Nat King Cole – "Route 66" (1946)

Now you go through St. Louis

Joplin, Missouri

And Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty!

This is the time of year when 2 or 3 lines is focused on the best records from pop music’s “Golden Decade” – which was (as everyone knows) 1964 to 1974. 

I usually spend September presenting the newest members of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” HIT SINGLES HALL OF FAME, while October is devoted to the newest class of the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME.

But not this year.  (2 or 3 lines is nothing if not unpredictable!)  

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Those of you who get up early enough to watch CBS Sunday Morning know that program polled dozens of notable Americans earlier this year to create a list of what they’re calling the 250 most essential American songs.

Click here to see that list.

A lot of the allegedly “notable” Americans who were polled are notable mostly for their high degree of cluelessness when it comes to what makes essential American songs.

Some of the songs that made the list do belong there, but the vast majority don’t truly exemplify America’s distinctive character traits.

A Supreme Court justice once admitted that he couldn’t intelligibly define exactly what constituted hard-core pornography, but that he knew it when he saw it.  

I admit that I can’t tell you exactly what character traits are quintessentially American, but I know them when I see them.

For example, Americans believe in equality.  An American sees himself as just as good as anyone else – he doesn’t defer to someone just because he has more money or education.  (Don’t you dare put on airs with us because your daddy’s rich or your mother’s good-looking, and don’t you think for a minute that you deserve special treatment because you’re a Senator’s son!)

Also, we’re independent to the point of orneriness.  We really don’t like other people telling us what to do.  (When we’re young, we don’t like parents and teachers telling us what to do.  When we get older, most of our resentment is directed at the government and our bosses.)

And we LOVE cars.  (We love guns, too, but not as much as we love cars.)       

2 or 3 lines has sifted through hundreds of songs and picked the thirteen that best exemplify those and other essential American characteristics.  Each of my September and October posts will feature one of those songs – and trust me, my choices pone the mostly sucky choices of those dopes that CBS talked to.

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Is there anything more American than a road trip – especially one that ends up in California?  That’s why the first (and oldest) song on my top-thirteen list is a road-trip song.  

“(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66” was composed in 1946 by Bobby Troup, a jazz pianist, singer, and songwriter who also starred in the seventies medical drama Emergency! along with his second wife, Julie London.  (Not surprisingly, Troup played a doctor and London played a nurse on that show.  Today, he’d probably be the nurse and she’d be the doctor.)

Julie London and Bobby Troup

Troup wrote the song after he and his first wife drove from his home in Pennsylvania to Los Angeles in a 1941 Buick, which used 75 quarts of oil on the ten-day trip.  

The Troups started on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, but most of their trip was spent on Route 66, which stretched almost 2500 miles between Chicago and Santa Monica, California.  

Along the way, they toured the Meramac Caverns in Missouri (“Jesse James Hideout” was the slogan on that attraction’s many billboards), visited the Will Rogers Memorial in Oklahoma, drove through a snowstorm outside Amarillo, Texas, and stopped to take a look at the Hoover Dam.

Troup came up with the idea of writing a song about their trip, but it was his wife who suggested the song’s title.  (I’m not sure who came up with the “Oklahoma City looks mighty pretty” lyric.  Having visited Oklahoma City, I can tell you that they threw accuracy out the window in order to make the line rhyme.)  

Troup took the song to Nat King Cole, who had a big hit with it.  Since then, it has been recorded by Perry Como, Louis Prima, Bing Crosby, Natalie Cole, Asleep at the Wheel, Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Depeche Mode, the Cramps, the Cheetah Girls, John Mayer (for the soundtrack of the movie "Cars") and many, many others.

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I grew up in Joplin, Missouri, which was smack dab on Route 66.  So I was thrilled that Joplin was one of the cities mentioned in the lyrics of “Route 66.”

From the 2010 2 or 3 lines post that featured Cole’s recording of “Route 66”:

All Gaul was divided into three parts.  And all recordings of “Route 66” can be divided into two groups: the ones that say “Joplin, Missouri” (which is part of the original composition) and those that instead say “down to Missouri” or something similar.  

One of my first Rolling Stones albums had a live version of “Route 66,” but Mick Jagger disappointed me by not saying “Joplin, Missouri” when he should have.  (You can click here to listen to it.)  

A Route 66 mural in downtown Joplin

I’m surprised by that because I would have assumed that the Stones had heard the Chuck Berry cover of the song, which does mention Joplin.

