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Charlotte Greenwood, "Oh By Jingo!" (1919)

"The Sheik of Araby" (1921)

A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music. The other two divisions were ballads and dance music. Novelty songs achieved great popularity during the 1920s and 1930s. They had a resurgence of interest in the 1950s and 1960s.

Le Novelty song est un genre comique et absurde, joué pour un effet comique. Pour autant les sons humoristiques, ou contenant des éléments amusants ne font pas parti de ce genre. Son nom provient du surnom de la musique populaire, Tin Pan Alley, qui a d'ailleurs crée une des plus grande divisions de la musique populaire. Les deux autres divisions étaient la musique dansante et ballade. Le Novelty song est devenu populaire durant les années 1950 et 1960.

Novelty songs are often a parody or humor song, and may apply to a current event such as a holiday or a fad such as a dance or TV programme. Many use unusual lyrics, subjects, sounds, or instrumentation, and may not even be musical. For example, the 1966 novelty song "They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!" has little music and is set to a rhythm tapped out on a snare drum and tambourine.

Les Novelty songs sont souvent des parodies ou des sons humoristique, associés à des évènements récents comme les vacances, un programme de Télévision. Ils utilisent des paroles, thèmes, sons, et des instrumentation peu communes et peut être pas perçu comme de la musique. Par exemple la musique de 1966 "They're going to take me away, Ha-Haaa!" a une petite musique constitué d'un rhythm tapé sur une caisse claire et tambourin.

A famous book on achieving an attention-grabbing novelty single is The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), written by The KLF. It is based on their achievement of a UK number-one single with "Doctorin' the Tardis", a 1988 dance remix mashup of the Doctor Who theme song released under the name of 'The Timelords.' It argued that (at the time) achieving a number one single could be achieved less by musical talent than through market research, sampling and gimmicks matched to an underlying danceable groove.

Un livre célèbre sur la réalisation des novelty son is The Manual (How to Have a Number One the Easy Way), écrit par le groupe The KLF. Le livre est basé sur leur réussite à être numéro 1 en Angleterre avec "Doctorin' the Tardis", un remix mashup de la musique de Doctor Who publié sous le nom de "The Timelords". Il a soutenu que (à l'époque) atteindre un numéro un pourrait être atteint moins par le talent musical que par la recherche de marché,l'échantillonnage et les gadgets correspondant à un groove dansant sous-jacent.

History Histoire

Novelty songs were a major staple of Tin Pan Alley from its start in the late 19th century. They continued to proliferate in the early years of the 20th century, some rising to be among the biggest hits of the era. Varieties included songs with an unusual gimmick, such as the stuttering in "K-K-K-Katy" or the playful boop-boop-a-doops of "I Wanna Be Loved By You", which made a star out of Helen Kane and inspired the creation of Betty Boop; silly lyrics like "Yes! We Have No Bananas"; playful songs with a bit of double entendre, such as "Don't Put A Tax On All The Beautiful Girls"; and invocations of foreign lands with emphasis on general feel of exoticism rather than geographic or anthropological accuracy, such as "Oh By Jingo!", "The Sheik Of Araby", "The Yodeling Chinaman". These songs were perfect for the medium of Vaudeville, and performers such as Eddie Cantor and Sophie Tucker became well-known for such songs. Zez Confrey's 1920s instrumental compositions, which involved gimmicky approaches (such as "Kitten on the Keys") or maniacally rapid tempos ("Dizzy Fingers"), were popular enough to start a fad of novelty piano pieces that lasted through the decade.

Les Novelty songs ont été un aliment de base important de Tin Pan Alley depuis son début à la fin du 19ème siècle. Ils ont continué à s'amplifié au début du 20ieme siècle, certain considérés comme les plus grands succès de l'époque.

A famous 1940s novelty song was Spike Jones' 1942 "Der Fuehrer's Face", which included raspberries in its chorus. The 1953 #1 single "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" became notable both for its extensive airplay and the backlash from listeners who found it increasingly annoying.^{[réf. nécessaire]} Satirists such as Stan Freberg and Tom Lehrer used novelty songs to poke fun at contemporary pop culture in the 1950s and early 1960s.

