Gentle Readers, a little assistance, if you please.
\n
Your Humble Blogger has started for himself a little tradition (if you do something twice, it’s a tradition, right?) of making a mix CD as opening-night gifts for the cast and crew. For The Man who Came to Dinner<\/i>, I did a mix of songs from the 1930s, the era the show was set, although I did mix in some other songs that fit the mood, even if they were recorded later. For Les Liaisons Dangereuses<\/i>, I made an Early Music mix (explaining that after a fair amount of research, I decided that I just don’t like music from the 1780s). For Pygmalion<\/i>, my idea is a mix of songs where the singers put on funny accents. Or songs about people with funny accents. Probably supplemented by songs where the singers actually have funny accents, to fill up an hour.
\n
Off the top of my head, there’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”, and probably Noel Coward’s “Has Anybody Seen My Ship”, and either Mel Torm\u00e9 singing “Autumn Leaves” in a Faux French Accent or Trout Fishing in America singing “Proper Cup of Coffee” in Faux French. There’s Bing Crosby and Bob Hope singing “Hoots, Mon” from the Road to Bali.
\n
I could find “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, either the Irving Kaufman hit or the Spike Jones travesty. Louis Prima, of course, does it in Mock Italian rather than Mock Greek, but I could come up with some other Louis Prima Mock Italian, like “Angelina” or “Felicia No Capicia”.
\n
One problem, of course, is that many of the possibilities are racist, or at least smell of racism, to the point where I’d rather not include them. Is Harry Belafonte putting on the Jamaican accent he lost as a child to sing Calypso racist? No, not really. I could put the Banana Boat song on, or even “Matilda”. What about Nat King Cole singing “Calypso Blues”? I mean, somewhere along the line you get to Al Jolson, yes? Not that “Yes, We Have No Bananas” is not<\/i> racist. It is. But somehow, now that Southern European isn’t a race anymore, I don’t mind it too much. Of course, there’s the anti-immigrant thing, but isn’t that the whole point of funny-accent music? Perhaps I could put that in the liner notes.
\n
Anyway, I’m looking for suggestions. My own taste leans to mid-century stuff (er, the 20th century, you remember), but I’d be happy to have a ton of rock-and-roll, if we can come up with enough. I find that a mix that is mostly in one (broadly defined) style but has one or two songs from a different style doesn’t work very well, but a mix that swings from style to style can work very well indeed. I am aware that the lead singer of Green Day affects an accent, but I don’t know their stuff, and I would have to put on, I don’t know, Ian Dury’s “Billericay Dickie” to cushion it. Does that count as a fake accent? Mr. Dury wasn’t really from Essex, you know.
\n
Anyway, I’m—did I mention this?—looking for suggestions. Criteria: Song must have at least one verse in accented English, preferably fake, ideally outrageously obviously fake. Song must be reasonably pleasant to listen to anyway. Song should ideally avoid outright racism. It would be nice to avoid vicious mean-spirited mockery, although affectionate mockery would be acceptable. Obscenities are a strike against, although I could presumably make a different disc for the children in the cast. Songs from stage musicals are also a strike against, although later recordings by different singers may well be fine. Sock it to me, Gentle Readers.
\n
Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus<\/I>,
-Vardibidian.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
In Which Your Humble Blogger needs a little help from his friends.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[200],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-music-music"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18442,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11320\/revisions\/18442"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/vardibidian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}