Earworm of the Day: HAW HAW

I hear the Mule Skinner Blues, but Levi's style (as in the embedded video), at 3 a.m., and it's guaranteed to lead me down some strange pathways. Not only do I wander into Bluegrass turf, such as from Bill Monroe and Dolly Parton, but even more, the brain starts tripping out on memories of all those  psychedelic ads Levi's ran, back in the day, especially those featuring the voice of Ken Nordine (please click on this last one, especially!)...

Earworm of the Day: Please Don't Take Our Tree For Christmas

O Tannenbaum this is not. But it is very… something.

The Nutty Squirrels were a bebop knockoff of Alvin & the Chipmunks, and a welcome reprieve, for me, from the Chipmunks Christmas Song (which always gets so much air time during the sprawling holiday season).

It's a pity the squirrels didn't withstand the ravages of time in show biz. They were pretty hep cats, as tree rats go.

Earworm of the Day: Washington Square

In Dixieland-style, the Village Stompers actually made it onto my playlist early on, probably while I was still in diapers, having heard it on the radio in our apartment building in Chicago (but don't quote me on it, because, as a child of my times, pretty much everything that happened before my 30th birthday is a blur, and everything that has happened since is a lie. Even the verity of that statement may also be questioned). From any angle, though, it's been with me since my earliest stages of musical awareness, along with a bunch of now-dead writers and performers.

It was one of those tunes I knew for years, before I was able to track it down and learn its name.

There are still a lot of those mystery tunes rattling around in here, leading from one to the next by virtue of, sometimes, a single chord or some other arcane note in common. And then, quite suddenly, it'll get stuck on a single melody for a day, a week a month, or even a year…

If that triggers a tune in you, you're welcome.

Earworm of the Day: (Lookie Lookie Lookie) Here Comes Cookie

I was well into adulthood before I realized that the band on WGN's broadcasts of Bozo's Circus usually played this tune when Cooky the kooky cook clown entered…

I was today years old when I learned about the amazing Cleo Brown as a human being, and not just a voice occasionally heard on my playlist. She was not only the remarkable pianist who replaced Fats Waller when he left NY's radio station WABC, she subsequently (reportedly) inspired Dave Brubeck in the early days of his career.

As she matured, she left show business, got baptized, and went on to pursue a career as a nurse, and only later returned to music...  to sing gospel for her church and a small few other performances.