TALKIN' 'BOUT TOT MUSIC

Since the early 1980's, singer-songwriter-musician, Joe Jack Talcum, has left a long and worthy trail of songs and recordings scattered behind him. Whether on the pop or punk ends of the spectrum, you can always rely on him for some clever or poignant (sometimes even pungent) lyrics, a memorable melody and a heartfelt performance. Most (in)famously known for his work with scruff-pop combo, The Dead Milkmen, Joe Jack has also worked with such diverse lineups as: Ornamental Wigwam, Mosh The Hoople, Touch Me Zoo, We're Not From Idaho, Butterfly Joe, The Big Mess Orchestra and most recently, The Town Managers.

In between van rides and sound checks, Joe Jack has been known to hit the thrift stores in search of kiddie records (among other items), and so today we speak to him in his capacity as a kiddie record fan.

MA: So, what's the deal with kiddie records? Or to use the old gag cartoon psychiatrist's line, "Let's go back to your childhood..."

JJT: Well, my memory doesn't serve me as well as my parents' accounts of my childhood. Since they seem like trustworthy people I'll take their word for it. They claim I displayed such a great interest in my father's AND our next-door neighbors' hi-fi systems when I was a baby that they bought me my own turntable when I was only 18 months of age. This did the trick and kept me away from my father's expensive system! I could play my own records on my own system and I did.

As far back as I can remember, I loved records. It wasn't necessarily the music I was interested in. I liked the mechanics of the thing... I was fascinated with the way it worked and made sound, which is quite understandable to me even today.

It was my parents who pushed "kiddie records" on me. They bought them for me, and even subscribed to a monthly service from Disneyland Records which, in retrospect, wasn't really wise as I didn't pay much attention to those recordings. When I was old enough to go shopping with them -- age 3, I think -- they let me pick out my own 45-rpm records from the children's section at the department store, Jamesway. I got to pick one per visit, about one a month. I remember several times trying to choose a Top 40 45-rpm record from the rack right next to the kiddie records, but my parents denied me these saying, "you are not old enough!" Better not make too much of a fuss, I figured. I would quickly choose a kiddie record, and we'd soon be on our way home. I could not wait to hear it! The excitement of playing a brand new record for the first time is still a rich memory!

I loved records. I loved watching them spin. It wasn't so much the music at first as it was a fascination with the mechanics of the system. I performed my own experiments much to the consternation of my parents. I took some of my mom's 78-rpm collection, for example, and embedded the grooves with a thick coating of crayon to see what effect that would have on the playback. The result was extremely decreased fidelity and a spanking.

MA: Ouch! Of course, I say that on behalf of those mistreated records, not you. So once you got past the machine and began to notice the content, did you have any favorites?

JJT: I had a favorite 45 that I played almost every day for I don't know how long. It almost haunted me. It was a Peter Pan 4-song EP, all train-related songs, and the one song I kept playing was called Rock Island Line. I later learned that there was an earlier pop hit version of this song by Lonnie Donegan, but this wasn't by him. In fact there was no artist credit on the record. I think it's an old folk song. Also on the record was I've Been Working on the Railroad which was sung by the Peter Pan Singers, a really stiff version. But Rock Island Line was sparse and soulful. It sounds like an upright bass, guitar, drums and a vocal, and it stood out on the EP. It was almost rock-n-roll. I don't have my original copy of this record, but I found a used one in a thrift store in 1987, without the sleeve and with a different, newer label design. Playing it brought back a lot of memories. It's a song about how a train engineer tricks a toll taker into letting him go without paying the toll. He lies about the contents in his train -- seems you didn't have to pay tolls for cargos of livestock -- and brags in the song about how he got his cargo of pig iron by the toll taker by declaring it as livestock. Now, isn't it strange that a children's record would contain a song sung gleefully from the point of view of a dishonest engineer?

I didn't know what the hell pig iron was when I first heard this song. Iron from a pig? I did get the gist of the story and I loved the melody. I still do. But a few years later, my first grade class was shown a film about steel making -- I grew up near Coatesville, PA, home of Lukens Steel Company, which was then still a major part of the town's economy. I don't remember a whole lot about the film except that I was struck by images of molten PIG IRON and I associated those images with the cargo of the train in the song. When I'd hear a distant train at night I'd imagine it was carrying molten pig iron to Lukens!

