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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY Musical satire has become rare today Comedy song lyrics are difficult to write. Even harder to write is satire, whether for the stage or for a book. On Broadway, the cynics have long said that "Satire is something that closes on Saturday night." If it is hard to write satire for publications, think how hard it would be to write novelty songs. Yet comedy tunes and satirical lyrics have always been us, particularly in the �20s and �30s. Great Britain�s Noel Coward was the ultimate music hall man �writing both scores and lyrics in addition to performing. Typical of his satirical songs was "Man Dogs and Englishmen Go Out In The Noonday Sun." The English laughed heartily because they recognized that there was a lot of truth in the song. Moving ahead to the late 1940s, a classical pianist from Scandinavia, Victor Borge, brought humor and satire to the concert halls as well as performing in nightclubs and with major symphony orchestras. He was a pianist of concert caliber who was also what we now would call a "stand-up comic," although he just sat at the piano. He wrote his own material, such as "Audible Punctuation," in which he claimed that English should have sounds for punctuation marks, so he wrote some. Borge appeared before the American public for about 50 years. On the popular music side, Lindley "Spike" Jones, a drummer with several big bands, formed his own group, the City Stickers, in 1942. Spike scored almost immediately with a novelty record, "In Der Fuhrer�s Face," for which he wrote both words and music. The song was later featured in an animated short subject that played in hundreds of movie houses across the country. After the war, Jones took his band on the road. Its bizarre sound effects ranged from penny whistles to blank gunshots, to even hiccups in his greatest hit, "Cocktails For Two." Like they say, "You would have to have been there." In 1946, I attended the band�s appearance which filled the 2,000-seat municipal auditorium in St. Joseph, Mo. The date was also Spike�s birthday, and I was invited to a party in a hotel after the concert. He told me he was proud of having the only band of its kind anywhere, and that there might never be another. He was right. Spike Jones died in 1965 at the age of 54. Other bands and groups over the years have tried to make it with satire, but they didn�t have enough material to make the gig worthwhile. Several Western and hillbilly groups and soloists have tackled humorous songs. One of those from the 1950s was by a country singer in a colorful cowboy outfit, and I�ll attempt portray the way the song was sung by using phonetic spelling. Here it is: "Ciga-reets and Whusky and Wild, Wild Women, They�ll Drive You Crazy, They�ll Drive You Insane." The song was played and sung with a stomping beat, and it was actually a hit. Another humorous song with a country beat also had one of the longest titles of any published in that period: "I�ve Got Tears In My Ears From Lying On My Back and Crying Over You." Band leader Kay Kaiser became famous as much for a radio contest he used during his radio shows as for the music the band played. Kaiser was from Winston-Salem, N.C., and never lost his accent. During his show, he would pick about six people out of audience to compete on the "Kay Kaiser�s Kollege of Musical Knowledge" segment. His program became a hit in prime time broadcasts even though the questions were not hard and the prizes were small. While Kaiser was struggling for professional approval, the record company assigned him to record this number: "Marzee doats and dozedoats and liddle lambs eat divey. A kiddul eat ivy too, wouldn�t you?" Say it aloud, or even sing it. Novelty songs go way back. Around the time of World War I, a hit from Tin Pan Alley was "Yes, We Have No Bananas," which surprised everybody by being a hit. It was about an old vegetable seller in a market somewhere who had lots of vegetables but no bananas. Humor and music can go together, but don�t expect them to make millions by doing it. (Hank Henry is a retired Jackson County commissioner and a former radio and television announcer. Call him at 772-9055.) Obituaries | Sports | Business | Classifieds | Tempo | Prime Times | So Oregon Sites | Outdoor Journal | Subscribe | Contact | Movies | Advertise | Real Estate Showcase | Archive | Editorials | Letters to the editor | Religion | Wake-up Call | NIE | Cyber Chef | Job Network | So Oregon Weather | WSJ Northwest | Forums | AP Wire | AP Money | F.A.Q. | Awards Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. The Community Newspaper Subsidiary of Dow Jones & Co, Inc Copyright �The Mail Tribune 2000, Medford, Oregon USA