It is Sunday July 19, 2020 – Our host Jim Adams has given us the prompt:Bake / Bread/ Cake/Pie/Picnic, for Song Lyric Sunday Suggested by Caramel (Learner At Love) aka Melody
“Bread and Butter” is a 1964 song by American pop vocal trio the Newbeats. Written by Larry Parks and Jay Turnbow, “Bread and Butter” was the group’s first and most popular hit.
“Bread and Butter” served as the Newbeats’ demo in an effort to obtain a recording contract with Hickory Records. They were then asked to formally record the track for the label.[1]
The opening two-chord piano riff and the lead falsetto singing voice of Larry Henley are notable features of the song.
Soon the song was sampled in the Dickie Goodman novelty tune “Presidential Interview (Flying Saucer ’64)”. “Bread and Butter” was the inspiration for the advertising jingle of Schmidt Baking Company used in the 1970s and 1980s; it went: “I like bread and butter, I like toast and jam, I like Schmidt’s Blue Ribbon Bread, It’s my favorite brand”.[2] Devo covered the song in 1986 for the soundtrack to the film 9½ Weeks, but it was not used in the film. A lyrically modified version was used as the theme for the television series Baby Talk. The song features on the soundtrack to the 1998 comedy-drama film, Simon Birch, as well as in the 2004 Will Ferrell comedy, Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy. “Bread and Butter” was featured in The Brave Little Toaster Goes to Mars and in the Lizzie McGuire episode “She Said, He Said, She Said”. The song has also been used as a jingle for Savacentre, Spam, Doritos, Little Chef and Quaker Rice Cakes; as well as in a 2018 television commercial for Walmart.
I like bread and butter
I like toast and jam
That’s what my baby feeds me
I’m her loving man
He likes bread and butter
He likes toast and jam
That’s what his baby feeds him
He’s her loving man
She don’t cook mashed potatoes
She don’t cook T-bone steaks
Don’t feed me peanut butter
She knows that I can’t take
He likes bread and butter
He likes toast and jam
That’s what his baby feeds him
He’s her loving man
Got home early one morning
Much to my surprise
She was eating chicken and dumplings
With some other guy
No more bread and butter
No more toast and jam
I found my baby eating
With some other man
Cake not an easy but I chose Soul Cake by Sting .
- In December 2009, Sting was the subject of an hour long BBC TV documentary which was dedicated to his Winter Song project. In this he explained the background to this song. It was, he said, a begging song, a very old English song which originated in the ritual of baking soul cakes. These were made to feed the dead on Halloween, in the hope that it would sate their hunger until the following year. As, obviously, the dead did not generally have much of an appetite, the poor and hungry got the idea that they could beg for them.
- “Soul Cake” appears to emanate from Cheshire, and was published in the 1893 study English County Songs by Lucy Etheldred Broadwood and J. A. Fuller Maitland wherein it is alluded to as “Souling Song (Cheshire)”; it is also known simply as “Souling Song” or the “Cheshire Souling Song” and is written in 6/8 time. According to Miss Broadwood’s notes, the words and music were taken down by the Reverend M.P. Holme at Tattenhall, Cheshire. Part of it was restored from the book Shropshire Folk-Lore by Charlotte Burne, and the rest of the song was sung by a young girl at Tattenhall School in October 1891.
“American Pie” is a song by American singer and songwriter Don McLean. Recorded and released on the American Pie album in 1971, the single was the number-one US hit for four weeks in 1972 and also topped the charts in Australia, Canada, and New Zealand. In the UK, the single reached number 2, where it stayed for 3 weeks, on its original 1971 release and a reissue in 1991 reached No. 12. The song was listed as the No. 5 song on the RIAA project Songs of the Century. A truncated version of the song was covered by Madonna in 2000 and reached No. 1 in several countries, including the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia. McLean’s combined version is the fourth longest song to enter the Billboard Hot 100 (at the time of release it was the longest), in addition to being the longest song to reach number one.
The repeatedly mentioned phrase “the day the music died” refers to the plane crash in 1959 that killed early rock and roll performers Buddy Holly, The Big Bopper, and Ritchie Valens. (The crash was not known by that name until after McLean’s song became a hit.) The meaning of the other lyrics has long been debated, and for decades, McLean declined to explain the symbolism behind the many characters and events mentioned. However, the overall theme of the song is the loss of innocence of the early rock and roll generation as symbolized by the plane crash that claimed the lives of three of its heroes.[2]
In 2017, McLean’s original recording was selected for preservation in the National Recording Registry by the Library of Congress as being “culturally, historically, or artistically significant”.