There was another 45 I played so often my parents complained. It wasn't really my record. It belonged to my uncle, but I took it over. And it wasn't really a kiddie record, though kiddie versions exist. It was the theme song from Davy Crockett on the Monument label, a pop hit I think, which was a popular tv show at the time. I own a Disneyland 45 version of this song now. What sticks out in my mind about the Monument record is the "swirl" label art which was fun to look at while the record spun. The other record I had with a similar swirl, different colors, was one from another uncle's restaurant jukebox (he'd give me the worn out ones knowing that I loved records) on the Capitol label: Hello Goodbye / I Am the Walrus by The Beatles. While certainly not a kiddie record, it did have kiddie appeal and was another record I played often, not just to look at the label spin.

There were two 33-rpm 12 inch albums I liked a lot. One was called, simply, The Three Little Pigs. I cannot remember the label -- I'm thinking Golden Records. It was just the story of the three little pigs narrated with some sound effects and music. No songs that I can remember. I liked this story I suppose. It was one my mother told me in her own version and it was nice to hear a familiar story, I guess, on record.

The other album was on the Disneyland label. My parents got it as a premium at a gas station, I think. I wish I still had it. Disney's Merriest Melodies was the title -- a compilation of Disney hits including Zippadee Doo-Dah and When You Wish Upon a Star and The Bear Necessities -- a lot of good songs. Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was on it too. That album spent a lot of time on my kiddie turntable.

MA: What with those jukebox records and The Beatles, I imagine you managed to bust into the Top 40 bin before too long.

JJT: Actually my parents would never buy me any Top 40 records. If I'd pick out a Top 40 record at the store they'd say, "You're not old enough for that one." There was a price difference between kiddie records and Top 40: the kiddie 45's usually went for 29 cents. I think the Top 40 ranged from 49 to 69 cents. Still, they allowed me to have the Top 40 records my uncle gave me.

I didn't add my own Top 40 records to my collection until I started earning money by doing chores around the house. I was in the fourth grade by then and the first records I bought with my "own money" were by The Partridge Family. Just like with my kiddie records, I got rid of them when I got older -- I was embarrassed to own them. But later I repurchased some of them in thrift shops.

I was happy to get any record when my parents took me shopping with them. I wanted the Top 40 records more than I wanted the kiddie records, but the kiddie records were better than no record at all. I loved records, period.

MA: Did the usual successive cycles of "this isn't cool anymore" set in as you got older?

JJT: I suppose so. By the time I was in first grade I was listening to the jukebox records my uncle gave me a lot more than my kiddie records. I was also struck by some of the records my other uncle, the one who lived with us and was a teenager at the time, was playing. His neighborhood friend would come over with Top 40 45's and play them on my record player. I had a record player, he did not. I remember some of those listening sessions fondly.

MA: And from there, it was down the ol' road to perdition -- from pop and rock to punk and new wave. Eventually ascending to vinyl-hood yourself!

JJT: The spiral groove led to the downward spiral! But it seemed innocent in the sixties.

Punk and new wave excited me in a lot of the same ways that Rock Island Line did, and The Beatles did, and those sixties pop records did.

I did often daydream in my early years of making records, but not with me on them. I fantasized about owning my own record making machine with which I could crank out customized 45's and albums for myself and friends. I didn't know then that such machines actually existed. I dreamed of my own record company. I even designed a logo for it -- Deft Records -- I don't know why I chose that name -- and dreamed up a roster of artists, album art and discographies. This fantasy world of mine grew to be quite elaborate and somewhat secretive. It's something I did alone -- a world I was master of and could escape to on a daily basis. I would spin records around on an imaginary turntable on my lap and sing made-up songs for my made-up artists on my made-up radio station. I had a made-up TV station too, but that's another story. I even came up with competing labels and artists who were not mine. None of my artists made kiddie records, though. They were strictly in the pop market. This fantasy world of mine faded out by the time I was 10 or 11.

Though the idea of fictitious bands cropped up a couple more times in my high school days in a more "out of the closet" fashion... a role-playing game I designed called Billboard Top 100 had players manage their own fictitious bands and try to pitch singles up the chart. And of course there were the fan newsletters I published for the fake band, The Dead Milkmen -- a name I actually came up with while playing my Billboard Top 100 game with some of the neighborhood gang.

It was definitely a dream come true to make records with a REAL band, though at the time of the making of our first record, my main goal was to TOUR THE U.S. -- see the country firsthand! -- and making a record was a means to that end, or so I told myself.

