My Musical Evolution – Part 7 Working On The Railroad
So we approach a transitional moment. Up to this point,with a couple of exceptions, the music has almost all come from Disney or had been Disney-fied in some way. This album The Little Engine That Could – And Other Railroad Songs And Sound Effects was made by Happy Time Chorus. I did a quick Bing search on Happy Time and saw that they did a bunch of records back in the day. We might have even had a couple of them but this is the one that stuck with me.
You might notice the continuation of the sound effects genre. I’m not sure what drew me to sound effects maybe it was just something that went well with an active imagination.
The reason I feel that this is transitional is that this is where I did not turn a corner so much as altered course a little. Sure, the album begins with the children’s tale of the Little Engine That Could which is consistent with Disney. You know, whistle while you work, a spoonful of sugar. This expands that idea with a believe in yourself attitude. Decades later, I would be introduced to Earl Nightingale and his Strangest Secret which is a very similar concept. I remember having this philosophical discussion on the playground in elementary school. What if the only reason that you can’t fly is because people told you that it was impossible, and you believed them.
Sidetracked again. Speaking of sidetrack, that sounds like a railway derived sentiment. Apart from the story and the sound effects and maybe the old I’ve been working on the railroad song, the rest of the tracks on this album did not seem to be children’s songs. They were grown up songs, folk songs. Thus, the transition into more adult oriented music add to that the fact that I was nearly old enough to operate the stereo. My musical evolution was about to reach an explosive point thanks to my mother and her love for pop music.
I recognized the cover of this album right away. It seems to be vanishing from this earth. I tried to think back to the songs that were on it and really the only one that stood the test of time and memory is the one listed as Patsy Ory-Ory-Aye. Like I’ve done so many times since I started this, I went to YouTube to try to find a good sample of Patsy Ory-Ory-Aye to include here for you. I came up empty. As it turns out the song really is “Paddy On The Railway”. I guess the Happy Time people felt that they needed to alter it for political correctness or to make it child friendly. It has a definite Irish feel to it even though it was toned down a little on the album compared to the versions I found on YouTube. I have to wonder why this was my favorite song on this album. Was that Irish-ness speaking to me at five? Was this almost forgotten tune the seed of my gravitation to The Dropkick Murphys or The Dubliners or any of that Irish / Celtic stuff that I’ve acquired? Is this song why I married the daughter of an Irishman? We’ll get to Whiskey In The Jar later but now it is time to work upon the railway
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