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Do "funny" songs run thin on the radio?
- Thread starter tall_guy1
- Start date
Novelty records go back as far as records themselves. Probably the earliest that got airplay were the Spike Jones records of the 1940s, and the most recent was probably the last Weird Al record that radio played.
As a rule, if they catch on, they catch on fast and burn out quickly. Probably about six weeks in most cases, though on the Los Angeles board, we've been discussing Cheech and Chong's "Earache My Eye" (1974), which had more than ten weeks on the KHJ Thirty.
As a rule, if they catch on, they catch on fast and burn out quickly. Probably about six weeks in most cases, though on the Los Angeles board, we've been discussing Cheech and Chong's "Earache My Eye" (1974), which had more than ten weeks on the KHJ Thirty.
Yes. The one that comes to mind for me is "I Love NASCAR" as performed by Cletus T. Judd. We played that at one station I worked at (a Motor Racing Network affiliate) but I don't need to hear that one ever again.
Many listeners used to spend Sunday evenings with Dr. Demento on the radio spinning wacky novelty tunes for four hours on KMET, and syndicated a two hour show to other radio stations. There were songs charted by artists such as Ray Stevens, Allan Sherman, Jim Stafford, Roger Miller and others that were funny. I love Tom Lehrer's songs but don't think radio touched them when they were released.
The late seventies and early 80s generated several humorous novelty songs that gained quite a bit of radio airplay when they were released: "Disco Duck" by Rick Dees (which I've actually heard on Mesquite's non-commercial KEOM in recent years), "King Tut" from Steve Martin, and "Eat It" from Weird Al.
Lehrer was a college professor first, and an entertainer second. He was considered too "high-brow" for the average American, despite his military service in the 1950s. He held a Master's Degree at the time, but was a Specialist 3rd Class rather than an officer. He referred to his rank as "Corporal without Portfolio." He had something of a comeback in the mid '60s with That Was The Week That Was, but got tired of it later on.
He's still with us, and will turn 95 on April 3rd. He declared all of his songs to be in the Public Domain in 2020 and all of his recording and performing rights to be as such this past November.
I still hear "I Lost on Jeopardy" when the Greg Kihn song comes on.
"Sister Mary Elephant" and "Santa Claus & His Old Lady" are 2 more Cheech & Songs that got plenty of airplay on Album Rock formats in California. MR. JAWS by Dickie Goodman was played quite a bit. It was mildly humourous the first couple times, but got annoying quickly...
Dr. Demento helped me to discover people like Spike Jones and Stan Freberg that I never would have heard otherwise.
They really all do. Even Weird Al, whose stuff is smarter than most, burns pretty fast.
“Basketball Jones“ by Cheech and Chong is another good one. It was a parody of “Love Jones” by Brighter Side of Darkness, plus Michelle Phillips from the Mamas and the Papas was on it as one of the cheerleaders:
I've always loved novelty songs. Didn't get Dr. Demento on the radio where I grew up, but had a cousin visit one summer and he had cassette tapes of the show and I was hooked.
I do recall in 1982 Dickie Goodman's "Hey E.T." got quite a bit of radio play on our local top 40 station...for about 2 weeks and then vanished. Have heard Cheech and Chong "Earache My Eye" and "Born in East LA" on radio, but only on pirates so not sure if that counts.
But yeah, when they do make the airways they seem to have a very short shelf life.
I do recall in 1982 Dickie Goodman's "Hey E.T." got quite a bit of radio play on our local top 40 station...for about 2 weeks and then vanished. Have heard Cheech and Chong "Earache My Eye" and "Born in East LA" on radio, but only on pirates so not sure if that counts.
But yeah, when they do make the airways they seem to have a very short shelf life.
Is that because they touched on our "royal family" - JFK's administration?
Spike Jones had a very talented band but was pretty badly dated by WWII's end. Seems he lost traction once the 50's rolled around. Most of his most popular songs wouldn't be understood by people living today. I've got his "Best Of" album of the 60's and it's a hoot when I play it for the kids.
While Dr. Demento hasn't been aired on any OTA stations in a few years (he went from more than 200 affiliate stations in his heyday to just a handful in the final years of self-syndication), he still maintains a website where there are a few subscription levels depending on what you're looking to hear, nearly every show he ever produced is available, and he still creates a new program weekly for (I'm guessing just a few) really die-hard fans.
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He drastically toned down his act sometime around 1954 or '55. The crazy musicians, with a few exceptions, were gone, and the name of the band changed from The City Slickers to The Band Who Plays for Fun. His 1956 Christmas album is quite tame, sometimes serious, although there are a few moments of comedy (mostly from George Rock) as well.
Not only was the big band era gone by the mid '50s, but people wanted stand-ups doing mother-in-law jokes rather than crazy musicians. That era was pretty much the end for Milton Berle as well.
The "trick" in the era when we had more novelty songs than now was to drop them before they approached burn. Better to have a few listeners miss one of those than to seriously annoy many of them.
In my experience novelty records died sometime in 1980’s. Yes there have been attempts but I can’t recall a hit novelty record the past 30 years. I could stand corrected, but the genre seems to be mostly dead. Why? Because of the advent of multi media platforms that didn’t exist then.
I heard this one on Utopia today. On the Decades of Dance show. This was a bigger hit overseas but still sold 500,000 singles here. Earning a Gold Record. And was played all over CHR/Rhythmic from 1994.
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