Latest in a continuing serenade of songs about animals
- “Simon Smith and His Amazing Dancing Bear,” Randy Newman. It’s a Randy Newman song, so you know its doom-laden. There isn’t really a bear, or they don’t really get fed, or life isn’t so amazing. Most versions of the song lay on the absurdity and irony. Probably the biggest hit versions—the ones by Alan Price and Jim Henson’s Muppets—don’t.
- “Hold That Tiger!” And then what are you supposed to do with it?
- Knock knock. Who’s There? Gorilla. Gorilla who? Gorilla My Dreams. That gag dogged my whole childhood, appearing in very jokebook in the public library. But even in the ‘60s, nobody I knew could hum me the melody of “Girl of My Dreams,” a 1946 hit by Perry Como, though the song had been written two decades earlier by the illustrious tunesmith Sunny Clapp.
- The Woody Woodpecker Song. Actually, it’s the Woody Woodpecker laugh with a song constructed around it. The lyrics are impossible: “Yeah, he’s peckin’ it all day long,” it says, but it’s talking about singing; “He gives all his rivals the bird,” yet he is one. Kay Kyser has a lot to answer for—he must have had a few holes pecked in his head.
- “I Am the Walrus.” Now what stopped the Muppets from doing this one?