This is going to be a long post. Among the many components I've always loved in MAD magazine were the poems and song parodies, most of which were written by either Frank Jacobs or Larry Siegel. For decades, those two men were among the magazine's most prolific contributors. I used to tell folks I know who worked at MAD that they had to get a recording studio and a batch of singers and musicians and record an album of these tunes.
No one has ever done this but I recently did find the video below that was recorded years ago at a gathering of F.R.U.S.O.P., which stands for "Free Range Ukulele Society of Oak Park." That's Oak Park, Illinois and the performers here are two folks whose names I believe are Laura and Mike. They sing five song parodies from the pages of MAD and the audience not only sings along but many of them are also playing ukuleles.
I'm thinking it would be neat to have everyone doing that at my funeral. You don't have to dress up but you're required to bring your ukulele.
The first three numbers are "Hello, Deli," "Ground Round" and "Chopped Liver," all from MAD #110. "The Bluefish Lie Dead in the Ocean" is from MAD #135 and "The Alfred E. Neuman Anthem" is from MAD #151. The Bluefish one was written by Larry Siegel and the others were penned by Frank Jacobs. Let's watch that video and then I'll have more to say…
Here I am with more to say. The gent I think is named Mike got the history of MAD's legal battle a bit wrong. He said it was spawned by their parody of "Moon River" and they were sued by its composer, Henry Mancini and others. The suit was actually over the song parodies in Sing Along With MAD, a special insert in More Trash From MAD #4, an otherwise-reprint collection that came out in 1961. The parodies in it were written by Jacobs, Siegel and members of the MAD editorial staff, which mainly meant Nick Meglin and maybe Jerry DeFuccio.
The lawsuit was Berlin v. E.C. Publications, Inc. and it was filed in 1961 about songs written by Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, Cole Porter, Richard Rodgers, Lorenz Hart and Oscar Hammerstein II. Henry Mancini was not involved. His song "Moon River" was first heard in the 1961 movie, Breakfast at Tiffany's, but the MAD parody of it — "Chopped Liver" — wasn't done until 1967, long after the legal battle was over.
After the suit was filed, MAD continued to do song parodies, though less often and when they did, they usually omitted the footnote, "Sung to the tune of…" In their famous parody of West Side Story in MAD #78 in 1963, Jacobs wrote his versions of Stephen Sondheim's lyrics but you had to figure out which tune in the play to sing each one to. It wasn't difficult.
There were 57 song parodies in Sing Along with MAD. Many of the parodied songs were in the public domain and I think a few composers declined to sign on to the legal action so the lawsuit was just about 25 compositions. The court decided that while the lyrics in two of the MAD rewrites were too close to the originals, the other 23 fell clearly into the realm of parody and protected speech.
The songwriters should have quit there but they appealed to Second Circuit which ruled that all 25 were fine. Then they appealed that adverse (to them) decision to the U.S. Supreme Court which in March of 1964 refused to hear the appeal so that ended that. MAD immediately began running more song parodies and resumed telling you which song was being parodied. As Mike noted in the above video, the magazine did indeed make history.
One other thing I should mention: Years ago at Comic-Con in San Diego, I moderated a MAD panel with Frank Jacobs among the panelists. I asked each of several MAD contributors there which piece they did for MAD got the most reaction and Frank, after a little thought, have this answer: He said that it was the parody he did of the song made famous by Petula Clark, "Downtown." His version was "Ground Round" and he said that for some reason, long after it had appeared in the magazine, people were still singing it to him.
Whereupon I dug into this silly memory of mine and recited the lyrics, recalling them somehow from MAD #110, which at the time was at least thirty years earlier. The lyrics can be found on several webpages on the Internet but all the ones I've seen get some of the words wrong — obviously, the result of someone doing them from memory, not looking them up. I looked them up…
When you eat meat / but hate the meat that you're eating / Then you've surely got
Ground Round!It's so unnerving / when they're constantly serving / in an eating spot
Ground Round!It may be called a Chopped Steak, a Salisbury or Beef Patty!
No matter what it's called, it's always overcooked and fatty!
What can you do?Sound off to your waiter there / And loudly pound on your table
Stand up on your chair / And shout Ground Round!
Piled on my plate I see / Ground Round!
Always you're conning me! / Ground Round!
Why must it always be? / Ground Round! Ground Round! Ground Round!
I quoted these lyrics before here and back then, I said that if someone would make a video of them singing Frank's parody and would post it on YouTube, I would feature that video here. No one, as far as I know, did. The only time I've seen his parody on YouTube is the one from our friends above at the ukulele society, plus I've heard (but have not found) that somewhere there's a video of Drew Carey singing it. My offer stands.