TRACK 6 “Potatoheads’ Picnic”
Come in a motorboat, come in a car, oh come to the magic toyland
Come as you like, come as you are
Come quickly as soon as you can
Come in a motorboat, come in a car
Oh come to the magic toyland
The party's never been a dud
Especially if you’re a spud
Today is the day of Mr. Potatohead's picnic
CHORUS:
Picnic time for Potatoheads
Mr. Potatohead is having a wonderful time today
Watch them dance until they're dead
Potatoheads have all come out to play
Before your eyes their heads will sprout
They'll pull their eyeballs out
Before they go back to bed
At six o'clock your mommy will mash them
And serve them up with steaks
Because they're tired little Potatoheads
Look at the one who is dressed like the Pope
Oh he's the Potatohead King
Look at the one who is tied up with rope
He will not remember a thing
Some walk, some run, some leap, some crawl
They want to attack that sweet Barbie doll
Who pops out of the cake at Mr. Potatohead's picnic
(Repeat Chorus and first verse)
copyright Sidhe Gorm Music (BMI)
(written 1979)
“When I was young we were very poor. My mom couldn’t afford to buy me a teddy bear. So all I had was a Mr. Potatohead. Not the ones with the plastic potato they have now. No, this was before anyone cared about toys being safe for kids. Back then when you bought a Mr. Potatohead, you just bought a box filled with plastic eyes and noses ears and mouths and little hats and pipes and mustaches. And they all had little spikey things that you could stick right into a real potato, or another vegetable or fruit. Or your little brother. …”
I’m quoting myself here. This was a typical spiel with which I used to introduce my song “Potatoheads’ Picnic” during live performances.
No, I didn’t come from poverty. I had plenty of teddy bears and other stuffed animals as a kid.
But I also had the 1950s version of Mr. Potatohead, which indeed consisted of little spikey things to stick into real potatoes.
Turns out, Mr. Potatohead is just a few years older than me. He was invented in 1949 by a guy named George Lerner, who originally called his creation. “Funny Face Man.”
For the first few years Lerner had a deal with Post cereals to distribute “Funny Face” parts as prizes in kids’ cereals. (So far I haven’t come across any reports about kids choking on Funny Face Man eyes or noses while eating their Post Toasties.)
Funny Face Man didn’t become Mr. Potatohead until Lerner sold his creation to the Hasbro company in 1952. Early that year Hasbro launched a ad for the magnificent spud, which reportedly was the very first television commercial for any toy.
And sometime in the 1960s, because of child safety concerns, Hasbro got rid of the “little spikey things” and created a safe plastic head for Mr. Potatohead.
This guy gives a cool history of the Potatohead saga:
So let’s switch gears to that other entre in my childhood combination platter: the Teddy Bear, that ubiquitous plush critter so loved by Radar O’Reilly with origins going back to Theodore Roosevelt’s years in the White House.
President Teddy, a well-known big game hunter, was on a bear-hunting trip in Mississippi in 1902. He hadn’t bagged a single bruin all day, so his well-meaning (if stupid and cruel) assistants captured a bear and tied it to a tree. They tried to convince the boss to shoot it. The president refused, saying that would be unsportsmanlike.
Instead tied up and shot the assistants.
Sorry, I made up that last part.
So this inspired an editorial cartoon by Washington Post political cartoonist Clifford Berryman, which inspired Brooklyn candy shop owner Morris Michtom to create a cute stuffed animal he called “Teddy’s Bear.”
And, hang onto your wax cylinders, that plush toy inspired this song:
Composer John W. Bratton first published it in 1907, and soon after, it was recorded by the Edison Symphony Orchestra.
Skip ahead to 1932 when Henry Robert Hall became leader of the BBC Dance Orchestra.
That very year, Hall decided to add vocals to “The Teddy Bears’ Picnic.”
An Irish songwriter named Jimmy Kennedy — whose other works include “Red Sails in the Sunset,” “South of the Border” and another classic novelty song, “Istanbul (Not Constantinople)” — had written words for Bratton’s rollicking tune not long before.
So Hall and his orchestra recorded the song that nearly 50 years later would begat what would become my own signature tune.
No, Hall is not the vocalist on this recording. That was another Brit named Val Rosing, who also sang the first recorded version of “Try a Little Tenderness” (with the Ray Noble Orchestra.)
I’m pretty sure I first this song as a very young child watching Captain Kangaroo. And I have a vague memory of hearing it performed by Rosemary Clooney.
But the version that set my young mind aflame was the 1967 recording by The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band on their second album, Ricochet.
This album was released when I was in junior high. At this point I already was a huge fan of Dr. West’s Medicine Show & Junk Band (“The Eggplant that Ate Chicago”) as well as Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band, the OGs of the 1960s jug band revival.
Even before Ricochet, I was a Dirt Band fan. I had their first album, on which the big radio hit was a little bit of folk rock pop called “Buy for Me the Rain” – though I preferred kazoo-heavy deep cuts like “Hard Hearted Hannah,” “I Wish I Could Shimmy Like My Sister Kate” and “Crazy Words, Crazy Tune” (previously covered by Kweskin with the title “Washington at Valley Forge.”)
