I need some happy music! (Eldermike, you were absolutely right about that).
Here’s one from way back when–A Swingin’ Safari, by Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra.
Was this used as theme music by “The Match Game”? Anyone remember?
Tag: Bert Kaempfert
Have I Lost My Marbles?
Nah, I’m all right–I just felt like hearing this: That Happy Feeling, by Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra, from way back when. As one of the theme songs for Sandy Becker’s show, it was a staple of my childhood. I’m glad I’ve not forgotten it.
Memory Lane: ‘That Happy Feeling’
Ach! I’m tired, I’m stiff and sore all over, it’s raining again (!), and this computer is giving me fits, it doesn’t want to work today.
So what am I doing, posting a tune called That Happy Feeling?
Well, it’s a happy memory, then. Band leader Bert Kaempfert had a lot of hits when I was in my early teens, back in the early 1960s, before our culture imploded. I don’t think music sounds like this anymore.
If you’re young, here’s a little bit of what you missed. I wish I could have missed rap music.
Taking a Break
What does Afrikaan Beat, by Bert Kaempfert and his orchestra, have to do with today’s up-to-the-minute nooze?
Absolutely nothing! That’s why I’m posting it.
I’ve been scanning nooze sites while Patty dumps all the boner ads out of our spam folder (are there really that many people obsessed with “hardness issues”? We need to think about something else). And enough is enough. I can’t digest any more nooze today.
Afrikaan Beat came out in 1962. We heard it as theme music on The Sandy Becker Show (appealing both to little kids and young teens like me) and on the jukebox at the YMCA. It is a souvenir from normal times. Back when we didn’t have to worry about Far Left Crazy taking over our country while we slept one night.
This is all I’m going to say about today’s nooze:
If you little tinpot tyrants, wherever you are, intend to withhold from us our God-given rights, enshrined in law, for as long as you can get away with it–well, we’ll just have to take them back. However we do it, it won’t be good for you.
We don’t want your “new normal.” We don’t want anything you’re selling us. Just go away.
What’s Goin’ On Here?
While we enjoy Bert Kaempfert’s 1960s classic, Afrikaan Beat, I can wonder what’s going on with this blog today. As I write this, we have 585 views–585!–and 327 referrals from Facebook, well over the daily average of, oh, 13 or 14. The record is 644 views on Nov. 7, 2016; and today we’re making a run at breaking it.
Does anybody out there know a lot about blogging? If so, can you clue me in? Like, we’ve got some 350 views Hyfrydol, a Welsh hymn I posted… a couple of years ago. Why is it so hot today? What factors might have come into play, to pump up the viewership? If I could only understand it, maybe I could learn how to do it on purpose.
Well, I’ve got to tear myself away to write my weekly Newswithviews column. I’ll check our stats again after I’ve finished.
Someone out there must know more about blogging than I do. I am merely dazzled by it all.
(And now it’s 590–wahoo!)
Memory Lane: Bert Kaempfert’s ‘Afrikaan Beat’
I first heard this as theme music for The Sandy Becker Show, but it was smoking hot in 1962 and soon wound up on all the juke boxes. Do they still have juke boxes?
Kaempfert had hits galore, and not one of them about drugs, fornication, shooting people, or anything else they sing about today. He wasn’t South African, as I thought at the time, but German. Internationally popular, though, and heavily influenced, at one phase of his career, by South African music. Who can blame him? That’s pretty cool music.
Anyway, I thought you might enjoy something harmless and wholesome for a change–like Afrikaan Beat.
Memory Lane: Sandy Becker
Growing up in the New York media market in the 1950s and 60s, you just can’t imagine it without Sandy Becker on TV. Which he was, from 1955 through 1968, mostly on WNEW.
This guy was a volcano of talent: nobody like him, anymore, to entertain little kids and young teens. Original puppets? Sandy not only performed them; he made them. Far-out characters? Sandy played them: Norton Nork, Hambone, the Big Professor, and the inscrutable Dr. Gesundheit. He also did cartoons.
Much of his show was live, and, alas, little of it was recorded. Much of it was ad-libbed. And you also heard a lot of Bert Kaempfert music: the theme for his daytime show, heard in this video, was That Happy Feeling. When he was on at night, it was Afrikaan Beat.
Kids’ TV in this era was overrun with talent. Along with Sandy, we had the immortal Soupy Sales and the incredible Chuck McCann, who gained national recognition by winning an Oscar nomination for his supporting role in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter… and his “Hi, guy! One shot and I’m good for the whole day!” deodorant commercials. Remember those? The protagonist was an ordinary gtuy who had to share a medicine cabinet with McCann’s weird character. But I digress.
Well, I can’t hear any of Bert Kaempfert’s music without thinking of Sandy Becker–gone, but lovingly remembered by probably millions of people who were kids then.
Let me see if I can get you just a tiny Hambone clip or something…
Memory Lane: ‘A Swingin’ Safari’
Do you ever get a tune in your head from way, way down at the bottom of your memory jar, and then it drives you nuts because you can’t remember what it’s called or where you heard it?
I’ve had this one going round and round. I kept thinking it was from a TV game show, The Match Game, and it turned out I was right–it was the theme song for the first edition of The Match Game, 1962-69. And I used to hear this at my friend’s house after school, because his mother never missed the show.
Nothing like an old TV theme to take you back! Hey, where were you in ’62? I think Paul Lucas asked that once. Of course, he had us all behaving like teenage sitcom characters, which wouldn’t be even close to describing my pals and me. I have a vision of two or three of us just sitting down to play Mille Bornes when we heard this music coming from the living room.
Bert Kaempfert, Billy Vaughn, you made great music! Don’t let anybody say you didn’t.