Hello Mudduh, Hello Fadduh
Allan Sherman ~ Syd Hoff
Harper & Row, 1964
My husband and a few friends fondly remember having this LP as children and none of them knew this book even existed. Most people today know this song even if they don't know who originally sang it. Sherman was a comic, TV personality, maker of musical parodies and perhaps the original Weird Al. Here we find an illustrated version of the song described by the Wiki as Sherman's "biggest hit single... a comic novelty in which a boy describes his summer camp experiences to the tune of Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours".
The Grammy-winning single was brought to life in book form (and in hysterical detail) by Mr. Hoff, the author and illustrator of the perennial favorite Danny and the Dinosaur. So the song goes...
Hello Muddah, hello Fadduh! Here I am at Camp Granada.
Camp is very entertaining,
and they say we'll have some fun
if it stops raining.
I went hiking with Joe Spivey.
He developed poison ivy.
You remember Leonard Skinner?
He got ptomaine poisoning
last night after dinner.
Unfortunately, like most books that have a tune behind them, our son almost always demands we read sans the tune, which if you've ever tried to just read the lyrics of a song... it is almost excruciating. Even without the notes, my son thinks it's a pretty funny story, but somehow I doubt that he really gets it. Shoot, I don't even know what ptomaine poisoning is. This one might be better saved for those kids at heart. 
1 comment:
Thanks for the memory!
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