Then came Ricochet. In an otherwise positive review of this album, Bruce Eder in The Allmusic Guide wrote, “…but "The Teddy Bear's Picnic" -- an adaptation of an old children's song -- was probably beyond the pale of most listeners.”
But not this listener!
When I saw the Nitty Grittys perform the song on The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in late 1967, my young mind was blown to smithereens. I didn’t just want to perform the song. I wanted to live in it!
I was so happy to find it recently on YouTube!
So “Teddy Bears Picnic” became a staple of The Ramhorn City Go-Go Squad & Uptight Washtub Band’s repertoire, both the original Oklahoma City group and the Santa Fe version after we moved to New Mexico in 1968.
Skipping ahead to early adulthood, when I started performing publicly again in the mid/late 70s, I considered covering “Teddy Bears Picnic” along with my wilder, raunchier fare.
But somehow I didn’t think a song about teddy bears would appeal to the audience I had started to attract. I knew it would have to be a little more irreverent and dangerous. And, well, wilder and raunchier.
I honestly don’t remember how the idea of Mr. Potatohead crossed my mind. But once it did, I was convinced it would work.
And it did. “Potatoheads’ Picnic” quickly became a crowd favorite and one that rarely failed to get a crowd to sing along, especially with the chorus.
The nightmarish image of living Potatoheads pawing at slutty Barbie dolls in a Dionysian frenzy set to a hopped-up military beat in an unnatural orgy presided over by the Potatohead King in full papal regalia just had a perverted appeal to those with ears to hear.
I mentioned at the top of this post, some of a typical introduction I used to introduce the song at live performances. Sometimes, I’d use an actual Mr. Potatohead toy – the late-70s/early-80s plastic jobs, not the original 1950s child-safety hazards – for a little schtick.
I’d rearrange the eyes, ears, nose and mouth to create an even more bizarre creature and say something like, “You could even get artistic and make Mr. Picasso Head …” which usually got a lot of laffs.
So, looking ahead to the mid ‘90s, I was delighted when I heard that Don Rickles would be providing the voice of Mr. Potatohead in the Toy Story movie. I took Anton, then about three years old to a theater to see the first one. Imagine my surprise when I saw this scene:
That hockey puck Rickles stole my damn joke!!!!!
But back to the 1981 Potatoheads sessions …
David Valdez’s fearsome John Philip Sousa marching-band drums, which kicked off this track on the album, set the tone for the whole wacky tune.
And though this mutated children’s song definitely wasn’t aimed at the kiddies, I’ve had several friends through the years tell me that “Potatoheads’ Picnic” became a favorite of their children when they were young.
I never heard about any permanent damage to those young minds stemming from exposure to such musical madness.
I actually wanted some children’s voices in the chorus. My daughter, who was just a few months old, obviously was too young (though Molly did lend her vocal talent to a Pandemonium Jukebox song a couple of years later. That’s in an upcoming chapter.)
But my one of my old college roommates, Steve Severtson and his wife Debbie (RIP), who were living in Albuquerque at the time, had a couple of preschool sons.
So after we got the basic track recorded we had Geoff and Jeremy Severtson come by John Wagner Studios to give it a try. However, the boys were just too young and too shy. They clammed up in front of the microphones.
But we got various cronies and girlfriends of band members to help out on the chorus, turning it into a party.
And, as I mentioned a couple of chapters ago, the “Cajun Clones” fiddle section, Jeanie McLerie and Ken Keppeler added some old-timey magic to the chorus, with Ken switching to the accordion.
I was a little bit reluctant to make this song the (well, kinda) title track of the project, just because I didn’t necessarily want to be joined at the hip to Mr. Potatohead and “Teddy Bears Picnic” for years to come.
Plus, there was a fear in the back of my head about a possible lawsuit from the Hasbro company and whoever owned the rights to that teddy-bear song. But even though “Potatoheads’ Picnic” did get some (mostly local) attention and was played on Dr. Demento, the album never sold enough to attract litigation.
Which is fortunate. I guess.
Picnic Time for Potatoheads was about a decade in the can when I got a package from an old Forge regular named Christopher Wright. Chris is a photographer and videographer who for several was a production engineer at the PBS station in Austin, Texas.
Inn his spare time, I assume while working for the station in the late 80s or early ’90s, created a video for this song. I know nothing about video production, but had I set out to do a video for “Potatoheads’ Picnic,” I would have wanted it to look basically just like Chris’.
So now enjoy the video while you enjoy my song.
Credits:
Steve Terrell, lead vocals, acoustic rhythm guitar
Jack Clift: lead guitar, producer
Mike Roybal: bass
David Valdez: drums
Jeanie McLerie: fiddle
Ken Keppeler: accordion
The Potatohead Chorus: Mary Kyle, Tom Dillon, Alec Walling, Paula Wylie, Lori Boyd, David Vigil, and, in spirit, Geoff & Jeremy Severtson
Get your own copy of Picnic Time for Potatoheads & Best-Loved Songs from Pandemonium Jukebox, or just listen HERE