Friday, April 01, 2011

April Fool's Day song

Many years ago when my wife and I were the accompanist and choir director (in that order) at a church, April 1 fell on a Sunday and we thought it would be fun to do something different for the choir's part of the worship service. I had heard a funny song years before on the radio show A Prairie Home Companion that we thought would work. Once in a while, A Prairie Home Companion would have a folk song show where listeners would send in their remembrances of folk songs from their youth (summer camp, Boy Scouts, Girl Scouts, church or school) and the performers on the show would fill the entire show with them. Some of them were familiar and some were silly. Some were profound and some were forgettable. This one was silly but we figured that April Fool's Day kind of gave us license to try it. I passed it by the minister first (he was in the choir, too, so he knew ahead of time) to make sure we weren't being too sacrilegious. Here are the words. I've tried to add more verses over the years but I won't subject you to those.
Adam was the first man, Eve she was the mother,
Cain he was an evil man because he slew his brother.
Samson was a strong man, Noah built the ark.
Jonah ran away from God - got swallowed by a shark.

Chorus:
Oh, young folks, old folks, everybody come,
Come and join the Sunday School and make yourself at home.
Bring your sticks of chewing gum and sit upon the floor and
We'll tell you Bible stories that you've never heard before.
Moses mother hid him in a basket in the brook
Pharaoh's daughter found him when she went to take a look.
When she took him home she said she found him by the shore.
Pharaoh merely smiled and said, "We've heard that tale before."
Chorus
Salome was a dancer. She danced before the king.
She wiggled and she wobbled - almost everything.
"Stop," King Herod cried. "We'll have none of that in here!"
"Oh, yes we will," Salome said. And kicked the chandelier.
Chorus
The congregation really enjoyed it and we had fun performing it. As far as I know, it was never done again. I was the choir director for about seven years and April 1 didn't fall on a Sunday again in that time.

2 comments:

Crafts Made By Me said...

Nice song Daddya, you did a good job!
In that song it was good,
and that is that,
and that was good so now I am telling you that it was good and that is that with a tip of my hat.

JED said...

Thank you for tipping of your hat for this post! I didn't write those verses, though. Mommy and I just performed them along with the choir. It was fun.