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So apart from the teddy bears picnic and other children’s songs I decided that rather than go that way we could have a song about a great place to go to have a picnic.
“Itchycoo Park” is a song written by Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane, first recorded by their group, the Small Faces. Largely written by Lane, it was one of the first music recordings to feature flanging, an effect at that time made possible by electro-mechanical processes. The location and etymology of the titular park has long been debated; many claiming it to be Little Ilford Park in Manor Park, East London or Wanstead Flats in Wanstead, East London. The single was not featured on any of their UK albums, but was however featured on the North American release There Are But Four Small Faces.
Released on 4 August 1967 on Immediate Records, the song was the Small Faces fifth top-ten song in the UK Singles Chart, reaching a position of number three. “Itchycoo Park” became the Small Faces sole top-forty hit in the United States, reaching number sixteen on the Billboard Hot 100 in early 1968. It fared similarly well throughout Continental Europe, reaching the top-ten in several countries there. The single was re-released in December of 1975, reaching number nine in the UK Singles chart, and is often attributed as the reason for the Small Faces reunion during the mid-1970’s.[3]
The song has since been covered by several other artists, most notably by English band M People in 1995, who’s dance rendition of the song reached number eleven in the UK.
The song was first conceived and largely written by Ronnie Lane, who had been reading a leaflet on the virtues of Oxford which mentioned its dreaming spires.[11]
A number of sources claim the song’s name is derived from the nickname of Little Ilford Park, on Church Road in the London suburb of Manor Park, where Small Faces’ singer and songwriter Steve Marriott grew up. The “itchycoo” nickname is, in turn, attributed to the stinging nettles which grew there. Other sources cite nearby Wanstead Flats (Manor Park end) as the inspiration for the song.[12]Photo of Wanstead Flats, London E12 near Marriott’s Manor Park home
Marriott and Small Faces manager Tony Calder came up with the well-known story when Marriott was told the BBC had banned the song for its overt drug references, Calder confirms:
We scammed the story together, we told the BBC that Itchycoo Park was a piece of waste ground in the East End that the band had played on as kids – we put the story out at ten and by lunchtime we were told the ban was off.
Ronnie Lane said of the true location of Itchycoo Park: “It’s a place we used to go to in Ilford years ago. Some bloke we know suggested it to us because it’s full of nettles and you keep scratching actually”.
“Itchycoo Park”
Over Bridge of Sighs
To rest my eyes in shades of green
Under dreaming spires
To Itchycoo Park, that’s where I’ve been
(What did you do there?) I got high
(What did you feel there?) Well, I cried
(But why the tears there?) Tell you why
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
I feel inclined to blow my mind
Get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun
They all come out to groove about
Be nice and have fun in the sun
I’ll tell you what I’ll do (What will you do?)
I’d like to go there now with you
You can miss out school (Won’t that be cool?)
Why go to learn the words of fools?
(What will we do there?) We’ll get high
(What will we touch there?) We’ll touch the sky
(But why the tears there?) I’ll tell you why
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
I feel inclined to blow my mind
Get hung up, feed the ducks with a bun
They all come out to groove about
Be nice and have fun in the sun
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
Ha
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
It’s all too beautiful
“If I Knew You Were Comin’ I’d’ve Baked a Cake” is a popular song written by Al Hoffman, Bob Merrill, and Clem Watts and published in 1950.
The best known version of the song was recorded by Eileen Barton in January 1950. Joe Lipman served as the musical director for the recording sessions for the two sides. The recording was released by National Records as catalog number 9103. When the song became too big a hit for National to handle, it arranged with Mercury Records to help with distribution.[1] The record first reached the Billboard charts on March 3, 1950 and lasted 15 weeks on the chart, peaking at #1.[2] The song was one of Tom Dowd‘s first hits as a producer.[3]
In 1962, Barton’s recording of the song was included in a list of 101 Perennial Singles Hits compiled by Billboard – a group “For year-round programming by juke box operators and radio stations … a catalog of standards that can provide consistent earnings for operators and a wealth of material for discussion by broadcasters.”