MA: Having made it onto vinyl and hitting the tour circuit successfully, how did you ever get back to kiddie records?

JJT: Well, by 1987 I was on tour with the Dead Milkmen about two thirds of the year and home for the other third. I rented a modest third floor apartment with two art student friends in a section of Philadelphia called Germantown, which was about a block away from two very large thrift shops. I wandered into one of them looking for some books and clothes to take on the next tour, and there I came across a stack of old 45's for the very low price of 5 cents each. One of them was the Rock Island Line train-themed Peter Pan EP. I bought it despite its poor condition. I bought a couple other odd records too, and an album by Jerry Vale: Let It Be, featuring his cover of the Beatles song. I didn't really consider myself a collector of children's records then, just a record collector. But I became hooked on this particular thrift shop. We called it Whosoever Gospel. That's what the sign outside said. Their records were priced lower than at any other. And the selection was changing enough that if I visited it weekly, I could find something new. Kiddie records were a lot of what I purchased there, but I bought all kinds of things -- from almost perfect condition Ramones albums to a very worn Frank Sinatra album that contained a cover of the Muppet's Bein' Green! I started to make compilation cassettes for myself and friends that contained almost exclusively songs from these thrift shop finds and that's how I think I earned the reputation as a "kiddie record collector."

MA: What was the appeal of the kiddie records this second time around?

JJT: There was a nostalgic appeal. But also I liked the absurdity of some of the lyrics of songs I'd never heard before. Dave Blood and I were inspired to cover a couple of the Peter Pan 45 songs at our Ornamental Wigwam shows -- Peter the Flameless Dragon and Lenny the Leopard. Two bizarre morality tales with simple melodies that lent themselves nicely to folk-style renditions. The goofiness of some of the arrangements and voice-overs in the activity records for children -- such as Let's Play Zoo on the Young Peoples Records label, 45-rpm -- amused me as well and added spice, or a nice break, I thought, to some of my compilation tapes of contemporary music. Some songs reminded me of what I liked about recent Jonathan Richman songs -- a fresh, naive innocence on the surface. And then there were the completely messed up songs that have to be heard to be believed, like Tinkertown Santa Claus. These were songs out of left field. Odd ditties, nutty plot twists, no real "lesson" to be learned, just pure wacky entertainment. A song like Tinkertown Santa was gold for my compilations.

MA: Don't tease! Tell us more, please. Come to think of it, this is probably a good time to dig into the stack and highlight some of your favorites. Highlights for Children?!?

JJT: Well, I first encountered Tinkertown Santa Claus on a 45-rpm EP of traditional Christmas carols where it stood out like a moldy carrot. Tinkertown is a rather odd secular Christmas song striving to be a Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer or Frosty the Snowman. It has a sort of big band orchestration, but with very little syncopation, almost like a march. The melody is just a little bit catchy, just enough to become annoying. The story, sung by a mixed chorus, is just bizarre. It's about a place (a town, I assume) called Tinkertown, which apparently has its own Santa Claus. The people from Tinkertown are pretty much like us. Their Santa seems very similar. He glides through the air on Christmas and enters homes through chimneys, leaving gifts. But the Tinkertown folks don't want toys and things next Christmas. All they're asking for is control of their voices! It seems they have a problem with singing in Tinkertown -- as the lyrics put it:

"Tinkertown folks are no different than us
but their voices they can't control
When Tinkertown folks all start to sing
it sounds like they're standing in a hole

"Next year, Santa when you call
please bring us the wherewithal
so we won't sound like we're a mole
singing songs in a great big hole"

The songwriting credits are Freeman-Thigpen, with no publisher listed. I lost my first copy of this recording, which I found at a thrift shop in 1987. I think the label was Mr. Pickwick, but I'm not certain. I lost that one but found the exact same version recently as the b-side of Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer (C-X-20), a Cricket 45-rpm sold by Pickwick Sales Corp -- "sung by The Cricketones with cast and orchestra directed by Warren Vincent, produced by Roy Freeman." The label and artwork suggest this copy is from the mid-sixties. My hunch is that the song was recorded in the fifties and there might even be 78-rpm versions around.

