The Roots of My Raisin

A plummy gathering of musical prunes

Greetings, Jagged Time Lapsers!

In what has become something of a Memorial Day Weekend tradition (i.e., this is the second year in a row we’ve done it), my lovely girlfriend and I spent this past Sunday driving around our neck of the (literal) woods looking for garage sales. The pickings weren’t great, but we had a lot of fun, and I did manage to score a small stack of sheet music — mostly from the 1960s and 70s, though I simply couldn’t resist the bizarre relic from 1928 that’s pictured above.

Who knew there were any prune songs, much less THE prune song? Well, apparently quite a few folks did know about this particular one; according to some of the responses on social media after I posted this, “The Prune Song” got some significant Dr. Demento airplay back in the day, and at least one of my friends learned it at summer camp. And my buddy and fellow musical encyclopedia Tom Clark hipped to the fact that the original 1928 recording by vaudevillian Frank Crumit — which was released on a 78 rpm disc by the Victor Talking Machine Company under the somewhat more regal title “The Song of the Prune” — can be readily found on YouTube. But I swear this was all news to me!

According to the sheet music, there are “extra choruses” to the song, just in case you want to keep that prune party raging all night.

Man, this is some serious “diss track”-level shit talking, right here. Frank Crumit, whatever did those poor prunes do to you?

Well, no need to come back from the grave to answer that. Because another Dr. Demento favorite apparently also had some thoughts on the subject, set brilliantly to the tune of The Who’s “Won’t Get Fooled Again”. The line “Meet the new sauce/Same as the old sauce” practically caused me to spit an entire apple slice through my nose the first time I heard it, and dig Al’s impressive ARP-aping accordion action!

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I honestly cannot remember ever eating prunes. I’m guessing I might actually like them, given my fondness for raisins, dates and figs — a prune is basically a dried plum, right? — but their reputation as”nature’s laxative” for old folks put me off them at an early age. Said reputation is, in fact, referenced in my all-time favorite Simpsons holiday moment, “Christmas with the California Prunes”.

I’ve long been a fan of The Electric Prunes, however. When I was just starting to learn about 1960s psychedelia, they would often be cited in the books or mags I was reading as an example of one of the more “ridiculous” psychedelic band names; but as with The Chocolate Watchband, I didn’t find anything ridiculous about their music once I finally heard it. And their debut hit, 1966’s “I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night),” still totally rules. (There are better video clips of it elsewhere on YouTube, but this is the only one with Dick Clark describing the Prunes as “a gassy thing!”)

Another LA band, the Frank Zappa-led Mothers of Invention, were getting their prune on around the same time. Their 1967 album Absolutely Free features “The Duke of Prunes,” a typically arch Zappa ballad which tenderly promises “a love that is strong/a prune that is true”.

Virgina’s OxPetals also got in on the pruney psych action in 1967, via their non-hit “Prune Growing In June”. It’s not a great song, by any means, but I’m sure the American Prune Association was pleased by its release.

I can’t say I know much about Virgin Prunes, though I used to see their records all the time at Chicago’s Wax Trax record store in the early/mid-1980s. (And I would laugh, simply because “Prunes” is inherently funny.) Apparently Irish musician/actor Gavin Friday was one of their vocalists, and their guitarist Dik Evans was/is the brother of U2’s The Edge. Despite their name, they seem a tad constipated here.

Unfortunately, there’s no video for my all-time favorite prune-related musical moment, so I’ll just have to tell the story instead…

When I was ten, my sister (who was eight) and I spent a significant part of the summer of 1976 in Alabama with our maternal grandparents, with whom we watched a lot of Lawrence Welk in their wood-paneled TV room. Even as a kid, I knew that the show was total Squaresville; but hey, music was music, and even then I simply couldn’t resist the pull of a classic Tin Pan Alley tune.

One episode featured the old Gus Edwards/Edward Madden chestnut, “By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” and the next day my sister and I were singing the song while running around the house. My grandfather, a man of relatively few words, surprised us by chiming in and singing along — although the words he sang weren’t ones we’d heard on the TV show. His lyrics to the song went like this:

By the light of the silvery moon

You will eat a rotten prune

Then you head for the bathroom

Who left the top down?

Mommy, Mommy get the sponge

It’s all over the place!

Oh, how my sister and I laughed — and of course, we immediately adopted my grandpa’s rendition as our preferred version. This, for some reason, did not please my grandmother (a noted prune fan) when we sang it in front of her.

“Where did you learn that?” she asked us, clearly appalled.

“Grandpa taught it to us!” my sister and I responded in gleeful unison.

She cast a withering glance over at my grandfather. “Shame on you, Grandpa,” she said. Grandpa just shrugged.

I’ll bet Little Richard would have thought it was pretty funny, though.

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