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Walt Kelly's SONGS OF THE POGO LP Golden (AA) Records 1956 For Sale

Walt Kelly's SONGS OF THE POGO LP Golden (AA) Records 1956When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.

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Walt Kelly's SONGS OF THE POGO LP Golden (AA) Records 1956:
$7.99

For Walt Kelly fans and those who love Golden RecordsThe singers are from the Sandpipers, who sang for Mitch Miller on Little Golden Recordsand the sound is identical because Jimmy Carroll was the conductor
PLEASE NOTE: THE BOOKLET INCLUDED IS A COLOR COPY, NOT THE ORIGINAL

SONGS OF THE POGO REVIEW by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Walt Kelly was one of the geniuses of American pop culture in the 20th century. That legacy, of course, is built on Pogo, his brilliant comic strip that ran from 1949 until his death in 1973. Originally started as a comic book, Pogo flourished as comic strip, as Pogo the Possum and Albert the Alligator soon were surrounded by numerous other residents in the Okefenokee Swamp, which grew richer with each passing year. Kelly is chiefly remembered for being a satirist and a social commentator, a reputation he earned with such storylines as a series of risky, scathing strips attacking Joe McCarthy at the height of the blacklist, along with his trailblazing environmentally conscious story of the late '60s, where Pogo famously commented that "We have met the enemy and he is us." All this is true, but Pogo retained legions of devoted fans for years because Kelly created a robust world with some of the greatest cartoon visuals in history (the detail is flabbergasting), while writing fully rounded, imaginative characters along with exuberantly funny absurdist words -- all things that can be appreciated outside of a political context, which is why the comic strip has aged so well. It's also why it spawned a bunch of memorabilia, including the 1956 LP Songs of the Pogo. Kelly wrote the songs -- often with co-writer Norman Monath, a veteran of the Brill Building -- and the music was arranged by Jimmy Carroll,who led the orchestra for this collection of strange, delightful music.

Technically, these are not songs from the comic strip -- Kelly's most famous parody, "Deck Us All With Boston Charlie," is absent -- and, musically, it might not seem to jibe with the homespun nature of the drawings, since it's a freewheeling collection of prewar popular musical styles. There's a little bit of folk and blues here, but they merely inform the songs, which really sound like turn of the century tunes designed for singalongs at the family piano or cinematic ballads -- or, in the case of the Kelly-sung "Go-Go Pogo," a rabble-rousing campaign tune out of Tammany Hall. It's music that's out of time, evoking an era earlier than 1956, but one that's highly stylized and absurdly funny. In that sense, it captures the spirit of Pogo -- nowhere more so than in the words, which highlight Walt Kelly's inventive wordplay -- even if it never quite feels like something that would be sung in the swamp. Regardless, it is unique, rather wonderful music, which will certainly thrill any fans of Pogo.



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