derry down' refrain used to be fairly salacious, and it has been suggested that the words, now nonsense, originally had a sexual connotation. (Karl Dallas, Songs of Toil 224)
[1998:] Rock 'n' roll itself [like pop] was full of gibberish masquerading as lyrics. [...] Nonsense syllables didn't start there either, of course. Think of 'Twelfth Night' with its 'Hey, ho, the wind and the rain'. Or Kenneth Williams's folk song parodies with their cascades of 'rum-te-tums' and 'derry-down-derries', all designed to conceal filth or, rather, to point to imagined filth. So where and when did it first become acceptable to pad out a song with a lot of made-up words? 'I have a theory,' said Vic Gammon [...]. Vic is a lecturer in the Education Department in the University of Leeds. His doctoral thesis was on English traditional song - 'not folk song, we don't like that word' - and showed that the nonsense syllable - 'or vocable, as we call it' - is widespread in English traditional song, even in the tunes of our diaspora - Newfoundland fishermen's songs, for example, or Australian elegies about the horrors of transportation. |
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Who Put the Mush? From: wysiwyg Date: 12 Feb 00 - 06:04 PM Wow! |
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Who Put the Mush? From: reggie miles Date: 12 Feb 00 - 09:53 PM Double that WOW from here. I tried to start a thread about this very subject some time ago hoping to discover a more scholarly explaination about it, nonsense phrases and words, which I understand are called crambo. Thread creep took over when the example I sited was a folk song called Froggy Went A Courtin' as sung by the cartoon mouse from the Tom and Jerry series. The Mouse is one of Jerry mouses' relatives that comes up from the south, Texas as I recall, and is going to be featured on a television show singing and playing his guitar. He wears a huge cowboy hat that covers his entire head right down to his equally huge handle bar moustache. He talks with a western drawl and is not afraid of Tom whose whiskers he plucks throughout the cartoon to use for spare guitar strings whenever his strings break as he rehearses for his appearance. What makes this version of the song so great is definitely his delivery, which is a combination of stuttering and effing, and the long string of nonsense syllables he manages to combine together at the end of each line. He ends each nosense phrase with the word CRAMBO! I never heard it done better. |
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Who Put the Mush? From: wysiwyg Date: 12 Feb 00 - 10:13 PM How soon can we creep over to the nonsense words the Three Stooges used? Huh? Are we there yet? Pleeze? Onna-conna-pooner Ah... I feel better Anna-canna-pannasan! OK! |
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Who Put the Mush? From: Sorcha Date: 13 Feb 00 - 03:17 AM "Who put the BOP in the Bop-de bop bop,"?? And how about "lilting/mouth music", a la Dolores Keane? Maybe that's where the non-sense syllables came from in the first place-----"words" to carry the melody line when the instruments were prohibited? (Sorry, I am not a 3 Stooges nut---don't know nuttin') |
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Who Put the Mush? From: wysiwyg Date: 14 Feb 00 - 01:56 AM Ella et all scat singing... |
Subject: RE: Lyr Add: Who Put the Mush? From: GUEST,tom n jerry Date: 21 Nov 04 - 04:16 PM can i get the lyrics to that song? |
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