I searched the web a couple of nights ago and did not find much in the area of "children's records" and nothing at all on Cricket or Pickwick. I did find, on an Antique Shop Site, two pages of 78-rpm children's records with pictures of their sleeves and brief notes. Most had prices from 15 to 20 dollars and most were marked sold. The labels included Golden, Wonderland, Columbia, RCA Victor and Young Peoples Records.

Speaking of Young Peoples Records, I know very little about this label, but I did come across a 45 of theirs in a thrift store and it's been another one of my favorites. It's called Let's Play Zoo and unfortunately I don't have its sleeve. It's a charming "let's pretend we are animals at the zoo" presentation, with singing and talking by Tom Glazer. Classical themes are woven into the orchestration. I've excerpted this for compilations. I never forced anyone else to listen to the whole thing -- which consumes both sides of the 45 -- though it is charming.

A couple of years ago I came across a copy of the 33-rpm 12-inch Golden Records album, Dance and Sing Mother Goose With a Beatle Beat. I haven't used it on any compilations yet, but it's still a favorite. I'm a big fan of the Beatles, and though there are no actual Beatles on this disc, the cover art features Beatles-esque caricatures. But I doubt this was licensed by the Beatles or licensing agents, Seltaeb. The songs are re-workings of nursery rhymes like Humpty Dumpty and Jack and Jill with music that mimics the Beatles' early style -- complete with trademark "oohs" -- as well as styles the Beatles drew from, and each song is sub-titled with a corresponding dance or beat such as Frug or Bo Diddley. There are no instructions for these dances. I guess the hip kids back then just knew them. This album was released in 1964 as Beatlemania swept America.

MA: Hmm, I'm a little surprised to hear that's on Golden Records. It seems more like the sort of thing that would come from those free-wheelers at Peter Pan. Most of my old kiddie records are Little Golden Record 45's -- I wonder if they might have had a rack of them at the Food Fair supermarket my mother shopped at way back then. Anyway, I don't know about your experience, but my Golden sides tend to be a little stodgy -- most of them cut by the Mitch Miller Orchestra -- except for some of the cartoon tie-in records. Which are dodgy, 'cause some of them don't have the real voices.

My favorite though, is a "real deal" -- even has the cartoon's own people behind it: Rocky and Bullwinkle doing I'm Rocky's Pal / I Was Born To Be Airborne (FF659), writer's credits to Paul Parnes. Airborne is okay, but nothing real special. It's sort of a march, with a solo Rocky singing about how he loves flying, with plenty of jet swoop sound effects thrown in. I'm Rocky's Pal is the real gold. It's basically Rocky and Bullwinkle doing a vaudeville act. Rocky introduces Bullwinkle. Bullwinkle sings his little song ("I'm Rocky's pal, I'm Rocky's pal / So greetings, culture buffs..."). They do some standup patter, with Bullwinkle doing a medium referential stuck needle bit. And on out with Bullwinkle's juggling act. It's an action-packed couple of minutes. It was a favorite when I was a kid also, judging by the record wear. Oops! Who's being interviewed here?

JJT: That sounds like a great record! I have quite a few Golden albums and 45's that feature orchestration by Mitch Miller and they are indeed a bit stodgy. Golden seemed to have a fixation on nursery rhymes -- or maybe that's just a reflection of what I happened to purchase of theirs -- Golden Nursery School is an album that comes to mind. Didn't Mitch Miller do a bunch of records with Columbia too, the Sing Along With Mitch series? Did Columbia have anything to do with Golden? Were they related? Hey, who IS being interviewed here?

MA: Uh, I think it's drifted into a conversation. Yeah, at least some of the Sing Along With Mitch albums were on Columbia's Harmony imprint. I must confess, I find their military drill-team precision singing rather frightening. He also held an A&R position at Columbia/CBS. So maybe there is a connection. The only affiliation mentioned on Golden sleeves is with Affiliated Publishers, "a division of Pocket Books, Inc." I would imagine that tied in with the Golden children's books.

Some of the other performers I see popping up on Golden are The Jimmy Carroll Orchestra and The Jim Timmens Orchestra. And of course, The Sandpiper Singers, or sometimes simply, The Sandpipers. Listening to the records, I suspect that was just their generic name for whatever studio singers did the session. One Golden singer who did get a lot of lead vocal credits is Anne Lloyd. She does a great job on When The Red Red Robin Comes Bob Bob Bobbin' Along (FF365). If the heat were turned up just a little bit, it would be downright torchy. I wonder if she did anything outside the kiddie market. Actually I'd like to know more about all of these unsung artists. Were they session players on just another job, or did they specialize in this genre?