In 1951, Frank Sinatra was paired in a CBS television special with TV personality Dagmar(actress). Mitch Miller at Columbia Records became intrigued with the pairing and compelled songwriter Dick Manning to compose a song for the two of them. The result was "Mama Will Bark", a novelty song performed by Sinatra with interspersed spoken statements by Dagmar, saying things like "mama will bark", "mama will spank", and "papa will spank". The recording even includes the sound of a dog yowling. It is regarded by both music scholars and Sinatra enthusiasts to be perhaps the worst song he ever recorded. Sinatra would in fact record a few others before he left Columbia and joined Capitol Records in 1952.

Dickie Goodman faced a lawsuit for his 1956 novelty song "The Flying Saucer", which sampled snippets of contemporary hits without permission and arranged them to resemble interviews with an alien landing on Earth. Goodman released more hit singles in the same vein for the next two decades.

The Coasters "Yakety Yak" became a #1 single on July 21, 1958, and is the only novelty song (#346) included in the Songs of the Century. "Lucky Ladybug" by Billy and Lillie was popular in December 1958.

Three songs using a sped-up recording technique became #1 hits in the United States in 1958-59: David Seville's "Witch Doctor" and Ragtime country Joe, Sheb Wooley's "The Purple People Eater", and Seville's "The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)", which used a speeded-up voice technique to simulate three chipmunks' voices. The technique (which Dickie Goodman had also used on "The Flying Saucer") would inspire a number of other knockoffs, including The Nutty Squirrels and Russ Regan's one-off group "Dancer, Prancer and Nervous."

In 1960, 16-year-old Brian Hyland had a novelty hit with the song "Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini", by Paul Vance and Lee Pockriss, which topped the Billboard single chart. The Trashmen had novelty song "Surfin Bird". In 1964, the Grammy for Best Country and Western Album was awarded to Roger Miller. Miller was known to sing novelty songs.

History: 1970s - present

Chuck Berry's "My Ding-a-Ling" reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1972, and Ray Stevens, known for such novelty hits as "Ahab the Arab", "Gitarzan", and "Mississippi Squirrel Revival", had a #1 hit with "The Streak" in 1974. Comedy act Cheech & Chong recorded a number of musical bits that can be classified as novelty songs, including "Basketball Jones"(1973) and "Earache My Eye"(1974). Other novelty songs in the 70s are Rick Dees "Disco Duck"(1976) and The Fools "Psycho Chicken(1978). "Weird Al" Yankovic would emerge as one of the most prolific parody acts of all time in the 1980s, with a career that would span the next four decades; he would join English singer Cliff Richard in being one of the few acts to have at least one top-40 hit in the U.S. in four consecutive decades (1950s through the 1980s for Richard, 1980s to 2010s for Yankovic). In the late 1970s and early 1980s one of the strangest but most popular novelty songs became a Christmas standard (sort of). Randy Brooks wrote a song and it was originally recorded by then husband-wife recording duo Elmo Shropshire and his wife Patsy in 1979, called "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer". It tells the tragic-comic story of a family grandmother who meets her end Christmas Eve. After having drunk too much eggnog and forgetting to take her medicine, she staggers out of her family's house late Christmas Eve. She is mauled over by Santa Claus' entourage, and found dead at the scene the next morning. "Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer" is perhaps the only hit Christmas novelty song which has had continuous popularity since circa 1980.

An underground novelty music scene began to emerge in the 1960s, beginning with the homosexually themed songs of Camp Records, then in the 1970s and 1980s with X-rated albums by David Allan Coe and Clarence "Blowfly" Reid.

Novelty songs have been popular in the U.K. as well. In 1991, "The Stonk" novelty song raised over £100,000 for the Comic Relief charity. In 1993, "Mr Blobby" became the second novelty song to reach the coveted Christmas number one slot in the UK, following Benny Hill's 1971 chart-topper "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)". Many popular children's TV characters would try to claim the Christmas number one spot after this. In 1997, the Teletubbies who reached number one the previous week failed to gain it with their single "Say Eh-oh!".^{[réf. nécessaire]} They came second in the charts to The Spice Girls second of three consecutive Christmas number ones, with "Too Much".^{[réf. nécessaire]} Later on at the turn of the millennium, Bob the Builder was successful in achieving a Christmas number one in 2000, with "Can We Fix It?". However, Bob the Builder did have another number one single a year later with a cover of Lou Bega's "Mambo No.5", and also had another less successful single in 2008 "Big Fish Little Fish".

