Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour: Father

By Tony Attwood

Previously in this series

• Happy anniversary, Theme Time Radio Hour. Still offering us fun
• Episode 2: Mother 
• 20 years of Theme Time Radio: Drinking
• Theme Time Radio Hour part: Coffee
• Theme Time Radio Hour: Jail

The episode of Theme Time Radio Hour on “Father” was first broadcast on 14 June 2006, and looking down the list of titles, I was immediately drawn to “Papa’s on the house top”.  I mean, how many songs have such a wonderful title?   The track just demands to be played!

And indeed, the piano playing in this extended 12-bar blues really is just something else.   The actual song title line is “Papa’s on the housetop and won’t come down”.

The lyrics of this song are as much fun as the music, and just in case you need them, they are below.

Mama made papa be quiet as a mouse
So papa climbed up on top of the house
Made a lot of whoopee, made a lot of noise
Stood up and cheered with the rest of the boys

[Chorus]
Baby's in the cradle, brother's gone to town
Sister's in the parlour, trying on a gown
Mama's in the kitchen messing all around
Papa's on the house top, won't come down

The blues they come, the blues they come
Nobody knows where the blues come from
The blues they've gone, the blues they've gone
And everybody's happy when the old blues gone

Papa saw a chicken out in the yard
Picked up a rock and hit him hard
Hit him hard, killed him dead
Now the chicken's in the gravy and the gravy's on the bread

Hush-a-little baby, don't you cry
Blues gonna leave you by and by
Papa came in, sure was cold
Put the baby in the cradle and the blues outdoor

Not too many of the songs Bob selected come with an explanation as to how they came to be composed, but “Song for My Father” does.    Horace Silver was born in 1928 and died in 2014, and was known for the hard bop style that he worked in in the 1950s – a sort of bebop plus.

Of course, one of the things we know about Bob’s selections is that they are going to be incredibly varied.  As is shown by “Father Alone” by Lowell Fulson.

Wiki tells me (because I had to look him up) that after T-Bone Walker, Lowell Fulson was the most important figure in West Coast blues in the 1940s and 1950s.

Of course, as in many Bob Dylan selections of songs, there are songs that go way, way back.   According to Encyclopædia Britannica, Jimmie Rodgers was one of the principal figures in the emergence of country and western music, and so appropriately Bob chose a recording of his from 1928.

At the other end of the temporal spectrum, I wasn’t particularly surprised by finding an Everly Brothers track turning up, but the film below really has an introduction which reminds me how old I am getting – not for the song but for the way the duo are introduced.

But overall, it is interesting how the image of the father in these songs changed over time, for an awful lot of 20th-century songs have a very mawkish attitude towards the father figure within them.  And probably none more than this final selection in my selection from Bob’s selection.

Now I must admit I include this only because Bob included it, and it is exactly the sort of song I could happily do without.  Not for any personal reason (I have three wonderful daughters, with each of whom I have a fantastic relationship), and  I guess because of that, I just don’t need this song.  Although of course it if it had happened to me I’d be pretty desperate too.

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