JJT: I have that record too! It's one of the few 45's I have with the original sleeve, the flip side of The Little White Duck, 29 cents, 35 cents in Canada.

MA: Oh, another good cartoon 45 from Golden -- with the real voices -- is The Flintstones' Dino The Dino, Parts 1 & 2 (FF739). It features Fred and Wilma extolling the charms of Dino in an appealing spoken-sung style. It's a real nice tune, kind of snazzy, but with a friendly, casual feel. Dino and Barney pop up also, but Fred and Wilma are the lead singers on this one. Golden had their moments. They also put out a fine Popeye album, Popeye The Sailorman and His Friends (LP56). More real voices: Jack Mercer and Mae Questel "As the Entire Cast," to quote the label. Written by Bill Kaye with music and orchestra by Jimmy Carroll. It opens with a cool rendition of Popeye's theme song, Popeye doing a bit of scat singing as only he can, followed by a story about Popeye and Olive making a movie about spying in Havana -- with Olive as a Mata Hari-type who slips a mickey into Popeye's drink. It has some really lush accordion music in it, and Olive singing Popeye a very romantic lullaby. Terrific.

Then again, they also put out this Bugs Bunny 45, What's Up Doc? (FF658). Despite the sleeve's claim of "original cartoon voices," I ain't buyin' it. But it's still better than these two Atom Ant 45's on Hanna-Barbera Records. They feature Atom Ant on the sleeve, but he's nowhere on the vinyl -- just the Hanna-Barbera Singers doing standard choral renditions of stuff like Happy Birthday (C-101) and I've Been Working On The Railroad (C-102).

JJT: Speaking of records that don't feature the real cartoon voices, I had a couple of 8-track tapes from Captain Kangaroo that I'm certain didn't feature the real Captain's voice! I also have a special personalized Happy Birthday 7-inch 45 for someone named Ryan. One voice sings the song, wishing a happy birthday, right up until the name comes up, then a very obviously "punched in" different voice comes in with "RYAN" at the appropriate moments. It's rather amusing to me, but if I were Ryan, as a kid hearing this record, I think I'd feel just a little cheated.

MA: Sooo, I don't have much of their stuff, but Peter Pan Records -- from the busy vinyl vats at Synthetic Plastics Co., Newark, NJ -- always struck me as having a somewhat more fast and loose approach.

JJT: Ahh, yes. Peter Pan does seem a bit more exploitative, don't they? I got a bunch of Peter Pan LP's from the cut-out bins in the late 80's. I think they got caught pressing too much vinyl after the market had shifted to cassettes and CD's. They featured really poorly drawn Warner Bros. cartoon characters and Marvel Comics characters and it looked like it was licensed, because it had all the proper copyright info, but I'm still not sure...

Peter Pan are still my favorite, hands down. I'd say the Pickwick / Cricket labels were the fast and loose ones, and I still have a special spot in my heart for those early Cricket 45's of mine even if I can't remember a note of the music. Peter Pan albums have most of the competition beat, in my opinion. First of all, Golden Records usually offered only one side of album art. The back cover was merely a brochure for other albums in the series. That's what's so frustrating to me about the Dance and Sing Mother Goose With a Beatle Beat Golden Record. There really should have been more information which could have easily been included on the back cover. Every single one of my Peter Pan albums has art on the front and back, and I think that impressed me as a kid. Well, it impressed me now at any rate.

I think Peter Pan's marketing approach was to appeal directly to the kids themselves and get the kids to say, "Hey Mom, buy this for me!" Whereas Golden's approach was to appeal to the parents first so they'd see it and think, "Oh what a nice record for my child. Let me purchase this one." Though I'm not sure parents in 1964 would go out of their way to buy the Beatle Beat record, even though the songs are purported to be Mother Goose nursery rhymes. And conversely, what parent wouldn't want to buy for their child the wonderful Peter Pan album, A Calendar Of Happy Thoughts -- featuring 30 original positive messages for everyday living, such as, Your House Is a Wonderful Place and Your Mother & Father Are People Too.

Parents might have balked at buying the Peter Pan 7 disc box set of 7-inch 45's simply titled Hit T.V. Themes, which apparently was issued in the mid seventies, and featured the themes from Welcome Back Kotter, Good Times, Chico and The Man, The Six Million Dollar Man and ten others -- not bad versions either. But the kid in me, had I been that young then, would surely have coveted that item. The kid in me bought it at a thrift shop in the early 90s. They did seem to crank out a lot of stuff and I'd agree a lot of it was cruder sounding than what Golden was issuing.

