‘Golden Age’ Recalls When Novelty Songs Rivaled Rock

When it comes to the novelty song, scarcely anyone comes close to “Weird Al” Yankovic.

The formerly shy student at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo made his first hit parody, “My Bologna,” after the Knack’s “My Sharona,” in a dormitory restroom with just accordion and vocal. Enhanced by the video age, Yankovic was able to pack even more funny business into his music clips, which in turn sparked hugely theatrical tours, with costume changes for practically every song.

Yankovic, 40, a 20-year veteran of the business, might be too young to remember a time when there were dozens of novelty acts vying for hits and hilarity on the radio.

Steve Otfinoski, an author in Stratford, Conn., has collected the cream of those in a new book, “The Golden Age of Novelty Songs” (Billboard Books, $18.95).

“The best of the novelty songs were as good as anything in rock ‘n’ roll,” says Otfinoski, who usually writes young adult fiction but who also wrote “The Golden Years of Rock Instrumentals.”

“I’ve always been in love with the music of my youth, the ‘60s,” says Otfinoski, 51. “Because that was really the golden age of AM radio, when you could hear so many different kinds of things--from rock ‘n’ roll to R&B; to pop and country to novelty songs--that you just don’t hear on music radio today. And novelty music you don’t hear at all, except ‘Weird Al.’ ”

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Otfinoski gravitated to novelty songs after studying instrumentals; they, too, seemed a neglected part of pop music history.

The modern standard-bearer for novelty music might be Barry Hansen, better known as Dr. Demento on his popular, long-running syndicated radio show.

“I’ve been meaning to write a book like this for 25 years, but Steve Otfinoski got to it first,” Demento says in the book’s forward. “More power to him.”

Demento’s focus on novelty songs since 1974 has altered the field.

In 1975, Benny Bell’s previously little-known 1946 ethnic ditty of double-entendre, “Shaving Cream,” made it to No. 30 on the charts.

The existence of a Dr. Demento show gave hope to home-recording buffs who probably would have gone into some other field had there not been such an outlet, from Barnes and Barnes (“Fish Heads”) to Yankovic, who as a teenager sent cassette tapes to Demento.

The real golden age of novelty songs, though, came in the 1956-61 period, after Elvis had arrived but before the Beatles.

“There was a void then,” Otfinoski says. “But it was a simpler time, too. People could appreciate a silly song then. They’re too sophisticated now.”

The advent of good taste and political sensitivity would never allow a hit today like 1962’s “Ahab, the Arab” by Ray Stevens, who recorded a string of successful novelties, including 1969’s “Guitarzan” and 1974’s “The Streak.”

In interviews after the book’s publication this year, Otfinoski has been reminded of novelty nuggets that had slipped his mind, from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy’s “Paralyzed” to Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant,” songs so different they raise the question: What is a novelty, anyway?

“I think it has to have three ingredients,” Otfinoski says, “humor being the most important thing. Time lines being another. It should have something to do with the times, like when Ray Stevens recorded his song ‘The Streak’ after that fad. The third thing is there should be an overall sense of weirdness, whether it’s the high voices of the Chipmunks or Napoleon XIV’s spiraling voice going higher and higher. That always got me.”

Any good novelty song should have at least one of those elements, he says; the best should have three.

For novelty champs, Otfinoski nominates the Coasters, whose songs like “Yakety Yak” and “Charlie Brown” endure generations later. “But my favorite song of theirs is something called ‘Shopping for Clothes,’ which isn’t really a song at all. It’s just a recording of shopping, with some music in the background. It’s a wonderfully evocative record of black America at the time.” Even so, it, like most of the Coasters’ hits, was written and produced by two white guys from New York, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller.

Otfinoski also praises the work of Roger Miller, who wrote and sang hits like “Dang Me” and “King of the Road.” “He was so human, and his humor was very gentle. But he had a dark side, too.”

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Obscurity is the delight of novelty fans, and Otfinoski counts among his all-time favorites the truly weird 1956 “Transfusion” by Nervous Norvus, “a one-hit weirdo” who sang about running red lights, speeding, drunk driving and promising never to do it again.

Along with an array of crash sound effects, the sick-humor single has the kind of couplets that Paul Simon would use decades later on “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover”: “Shoot the juice to me, Bruce”; “Pour the crimson in me, Jimson.”

“It’s lost none of its novelty and edginess over the years,” says Otfinoski of “Transfusion,” although its author, a ukulele-playing former truck driver named Jimmy Drake, died in 1968 at age 58.

The 1966 “They’re Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!” by Napoleon XIV was banned in many cities for its depiction of mental illness. The flip side was the A-side played backward in its entirety under the title “Aaah-Ah, Yawa Em Ekat Ot Gnimoc Er’yeht.” It was a bold move in the days before juries were playing Ozzy Osbourne records backward in the back-masking witch hunt of the ‘80s.

Weird Al also would be a shoo-in for the all-time novelty hall of fame; he is pictured on the cover of Otfinoski’s book for his sheer number of hits, from the Michael Jackson parody “Eat It “ to the grunge takeoff “Smells Like Nirvana” to “The Saga Begins,” last year’s summary of “Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace” to the tune of “American Pie.”

“He does it so well and packages it so well,” Otfinoski says.

Not only that, but unless you count low-humor contributions of Bloodhound Gang, Yankovic practically has the novelty field to himself. Otfinoski says, though, that artists today, like Beck, use samples in the creative ways that novelty acts like Dickie Goodman used ages ago with singles like “The Flying Saucer.”

But it is odd there aren’t more novelties these days, Otfinoski says, sighing. “There’s so much to make fun of. So much pomposity.”