Bruce Forsyth
It's another very British guest star, but this time all-singing, all-dancing, all…duckling? We are definitely feeling mixed here in the middle of the season, but this episode has some delightful puppetry, Miss Piggy coming into her full star power, and an extremely memorable duck. And snerfs! Snerfs?
Bouncing Baby GIFs
With Our Very Special Guest Star…Bruce Forsyth!
When Forsyth died, the BBC pulled away from their coverage of a terrorist attack to announce it.
At The Dance
“It’s just not the same when it’s not sung by a twink.”
Highlights from the Mudcat Forums on “I Am My Own Grandpa”
“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.”
“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’”
“Here’s the entry from Dorothy Horstman’s Sing Your Heart Out, Country Boy (Country Music Foundation Press, 1975, 1986, 1996)
I’M MY OWN GRANDPAW
Quote from Dwight Latham:
’Back in the early days of radio in the thirties, I had a very successful group called The Jesters performing three nights a week on NBC. Our specialty was novelty songs and bits of spoken humor. In reading a book of anecdotes and sayings by Mark Twain, I came across a paragraph wherein he proved it was possible for a man to become his own grandpa by a certain succession of events beginning with the premise that if the man married widow with a grown-up daughter and his father married the daughter, etc., etc., he would eventually become his own grandpa. The idea seemed funny enough to repeat on the air, and sure enough, the response was very good.
Later Moe Jaffe and I decided to expand the basic idea and set it as a song.’”
from America's Songs: The Stories Behind the Songs of Broadway, Hollywood, and Tin Pan Alley by Philip Furia and Michael Lasser (2006)
Snerfolution:
The Question Is...Who Cares?
Adam’s [2011 phone, sorry] video of the Being Elmo panel he mentioned in the episode. Kevin Clash breaks at 4:45.
This came up right after we recorded (RIP Jacques d’Amboise).
At 21 seconds in this video the floating people are being lifted by dancers in black and it's all side-light and strobe to hide them, unlike the very well-lit Gawky Bird.
