Follow the Drinking Gourd song

[Jonathan Lighter]

Sorry, Larry, but nobody cared if GROWNUPS listened to subliminal fiendish messages sung backwards. (Ever give "Moon River" the reverso-treatment?)  But innocent teens were at risk.

JL

Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at YALE.EDU> wrote:
---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Laurence Horn
Subject: Re: Follow the Drinking Gourd song
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>I wonder how old and widespread is the folklore motif of a song
>specially composed to impart coded information. (The Thompson Index
>isn't handy at the moment.)
>
>In the late '50s TV series "The Adventures of Robin Hood,"
>Alan-a-Dale the minstrel was a minor character, but ISTR that he
>traveled the countryside singing coded songs to alert the
>beleaguered poor of Robin Hood's intentions. And then there was the
>seemingly innocent Beatles song announcing when played backwards
>that "Paul Is Dead!" followed by any number of later recordings with
>even scarier messages which could only be understood by the teens
>who "knew the code" (i.e., to play the record backwards, or to bring
>out the background noises).
>
Hey, watch who you're calling a teen! Some of us "teens" were
pushing 30 at the time. Or maybe it was 25; the mind was fuzzy
now--and fuzzy then, if for different reasons.

larry,


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