I didn't have this particular recording of "The Teddy Bears' Picnic,"
Martin, but a bogeyman b-side seems exactly right for that obscurely
sinister song. (And wonderful to recall the Mountie's serenade--thanks!)
When my daughter (now nearly 20) was about 4, she and some other little
girls were outraged by a Sesame Street record they heard at a slumber
party--a song called (I think) "A Monster's Lullaby," in which a little
monster's bedtime ritual included its mother's checking under the bed for
little girls and repeatedly reassuring the little monster that there were no
such things. My daughter and her friends seemed to regard the song as both
outrageously anti-little girl (an annoyance I encouraged as their
proto-feminism) and a foolishly humorous take on monsters, the reality of
which was not to be lightly questioned either. I still remember one little
girl commenting darkly that Jim Henson "better not forget to look under his
bed at night."
Candice
on 1/6/02 2:37 PM, Martin J. Walker at [log in to unmask] wrote:
> "If you go down to the woods today.." has reminded me that a favourite 78 in
> our home had "The Teddybears' picnic" on one side & in a minatory sotto voce
> "Hush, hush, hush, here comes the Bogeyman" on the other ~ which went on
> "don't let him come too close to you, he'll catch you if he can". Whole
> lotta Bogeymen around these days. And quite a few bearish phenomena. Talking
> lions are still at a premium, though. Does anyone remember "Sparkey", in
> which a little boy practising is terrified by a talking piano? And
> absolutely symbolic of the communication gulf between us all, darlings, is
> another early memory, the mountie yodelling across the canyon "And I'm
> calling yóoo - oo-oo-óoo-oo-oo-óoo" in _Rose Marie_. Because he didn't have
> anything to say, either. (_My Musical Autobiography_ Chap.1, by M.J.Walker.
> To be contd.)
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