This is a public service announcement for the musically jaded.
Don’t know about you, but I start whistling Christmas carols around Halloween.
By this time of year, I’ve worked my way through most of my repertoire.
Greensleeves? Done it. Oh Tannenbaum (in German courtesy of all those years of high school German)? Check. Little Town of Bethlehem? It Came Upon a Midnight Clear?
And every year I find myself falling back in the week or two before Christmas on Deck the Halls. Not so much because it’s my favorite carol but because Walt Kelly wrote such an amazing set of words for it in “Pogo” so many years ago.
Let me give you the words to the first two verses.
Deck us all with Boston Charlie,
Walla Walla, Washington, and Kalamazoo!
Nora’s freezin’ on the trolley,
Swaller dollar cauliflower alley-garoo!
Don’t we know archaic barrel,
Lullaby Lilla Boy, Louisville Lou?
Trolley Molly don’t love Harold,
Boola boola Pensacoola hullabaloo!
You can find all the verses to “Deck us all with Boston Charlie” (there are four more I believe) in Outrageously Pogo.
P.S. Don’t forget to look up Churchy LaFemme’s version of “Good King Sauerkraut, look out! On your feets uneven.”
Jim or anyone:
Why is Boeing sinking like a rock? I thought things finally looking OK for Boeing. It can raise price, dreamliner on its way and orders pile in….. Why is the stock sinking?
They just don’t write music like that anymore, or cartoons, either.
Thanks for recalling them for us.
If you want to really laugh check out some of the christmas carols by “PDQ Bach”, for an example, “O Little Town of Hackensack”. Easily googled.
Great to see Walt Kelly recalled. An amazing talent. When even this gets familiar, Jim, you can try swapping in the words of Ode to Joy–or singing Deck the Halls to Beethoven’s music.