Some novelty music draws its appeal from its unintentional novelty; so-called "outsider musicians" with little or no formal musical training often will produce comical results (see for instance, Florence Foster Jenkins, Mrs. Miller, the Portsmouth Sinfonia, The Shaggs, and William Hung),.

After the fictitious composer P.D.Q. Bach repeatedly won the "Best Comedy Album" Grammy from 1990 to 1993, the category was changed to "Best Spoken Comedy Album"; when "Best Comedy Album" was reinstated in 2004, "Weird Al" Yankovic won for Poodle Hat.

Novelty songs were popular on U.S. radio through the 1970s and 1980s, to the point where it was not uncommon for novelty songs to break into the top 40. Freeform and album-oriented rock stations made use of novelty songs; some of the best-known work from Frank Zappa, for instance, is his extensive body of mostly adult-oriented novelty music. Zappa had "Dancing Fool", "Disco Boy". Beginning in 1970, Dr. Demento's nationally syndicated radio show gave novelty songs an outlet for much of the country; this lasted through the mid-2000s, when the show (mirroring trends in the genre) faded in popularity until its terrestrial cancellation in June 2010.

One of the longest selling novelty songs of the Rock and Roll era is Zane Ashton's whimsical "He Was A Mean Dragon," recorded in 1961 on Lan-Cet Records and still being sold on the internet today. Members of the band on the record include The Wrecking Crew members Ray Pohlman, Earl Palmer, and Al Casey, With the 2007 re-issue of the record by Ace Records in England and entitled "The Dragon", this record is well on the way to actually becoming "The Longest Selling Novelty Record." The record was recently picked up to be sold on iTunes and other sites, which will further enhance its longevity. The recording by Zane Ashton (aka Bill Aken) was featured in 2014 as part of the score in the film Lost River.

In the 21st century, novelty songs have found a new audience online: the hit song "The Fox (What Does the Fox Say?)" by Norwegian comedy duo Ylvis was featured on the kids' compilation album So Fresh Pop Party 13 in 2014.

Top 5 chartings in the U.S.A.

Title	Artist	Highest charting	Date	Comments
The Thing	Phil Harris	#1	December 1950
The Flying Saucer	Buchanan & Goodman	# 3	August 1956
Short Shorts	Royal Teens	#3	February 1958
Witch Doctor	David Seville	#1	April 1958
Beep Beep (The Little Nash Rambler)	The Playmates	#4	November 1958
The Chipmunk Song (Christmas Don't Be Late)	The Chipmunks	#1	December 1958
Yakety Yak	The Coasters	#1	June 1958
The Purple People Eater	Sheb Wooley	#1	June 1958
Alley Oop	The Hollywood Argyles	#1	June 1960
Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini	Brian Hyland	#1	August 1960
Mr. Custer	Larry Verne	#1	September 1960
Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor	Lonnie Donegan	#5	August 1961
Ahab The Arab	Ray Stevens	#5	August 1962
Monster Mash	Bobby "Boris" Pickett & the Crypt-Kickers	#1	September 1962
Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport	Rolf Harris	#3	June 1963
Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah	Allen Sherman	#2	August 1963
Surfin' Bird	The Trashmen	#4	December 1963
The Name Game	Shirley Ellis	#3	January 1965
They're Coming to Take Me Away, Ha-Haaa!	Napoleon XIV	#3	August 13, 1966
Snoopy vs. the Red Baron	The Royal Guardsmen	#2	December 1966
My Ding-a-Ling	Chuck Berry	#1	September 1972
The Streak	Ray Stevens	#1	April 1974
Disco Duck	Rick Dees and his Cast Of Idiots	#1	September 1976

See also

• Novelty
• Comedy

Bibliography

• Aquila, Richard, That Old-time Rock & Roll: A Chronicle of an Era, 1954-1963. University of Illinois Press, 2000. (ISBN 0-252-06919-6)
• Axford, Elizabeth C. Song Sheets to Software: A Guide to Print Music, Software, and Web Sites for Musicians. Scarecrow Press, 2004. (ISBN 0-8108-5027-3)
• Hamm, Charles (ed.). Irving Berlin Early Songs. Marcel Dekker, 1995. (ISBN 0-89579-305-9)
• Tawa, Nicholas E. Supremely American: Popular Song in the 20th Century . Scarecrow Press, 2005. (ISBN 0-8108-5295-0)
• Otfonoski, Steve, The Golden Age of Novelty Songs. Billboard Books, 2000 (ISBN 0-8230-7694-6)