One of my most recent Peter Pan purchases was of a still shrinkwrapped copy of the album, Wacky Winners, featuring popular "wacky" songs as performed by The Puff 'n' Toot Singers. This looks like a 1980's release to me. I bought it as a cut-out in 1990. I bought it because it claimed to include the song Mule Skinner Blues, and I was very curious to hear what The Puff 'n' Toot Singers did with this song with which I was made familiar by a cover version recorded by The Cramps. Much to my disappointment, the song was not included on the record inside. There is a song called Wringle Wrangle in its place with no explanation. It turned out to be the most interesting song of the collection, almost a little too risque for children, I thought upon first listen, but no Mule Skinner Blues.

There was a four page Consumer Order Form enclosed and this gave me a glimpse into the modern Peter Pan, which became Peter Pan Industries, with no mention of Synthetic Plastics Co. (or S.P.C.). They offered videos -- exercise for the whole family as well as cartoons, sports and instructional videos -- compact discs, one of which is titled Hit T.V. Themes, which I bet has the same program as my box set -- cassettes: sing-a-longs, activity books, read-along books, and books-on-tape -- and 33 1/3 vinyl recordings, including a 2-disc Children's Bible. 45-rpm records were not offered. They also offered a Peter Pan T-shirt for only $5.95!

MA: Isn't it frustrating to find old order forms that you'd really like to use? Some of the other labels that Synthetic Plastics put out -- or at least manufactured -- were Diplomat, Spin-O-Rama, Pirouette, Power and Mother Goose. Probably more besides. And Diplomat even had its own kiddie division: the Rocking Horse Series! I have an album on there called Puff And Toot and Other Musical Stories (5005), featuring the Diplomat Orchestra and Chorus. I guess this might be where your Puff 'n' Toot Singers got their name. It's musical train stories. I love Diplomat's motto: "Fine records need not be expensive."

Do you have many Disneyland records? They're another label that sort of took the "appeal to the parents" approach. Of course they also had the all-conquering Disney marketing machine behind them.

JJT: I would have had a bundle of Disneyland records had I saved my collection from childhood! When I was a tot, my parents got a Disneyland album as a premium for buying Gulf gasoline. It was a compilation of popular Disney soundtrack songs called Disney's Merriest Melodies and quickly became one of my most frequently played records. Not long after that, my parents brought home another Disneyland record for me, Story and Songs About Walt Disney's 3 Little Pigs, which also got a lot of turntable time. Seeing that Disney had something going on for me, they subscribed to a mail-order program offered by Disneyland Records at the time -- the year was probably 1966. Every month a new Disneyland Record came in the mail. Well... unfortunately I did not like them much. The artwork was nice, but once again, these albums had original art only on the front covers -- the backs were advertisements for other records in the series, which were selling for "Only $1.98 each." Some Disneyland Records did have unique album art on front and back, but not in this particular series.

I just didn't like the content of the recorded material much, which often included songs from Disney animated films I hadn't yet seen. This was before video. Disney often re-released their films in theaters, but at the age of four, I still hadn't seen one movie. I didn't go to the theater until I was six. And the songs from Disney's animated films are usually the worst part! I loved The Sword In the Stone when I first saw it as a kid, but even then I wanted the songs to be over as soon as they started. How could I be expected to enjoy an album of nothing BUT the songs? No narration, no story.

I don't have much from Disneyland in my collection now. I still have not come across the 3 Little Pigs record, or Merriest Melodies, but I did find Walt Disney's Merriest Songs in a thrift shop. It's copyright dated 1968, so I assume it's a sequel to Merriest Melodies and it was also offered as a premium to Gulf gasoline customers.

I happened to find a Disneyland 45-rpm EP called Walt Disney's Davy Crockett and Songs of Other Heroes (when did Davy Crockett sell out to Disney?), which I like because it reminds me of the Monument single of the theme song I had as a kid. I have a charming record called Walt Disney Presents Tubby the Tuba (Narrated by Annette). I assume she is Annette Funicello, but there is no last name given. This tells the story of a tuba who is tired of doing the oom-pah all the time and wants to play the melody like the flute or piccolo. The tuba leaves the orchestra in a state of depression, but comes across a bullfrog who convinces him that having a deep booming voice is really cool and useful. Tubby returns to the orchestra, with bullfrog by his side, to oom-pah happily ever after.