One good thing about the song rhyming “Missouri” with “St. Louis”: it promotes the correct pronunciation of my home state.  (It's “Missour-ee,” not “Missour-uh.”)

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James Fallows was the only one of the contributors to the CBS Sunday Morning “Essential American Songbook” to make “Route 66” one of his picks.

Fallows got an early start as a big smarty-pants journalist and author at Harvard, where he was the president of the student newspaper.  After going to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship, he became Jimmy Carter’s chief speechwriter at age 27.  He then wrote for Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Vanity Fair, and many other magazines, and has authored eleven books, one of which won a National Book Award.

It comes as no surprise that Fallows chose to ignore Sunday Morning’s instruction to nominate no more than three songs for inclusion in the “Essential American Songbook” – he named no fewer than twenty songs. 

James Fallows

A few of his picks – “California Dreamin’,” “Coal Miner’s Daughter,” and “America” from West Side Story – aren’t bad.  But too many of his other choices were unimaginative in the extreme – e.g., “Blowin’ in the Wind,” “We Shall Overcome,” “Battle Hymn of the Republic,” and the Jimi Hendrix version of the “Star-Spangled Banner.”  (Of course, Fallows named “This Land is Your Land” – which was the song named by more of those queried by Sunday Morning than any other.  )

And what is essentially American about songs like “Hotel California,” “Sounds of Silence,” and the very odd “Nature Boy”?

The same could be said about the jazz instrumentals (like “Take Five” and “Giant Steps”) on Fellows’s list.  Dave Brubeck and John Coltrane are great American jazz musicians, but I’m not sure that instrumental records really qualify for the “Essential American Songbook.”

And while I give Fallows kudos for choosing “Route 66,” why did he pick the John Pizzarelli Trio’s cover of the song instead of the Nat King Cole or Chuck Berry versions?   (If Fallows wanted a super-swingy jazz recording of “Route 66,” he could have chosen Bobby Troup’s.) 

Click here to listen to Nat King Cole’s cover of “Route 66.”

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Monty Python – "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" (1979)

You’ll see it’s all a show

Keep ’em laughing as you go

Just remember that the last laugh is on you! 

Most of the schools around here that have a hand-operated message board get a parent to volunteer to maintain it, updating the messages every few days.  But at Damascus High School in Damascus, Maryland, teacher Steve Kachadorian handles that task.

Steve was born in New Jersey, but his family moved to Maryland when he was eight.  He started teaching history at Damascus High School in 1998.  This year, he will teach AP World History and AP European History.

Steve took on the role of faculty sponsor of the school’s drama club since 2007.  A couple of years ago, he asked the PTA if he could use the message board to advertise the dates and times of upcoming school plays.  “When I didn't have a show or concert to advertise,” he told me, “I posted little jokes that were heavy on the puns.” 

Here’s one of his message-board jokes.  (Other examples appear below.)

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Where does Steve get his message-board material?  “Sometimes I just take an old joke I know and revise it so it works on the sign.   Other times I go to the internet and look up dad jokes that play off some theme.  Now and again, I just have a funny thought that I rework to make it work on the sign – or my family and I will brainstorm and something clicks.”

Which of his message-board jokes is Steve’s favorite?  Time Travelers Club Meets on November 5, 1955.  “That one was inspired by a ‘Weekend Update’ joke on Saturday Night Live,” Steve explained.  “I put in that particular date as a tribute to Back to the Future.”

(You can click here to see a Back to the Future clip that explains the significance of that date.)

Steve says that the response to his message-board puns has been positive.  “People have posted on Facebook about it, appreciating the humor.  At school, my students have commented that their parents like it.  Sometimes, when I’m putting up the letters, a passerby will yell something positive.  Overall, it’s been a good thing.”

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Steve sounded like he might be a “class clown” type – you know, one of those people who is always kidding around and trying to get a laugh.  So I asked him to rank himself on a zero to ten scale, where a zero is someone who’s introverted and pretty quiet around other people, while a ten would be someone who plays practical jokes, does card tricks at parties, and generally shows off like crazy. 

 2 or 3 lines loves getting attention, and would be a solid nine on that scale.  But Steve claimed he would be only a six.  “I used to be much more of a jokester in the classroom,” he said, “but I’ve mellowed out.”

Steve describes himself as an avid fan of comedy and comedians.  When he was younger, he frequented the stand-up comedy clubs in the Washington, DC area.  He has taken improv classes, and even done some public improv performing.

