Kingston Trio – "Merry Minuet" (1959)

The French hate the Germans
The Germans hate the Poles

Italians hate Yugoslavs
South Africans hate the Dutch

AND I DON’T LIKE ANYBODY VERY MUCH!

The end of February is rapidly approaching, which means that we’re nearing the end of this year’s “29 Songs in 28 Days.”  IT’S ABOUT TIME!

This year’s theme was the number three, and a number of the featured songs were recorded by trios.  So I’ve decided to close out the month with not one, not two, but THREE songs by the Kingston Trio – all three of which were released on The Best of the Kingston Trio album, which I played to death when I was 12 years old.

I still know the words to purt near every song on that LP, including “Tom Dooley,” “Everglades,” “Scotch and Soda,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” “Tijuana Jail,” and “M.T.A.”

*     *     *     *     *

“Merry Minuet” is a Tom Lehrer-style song – a sardonic little geopolitical ditty that must have tickled JFK-era, too-cool-for-school, Ivy League types.

Sheldon Harnick (1964)

But “Merry Minuet” wasn’t written by Tom Lehrer.  Its composer was Sheldon Harnick, who wrote the lyrics for a number of Broadway musicals – most notably, Fiddler on the Roof.

Like all minuets, this one has three beats per measure.

Here’s “Merry Minuet”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: