| "Crazy Downtown" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Allan Sherman | ||||
| B-side | "The Drop-Outs March" | |||
| Released | March 1965 | |||
| Genre | Novelty Song, Parody Music | |||
| Length | 2:40 | |||
| Label | Warner Bros. Records 5614 | |||
| Composer(s) | Tony Hatch | |||
| Lyricist(s) | Allan Sherman | |||
| Allan Sherman singles chronology | ||||
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"Crazy Downtown" is a song written and performed by Allan Sherman. The song is a parody of Tony Hatch's song "Downtown" which was a hit for Petula Clark (because of the use of the melody, Hatch also receives songwriting credit). The song reached #6 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart and #40 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1965; it was Sherman's last top-40 hit. [1]
Allan Sherman was an American comedy writer, television producer, singer and actor who became famous as a song parodist in the early 1960s. His first album, My Son, the Folk Singer (1962), became the fastest-selling record album up to that time. His biggest hit single was "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh", a comic novelty in which a boy describes his summer camp experiences to the tune of Ponchielli's Dance of the Hours.
Anthony Peter Hatch, is an English composer for musical theatre and television. He is also a noted songwriter, pianist, arranger and producer.
"Downtown" is a song composed by Tony Hatch which, as recorded by Petula Clark in 1964, became an international hit, reaching number one in Billboard Hot 100 and number two in UK Singles Chart. Hatch received the 1981 Ivor Novello award for Best Song Musically and Lyrically.
The song is sung from the point of view of a father whose teenaged children have gone "frooging" downtown with their car and money. At first, the parents are relieved that they can now use the phone and the bath tub but, as the hours pass, they get increasingly nervous. Meanwhile their offspring frug to the songs of Petula Clark while they are downtown. Eventually, the parents take Miltown in order to calm themselves down. However the father gets a phone call telling him that their children have been arrested as the result of a car accident, prompting him to angrily borrow someone else's car to get his sons home. He then vows to ground the teenagers and go downtown with his wife, where he promises to do "very nice dances" including the tango, waltz, foxtrot, and bunny hop, instead of the dances of the younger generation such as the Frug, the Swim, the Mashed Potato or the Jerk.
Meprobamate—marketed as Miltown by Wallace Laboratories and Equanil by Wyeth, among others—is a carbamate derivative used as an anxiolytic drug. It was the best-selling minor tranquilizer for a time, but has largely been replaced by the benzodiazepines due to their wider therapeutic index and lower incidence of serious side effects.
Tango is a popular partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. It was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries, where natives mixed with slave and European immigrant populations. The tango is the result of a combination of the German Waltz, Czech Polka, Polish Mazurka, and Bohemian Schottische with the Spanish-Cuban Habanera, African Candombe, and Argentinian Milonga. The tango was frequently practiced in the brothels and bars of ports, where business owners employed bands to entertain their patrons with music. The tango then spread to the rest of the world. Many variations of this dance currently exist around the world.
The waltz is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in
