One person’s view: “This is one of those songs you might want to hear once a year, but not twice.” – pcno2832 @ YouTube
The public’s view: 2.11 / 5.00
This entry is about a type of novelty song called an interruptabeat. (I’m the only one who calls it that, but no one else has bothered to give this style a name.) An interruptabeat is a conventional music track that is sprinkled with jarring sound effects which completely stop the surrounding rhythm each time they are played. It’s the inverse of the “break-in” records that were popularized by Bill Buchanan and Dickie Goodman, in which snippets of music are inserted into a spoken monologue for comedic effect. Goodman tried to keep this latter type of humor alive until the 1980s by making a new break-in record based on every hit movie that came along, but he finally quit after his E.T. spoof sold hardly any copies. We can all be glad that he stopped before Terms of Endearment was released.
The finest exemplar of the interruptabeat genre is “It’s a Gas”, a 1963 record that was distributed in specially marked copies of Mad Magazine. Countless spelling lessons and church services were disrupted by children who tried to reproduce the sonorous eructations they heard on this track. Meanwhile, parents were apt to find their hi-fi needles damaged after their kids repeatedly played the paper-thin flexible phonograph disc. Despite not charting on the Hot 100, “It’s a Gas” certainly burped its way into America’s hearts.
Buzz Clifford’s “Baby Sittin’ Boogie” is an interruptabeat about a baby who the narrator’s girlfriend is babysitting. The kid really enjoys rock ‘n’ roll, and he imitates the singers on the records that the babysitter plays. After every few lines that Clifford sings, the little rascal interjects with a bit of this mimicry. He is not particularly accurate, but what do you expect? He’s an infant! It’s hard to obtain decent vocal training at his age, because Juilliard doesn’t usually accept people who throw strained carrots across the room at their audition. (Barry Manilow managed to get in anyhow.)
As you might imagine, this song gets a little annoying after a minute or so. The babbling is mostly incoherent, and at one point it sounds like they put the microphone on the wrong end of the baby. I have to respect the authenticity, though. Anyone making a track like this today would rely on AI-generated infant noises, but “Baby Sittin’ Boogie” was created with the help of the producer’s two young children. I wonder whether they ever listed this experience on a résumé when they grew up, or would it have set expectations too high? You might not want to brag about doing vocals on a hit record at 14 months unless you’ve also translated Shakespeare’s works into Esperanto by age 11. Employers like to see some progression.
Although this tune was written by a songwriter from the U.S., it did not stay within our borders. It was later remade by acts in France, Germany, and Great Britain for their local markets. Americans often complain of being treated rudely when they cross the Atlantic, and usually assume this is because of discontent with U.S. foreign policy. I think I’ve found the real reason: Europeans still remember that we gave them “Baby Sittin’ Boogie”.
My rating: 3 / 10
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