Goofy Greats

The 60-second TV ad that turned me on to bubblegum pop (and so much more)

After my piece last month about how a TV ad for a cheapo “greatest hits” collection turned me into an Elvis fan, a few Jagged Time Lapse readers suggested that I write about some of the other classic “As Seen On TV” album commercials many of us grew up on…

It was a great suggestion, and initially I thought I might write about the iconic Hey Love and Freedom Rock commercials of the late ‘80s; I quickly realized, however, that I didn’t actually have that much to say about either of them. For one thing, I was already very familiar with the songs those albums contained by the time their respective ads first aired; so while said spots were certainly entertaining, they weren’t at all educational for me (and aren’t as forever screen-shot in my mind) like that Elvis ad.

For another, the memories triggered by those ads amount to little more than me and various college friends watching MTV while stoned out of our gourds and laughing hysterically at the actors’ brief bits of corny-ass dialogue. And while I’ll admit that I still occasionally use “No, my brother — you have got to get your own!” in conversation, that’s really about all I owe to the Hey Love ad.

But Goofy Greats? Now, lads and lassies, that one is a different story entirely…

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Back in 1975, pretty much all this third-grader knew about contemporary pop music was whatever I happened to hear on the radio in my dad’s car, or whatever songs I happened to see performed on the TV variety shows hosted by Cher, Tony Orlando & Dawn, John Davidson, etc. My friend Matt had the Paper Lace album with “The Night Chicago Died” on it, and I enjoyed listening to it with him, but somehow the idea of buying my own records — or even turning on a radio in my own home — didn’t even occur to me.

But then I started seeing the TV commercial for a new K-Tel collection called Goofy Greats — and suddenly, pop music had my full attention.

It wasn’t contemporary pop, though. Looking back from the vantage point of forty-plus years of musical obsession, I can understand that Goofy Greats was basically a grab-bag of rock n’ roll, R&B, novelty and bubblegum pop songs from the ‘50s and ‘60s, whose unifying thread was that they were all “goofy” — or at least, filled with enough nonsense syllables, upbeat tempos and broad humor to appeal to ‘70s elementary schoolers. I can also see in retrospect that this was a fairly brilliant marketing concept: these songs were pretty much the antithesis of “hip” by mid-’70s standards, yet somebody at K-Tel figured out a way to repackage and sell them to kids who hadn’t been around to hear them the first time.

But back when I first saw this commercial, I had zero frame of reference for any of it. All I knew was that these songs — or at least the brief snippets I heard in the ad — sounded like a hell of a lot of fun.

I’m pretty sure I was already familiar with two of the album’s “24 Original Hits”. Back in my days at Little Farm Nursery School, one of the teachers used to play The Playmates’ “Beep Beep” for us as kind of a class participation exercise — I think we were all supposed to shout “Beep Beep” together at the appropriate moments, or some shit like that. And of course, Piero Umiliani’s immortal (and some might say deeply annoying) “Mah-Na-Mah-Na” was often sung by the Muppets on Sesame Street. But the others were completely new to me, and it’s kind of fascinating to look back and trace the different directions that they wound up pointing me in.

While straight-up novelty songs like Larry Verne’s “Mr. Custer,” the Hollywood Argyles’ “Alley-Oop,” Ray Stevens’ “Ahab the Arab” and Brian Hyland’s “Itsy-Bitsy, Teenie-Weenie, Yellow Polka-Dot Bikini” haven’t aged particularly well, I did enjoy them at the time – and they did wind up leading me to Dr. Demento’s syndicated Westwood One radio show, which not only played far more interesting novelty songs than these, but would also become a major musical education source for me from 1976 to 1979.

Larry Williams’ “Bony Moronie” and Bill Haley’s “See You Later, Alligator” were some of my earliest introductions to 1950s rock n’ roll, hitting me in the solar plexus just as the second season of Happy Days was starting to become must-watch TV for me and my friends.

The Fendermen’s “Mule Skinner Blues” and The Trashmen’s “Surfin’ Bird” gave me my first aural glimpse into rock n’ roll’s weirder, trashier alleys, ones that I would later enthusiastically visit via the unrepentant likes of The Cramps and Kicks magazine. (And of course “Surfin’ Bird” would become Mark “The Bird” Fidrych’s unofficial theme song in 1976, but that’s a whole other story.)

The Lemon Pipers’ “Green Tambourine” and The Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Nashville Cats” tuned my ears to the frequency of mid-’60s American AM radio pop, an era I would become completely obsessed with in another ten years or so.

But my favorite songs on Goofy Greats were the bubblegum hits of The Ohio Express and The 1910 Fruitgum Company — “Yummy Yummy Yummy,” “Chewy Chewy,” “Simon Says” and “1-2-3 Red Light,” whose simple chords and insanely catchy melodies and choruses cloaked (as I would later realize) some fairly creepy double-entendres. I would also come to realize much later that these songs and their bubblegum ilk were massive influences on both The Ramones and Redd Kross, two bands that remain among my favorites to this day.

Sure, there were songs on Goofy Greats that I couldn’t stand even then — and if I never hear The Newbeats’ “Bread And Butter,” Bobby Day’s “Rockin’ Robin” and Jewel Akens’ “The Birds and The Bees” again, I’ll be totally cool with that — but I was more than happy to sit through them in order to get to the good stuff.

Not that I actually owned the album, mind you. Walking into, say, Ann Arbor’s Bonzo Dog Records and asking the stoned college dudes behind the counter for a copy seemed way beyond my capabilities; and anyway, it wasn’t like I had the princely sum of $5.99 in my piggy bank.

My friend Peter did have Goofy Greats, however, and we spent lot of time up in his room listening to it — too much time, as far as he was concerned. I vividly remember one Saturday afternoon where I was over at his family’s house, and had once again insisted that he pull out the album for a spin on his plastic Fisher-Price phonograph. We were about halfway through listening to Side One when we heard someone yelling our names from outside. It was our friend Scott, who lived down the block; he and a couple of other neighborhood kids wanted us to come out and join them for a snowball fight.

“Cool, let’s go!” Peter shouted.

“Uh, but we still have the rest of the record to listen to,” I protested.

“Fine, Epstein,” he shrugged. “I’m going out there without you!” He started stomping down the stairs towards his coat and boots.

“Where are you going?” I heard Peter’s mother call to him from the kitchen.

“Scott and them are having a snowball fight,” he answered.

“Where’s Dan?” she asked.

“He’s up in my room — he just wants to listen to that fucking Goofy Greats record again!”

Peter’s mom gave him a stern talking-to — not about the swearing (Peter’s folks didn’t mind that sort of thing at all; hell, they didn’t mind him wearing a “Dirty Old Men Need Loving Too” t-shirt to school, either), but about how rude it was to leave one friend upstairs while going outside to play with others. “Dan is your guest,” I heard her say. “If he wants to listen to Goofy Greats, you go upstairs and listen to Goofy Greats with him!”

Peter stomped back up to his room, rejoining me with a look of glum annoyance; much to his credit, however, he hung out with me for the duration of the record. And I happily joined him and our pals for some frenzied snowball flinging once Goofy Greats was finished; but first, I just had to hear The Ohio Express one more time.

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