Who is his favorite comedian?  “There are a lot of comedians that I enjoy, but I would have to point to the late Harry Anderson as a favorite,” Steve said.  “From his stand-up comedy, to the ‘Harry the Hat’ character on Cheers, to his role as Judge Harry T. Stone on Night Court, I always enjoyed the quick wit, the puns, and his visual humor.”

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When I asked Steve Kachadorian to name the song that he would like me to feature in this post, he chose “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from Spamalot.

“I directed Spamalot at Damascus High in 2019,” he told me, “and it was one of my most enjoyable drama experiences.”

“Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” – which was written by Monty Python member Eric Idle – was first featured in the 1979 movie Monty Python’s Life of Brian, where it is sung (and whistled) by a character who is being crucified.

From Wikipedia:

Written in the British music hall tradition, the song touches on stoicism and the "stiff upper lip" spirit in the face of adversity, so often associated with British people.  It became immensely popular, reaching #3 on the UK singles chart in 1991.  Idle performed the song live to a global audience at the 2012 Summer Olympics closing ceremony. . . .

When the destroyer HMS Sheffield was struck by an Exocet anti-ship missile on May 4, 1982 in the Falklands War, her crew sang it while waiting to be rescued from their sinking ship . . .

When [Monty Python member Graham] Chapman died on October 4, 1989, the five remaining Pythons, as well as Chapman's close friends and family, came together at his public memorial service to sing "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life" as part of Eric Idle's eulogy.  

In 2005, a survey by Music Choice showed that it was the third-most popular song Britons would like played at their funerals.  By 2014, it was the most popular.

Click here to watch the scene from Monty Python’s Life of Brian that features “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life.”

Click here to buy “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” from Amazon.  (Any commissions that 2 or 3 lines earns from purchases of that recording will be donated to the Damascus High School Drama Club.)

Steve Martin and the Toot Uncommons – "King Tut" (1978)

Born in Arizona

Moved to Babylonia

King Tut!

Most Monday mornings, I hit the gym at the Damascus (MD) Community Recreation Center.  (If I don’t watch my figure, who will?)

My route to the rec center takes me past Damascus High School.  The school has a fancy electronic marquee, but it also has a more traditional hand-operated message board that requires someone to place individual plastic letters to spell out messages.  

That message board has two faces.  One of the faces is mostly used to announce the days and times of upcoming events at the school – like football games, or drama club productions.  The other face usually contains punny jokes.  

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Here’s the message that’s currently displayed on the Damascus High School message board:

You might think that the person in charge of the message board was guilty of misspelling “SUMMER.”  But you’d be wrong.

If you take one “M” away from “SUMMER,” you have “SUMER” – which is the name of the world’s oldest civilization.

The Sumerian civilization emerged in southern Mesopotamia circa 4500 BCE.  It was succeeded by the Akkadian Empire, which in turn was succeeded by the First Babylonian Empire.  

Hence the punning reference to “SUMER” on the message board.   

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James Boswell quoted Dr. Samuel Johnson as saying that “puns are the lowest form of humor.”  Whoever is in charge of the Damascus High message boards obviously disagrees with Dr. Johnson.

Here are some of the other puns that appeared on the message board this year:

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I called the school over the summer to ask who was responsible for coming up with the puns on the Damascus message board, and learned that the culprit was one of the teachers at the school.

In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll introduce you to Damascus High’s “Punmaster General.”

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More than eight million Americans viewed the “Treasures of Tutankhamun” exhibit, which brought 53 artifacts from King Tut’s tomb to seven different cities between 1976 and 1979.

The resulting “Tut-mania” inspired Steve Martin to write today’s featured song, which he performed on Saturday Night Live on April 22, 1978.  “King Tut” was released as a single a week later, and eventually sold over a million copies.  

Click here to watch a video of the Martin doing “King Tut” on SNL.  Note especially the instrumental solo performed by a saxophone player whose face was painted gold to resemble Tut’s famous solid-gold funerary mask:

In 2017, students at Reed College in Portland, Oregon, blasted a professor’s decision to show a video of Martin’s Saturday Night Live performance in a freshman humanities class, calling it cultural appropriation. 

The pearl-clutching students objected in particular to the saxophonist’s gold-painted face, which they claimed was the equivalent of blackface.

Click here to view Martin responding to this absurd accusation.