One person’s view: “That’s the most horrible thing I ever heard in my life.” – independent record label owner to songwriter Joe Van Winkle (source: The Billboard Book of Number One Hits by Fred Bronson)
The public’s view: 2.09 / 5.00, the second-worst #1 hit of 1960
When choosing a #1 hit to spotlight for 1960, there are two whose extremely poor retrospective reviews set them apart from the rest. Both are novelty songs. Brian Hyland’s “Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini” is the inferior of the two by some metrics. It has the lowest Rate Your Music score of the year (1.91) and is almost universally loathed by critics. Its lyrics playfully mock a girl who has decided that drowning or freezing to death in the ocean is preferable to letting people see her skimpy bathing suit. The simplistic melody clashes with this dark theme, being more suitable for a children’s nursery rhyme than a tale of a swimmer’s impending demise. However, you don’t hear too many people arguing that “Polka Dot Bikini” is the worst #1 hit of all time, or even that it’s a contender for the title. Those who hate it usually also hate “The Streak” and “Disco Duck”, and they focus their rage on those later songs. “Mr. Custer”, on the other hand, does have detractors who rate it at or near the very bottom of the heap of over 1,100 #1 records, and so it will be featured in today’s entry.
“Mr. Custer” was a team effort by Hollywood stuntman Larry Vern Erickson and three songwriters who had an office across the hall from him. You don’t usually think of stuntmen working in an office building. (“We’ll have to cancel this week’s sales meeting. Larry’s setting himself on fire in the conference room again.”) Somehow, though, this benign setting turned out to be the right environment to incubate a comedic hit song about the Battle of the Little Bighorn. No one knows why. Offices didn’t yet have dry erase boards in 1960, so we can’t blame it on sniffing the markers.
The most common criticism of “Mr. Custer” is also the most obvious: it contains racist stereotypes about Native Americans. You have to put this in context, however. A fake battle whoop and a couple jokes about scalping are hardly the most grievous crimes committed against the indigenous peoples. And when you consider that “Mr. Custer” came out of Hollywood in 1960, it could have been much, much worse. It wasn’t even the first #1 song to feature a tribal war chant, as Johnny Preston’s “Running Bear” had already busted through that glass ceiling earlier in the year.
If we’re going to criticize #1 hits for stereotyping Native Americans, Paul Revere & the Raiders’ “Indian Reservation” is a more deserving target than Verne’s silly novelty record. “Indian Reservation” purports to express sympathy for the Cherokees but manages to confuse their characteristics with those of other tribes. More troublesome, though, is its reputed origin. Songwriter John D. Loudermilk said that his car had gotten stuck in a blizzard in the Smokey Mountains, and he was captured by the Cherokees and forced to pen a song about their history if he wanted to escape with his life. The story was obvious bullshit that he never intended to be taken seriously, and the details changed each time he told it, but it was accepted as truth by some media outlets. Even the esteemed Casey Kasem reported the improbable tale on his radio show. Thanks to Loudermilk’s prank, a generation grew up believing that vengeful Indians were waylaying American automobile travelers and engaging in bizarre acts of extortion. Children had nightmares that their family wouldn’t make it to Grandma’s house without being stopped by the Osage Nation and ordered to weave a tapestry or produce a Broadway play.
If you still worry that Larry Verne’s music was racist, you might be reassured by one of his follow-up singles, “Abdul’s Party”. When I read that title and saw Verne dressed up as various ethnicities on the record sleeve, I was prepared to hear something awful. In this inoffensive song, however, all of the jokes are at the expense of Larry’s slow-witted yokel character who doesn’t realize how annoying he is. That persona seemed to be the only trick in Verne’s bag, and it was not enough to carry a long career in show business. It’s a shame, because his performance in the “Mr. Custer” video hints at some acting talent that was never allowed to ripen. He could have been the American version of Mr. Bean.
In my view, there’s a more serious flaw with “Mr. Custer” than its use of a couple of worn-out Indian stereotypes: it tries to mine comedy from a tragic event, and it doesn’t succeed. Little Bighorn was one of the most devastating losses of life on U.S. soil between the Civil War and Pearl Harbor. In 1960, there were still a few people who remembered the battle or who had lost grandfathers there. Offensive humor is a wonderful thing as long the punch lines actually land, but “Mr. Custer” gets laughs only from Verne’s goofy facial expressions and bad lip-synching in the accompanying video. And even then, it’s like Louis C.K.’s bit about school shootings: a few snickers here and there aren’t enough to overcome the awkward premise. I hope I am dead by the time anyone releases a novelty hit sung from the viewpoint of a 9/11 hijacker who begs “Mr. Osama” not to make him get on the plane.
No comments:
Post a Comment