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Over the Back Fence By HANK HENRY When I err, I tend to do it big time After last Tuesday�s column appeared, an elderly man whose name I didn�t catch called to point out that some mistakes had been made in it. You might remember that the subject of last week�s column was humorous or satirical songs from the 1940s and �50s. My caller said there were a number of typos in the body of the column. I later checked and found a major one, as Spike Jones� band was called "The City Slickers," but somehow turned into The "City Stickers," and proofreading hadn�t caught it. That mistake was one too many, but there were more, as my caller pointed out. The last name of another band leader from that same era had been misspelled. Kay Kyser is the correct spelling. Another problem came when I wrote that "Yes, We Have No Bananas" was a song of the World War I era, while it was actually written in the �20s. Still another was that I had written my own version of the lyrics to "Mairzy Doats" and had failed to make that plain. If I had been a student, and my caller my professor, I�m sure he would have given me a failing grade. But I do know this: He was right about the mistakes in the column. In the five years that this space has been mine, I can�t remember a single complaint about a fact in a column; then last Tuesday came around and I made up for it in spades. You may say that attributing a song to the wrong decade isn�t a big deal, and that misspelling the last name of a man who has been dead for decades is not much of a crime. However, people in the news business pride themselves on spending all the time necessary to verify a fact. Technically, I�m not a reporter, but I want to follow a reporter�s precepts. I had intended making one more trip to the reference desk at the library to search for the lyrics to the novelty song and those other things, but I got sidetracked along the way. Actually, there was still another major mistake of fact in the piece, but that one wasn�t mine. I learned about it when I received a call from Mary Wallace Ritch of Rogue River. She said she wanted me to know how much she liked my column, but there was a mistake about who wrote the wartime song, "In Der Fuhrer�s Face." I had ascribed the words and music to band leader Spike Jones, because a reference book on popular music at the Medford Library said he did. Mrs. Ritch said that her late father, Oliver Wallace, had penned the words and music for "In Der Fuhrer�s Face," and Spike Jones had recorded it. Wallace was heard on the record as he performed the raspberry, which was the heart of the song. Later he was flown to New York City to appear in a program whose title was something like "You Were There." He told his daughter that after the program ended, one of the vice presidents of the recording company suggested the voiced raspberry should be replaced with a slide note on a trombone, because we might wind up working for "them." This was early in 1942 when there was considerable apprehension that the Nazis and the Japanese might win. Wallace spent 27 years with Walt Disney, writing music for most of the Disney cartoons and features. He later won an Oscar for the music he wrote for the animated feature, "Dumbo." Finally, I found the official lyrics to that crazy song from 1943. Here they are: "Mair-zy Doats and Do-zy Doats and lid-dle lam-zy divey. A kiddle-y divey too, wouldn�t you?" The official translation comes in the second verse: "Mares eat oats and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy. A kid will eat ivy too, wouldn�t you?" And to show that even reference books can be wrong, "The Great Song Thesaurus" proves the first reference work I read was wrong. Oliver Wallace did write words and music for "In Der Fuher�s Face." (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