The strangest Disneyland Record in my collection is an LP starring Anita Bryant called The Story and Songs of The Orange Bird. This is an elaborately packaged record, including a gatefold sleeve and 11-page color booklet! Copyright dated 1971. It was produced by CAMARATA -- I have no idea who or what that is -- with music and lyrics by Richard M. Sherman and Robert M. Sherman -- they did a lot of Disney songwriting. The orange bird is a bird that cannot sing or talk. It can however, think, and its thoughts become visible as large, smoky, orange words above its head! The orange bird has a series of inane musical adventures and ends up flying over a family's picnic, where he attracts the children's attention. He tells the kids, "I Love You," but the father says, "No, we cannot take that bird home with us!" The family then drives home, and the orange bird flies ahead of them and sees that a bridge on their route has been washed away by a storm! The orange bird "thinks" up a stop sign, and the father, driving the car, stops just in the nick of time and is so thankful for the orange bird's warning that he takes it home! What a super happy ending! I seriously doubt Disneyland Records will be re-releasing this one on CD anytime soon. The album seems to be a tie-in for the then-new Walt Disney World in Florida. The back of the album says, "You can see the Orange Bird in the Sunshine Tree at Walt Disney World." In 1971, I was nine years old and by then I had already outgrown kiddie records, so to speak. I was listening to The Partridge Family -- another type of kiddie record, I suppose -- and the 5th Dimension and Three Dog Night. So I don't remember the Orange Bird at all as a child. I assume this one was a Disney flop.

MA: With Anita Bryant featured, I'd wager that the Florida Orange Growers marketing group was involved also. That Sunshine Tree sounds like a tie-in to their, "A day without orange juice is like a day without sunshine" slogan. That Disney gang always covered all the angles. Even if they did have the occasional flop.

Any other favorites?

JJT: I like a lot of the Sesame Street stuff that the Children's Television Workshop put out on the Columbia label in the early seventies. My youngest brother, six years younger than me, was way into Sesame Street and had some of those records. He was just the right age to experience Sesame Street in its glorious early days. I remember feeling a little envious. There are some classic songs from that era that will probably stay in our culture for a while: Rubber Duckie, Up and Down, Bein' Green. Even Frank Sinatra was moved to record a rather sleepy interpretation of Bein' Green in the mid-70's!

When I was the age my brother was when he was listening to Sesame Street, I was listening to another PBS hero, Mister Rogers, who wrote some classics that have endured for decades now. I have the album by him called You Are Special, which contains one of my all-time favorite kids' songs, You Can Never Go Down The Drain. Your career can go down the drain, but you can't. Mister Rogers' gentle voice calmed fears and massaged egos of generations of children both on vinyl and on television.

MA: How has all of this kid stuff influenced your own music?

JJT: Well, there must have been some influence. The Dead Milkmen were accused in our early days of playing Kiddie Punk. I see the connection now. A lot of the children's music of the sixties was just a stone's throw from bubblegum pop, which was just a hop, skip and a jump from the simple four chord Ramones-style punk songs I was writing.

MA: On behalf of the readers and myself, thanks very much for such a generous interview. Any last words?

JJT: Well, thank you for doing the interview. It was fun. I'd like to end by saying it really does matter what music children hear when they are very young, just like it is important for a child's development of vocabulary to hear a lot of real human talking.

You can really warp a kid by playing a song like Tinkertown Santa Claus over and over.

Interview © 1998 M.Ace / Joe Jack Talcum

Kulture Links:

The Dead Milkmen website, maintained by the band themselves, with links to all else DM on the web.
Joe Jack Talcum himself has set up this Town Managers website.
And then there's this Butterfly Joe website from Razler Records. [dead links]
Here at OOK, read Joe Jack Talcum's account of meeting Danny Bonaduce.
Peter Pan Industries is still around and on the web. [dead link]
The Disney conglomerate, of course, has its own web push going.
Playhouse Records features the fine and wacky recordings of Jim Copp and Ed Brown.
The Kiddie Rekord King specializes in 78's and is working on a full discography of kiddie 78's.
The interviewer wishes to acknowledge the Exotica Mailing List for education and entertainment in his still formative years.