Recycling.

Emmanuel Chabrier; Espana; Vienna Philharmonic; John Eliot Gardner, conducting

I would like you to imagine yourself sitting in a bar before a ballgame, drinking beers and singing drinking songs. I know, I know, drinking songs went out of style with breeches. But if you did indeed sing drinking songs, what would you think if the words to one of them went to this tune. It’s hard to know what to say, isn’t it? For our entire lives this song has represented the lengths to which we will go to attain and maintain the integrity of our liberties and freedoms as citizens of the United States of America. Not only do the words signify patriotism, but so does the tune. In fact, we only need to hear the tune to feel and honor the sentiments of the Francis Scott Key poem. In the later 1700’s and early 1800’s, Americans knew the tune quite well as “The Anacreontic Song”. John Stafford Smith, a teenage British citizen, had written the song for the Anacreontic Society, a men’s social club in London. It was a common song in our land even before we declared our independence from Great Britain. Can you imagine what Mr. Smith would think if he heard the way his tune gets played today? It’s happened before, it will happen again: You never know when a tune is going to go out the door and get itself another gig.

“Espana”, by Emmanuel Chabrier, came to the imagination of the composer as he and his wife toured Spain from July to December in 1882. He determined that, on his return to his home in Paris, he would compose an “extraordinary fantasia” in commemoration of their trip. It appeared first as a piano duet called “Jota”. Then M. Chabrier orchestrated it in October of 1883 and called it “Espana”. At its first performance, the audience immediately demanded an encore of the piece, which sealed M. Chabrier’s fame overnight. The great Gustav Mahler declared it “the start of modern music” to musicians of the New York Philharmonic. Igor Stravinsky alludes to “Espana” in his score of “Petrushka”. Chances are that you haven’t heard it the way M. Chabrier composed it. But have you heard this?

“OOoooooooohhhh hot diggity, dog ziggity, Boom, what you do to me

It’s so new to me, what you do to me,

Hot diggity, dog ziggity, Boom what you do to me,

When you’re holding me tight.”

Yup. More people know Chabrier’s famous “Espana” tune by virtue of Perry Como’s number one hit on the Billboard chart in 1956. Then even more people heard it when Oscar Mayer used the “Hot Diggity” song (with different words) in one of their commercials in the early 1980’s.

In a day where the buzz words “green” and “carbon footprint” occupy the public’s conscience, maybe it’s okay to recycle music. The cartoons have done it for years. “Merry Melodies”, “Looney Tunes” and even The Smurfs would have been culturally empty if it hadn’t been for Franz Liszt, Johann Strauss, Jr., Edvard Grieg, Gioachino Rossini and Richard Wagner. Four or five generations of young cartoon watchers know the music of Rossini’s “The Barber Of Seville” thanks to Elmer Fudd and Bugs Bunny. If the score to Warner Brothers’ “What’s Opera, Doc” hadn’t so brilliantly, reverently and irreverently, paid homage to “The Flying Dutchman”, well, then, the only Wagner any of us would unwittingly hear would be “Here Comes The Bride.”

I mention this all today because a tangible childhood connection for hundreds of thousands of young people from South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa and even Nebraska, my age, older and younger, slipped peacefully away last night. Dave Dedrick daily donned a blue and gold jumper in the broadcast studios of KELO in Sioux Falls to become (Ta –da-da-daaaa) Captain 11. From four o’clock until four-thirty, every afternoon after school, moms all over the area could get thirty minutes of time to themselves because, rest assured, education weary eyes were glued to the TV screen to watch the illustrious Captain 11, featuring the animated comedy of Bugs Bunny, Huckleberry Hound, Snagglepuss, Quick Draw McGraw and Baba Luey, and Popeye. Mr. Dedrick did the Captain 11 show for forty-one years from 1955 until he retired in 1996. At the time of his retirement, his was the longest running children’s television show.

School got out at Sioux Valley Schools at half-past three. The bus ride home took between thirty-five and forty minutes. And after we walked up the driveway and into the house, we turned on the TV in time to see the last twenty minutes or more of one hundred or so kids who got to say their name on TV and then probably two cartoons. Then the Captain would tell all of the kids in the studio to stand up and then, “Now, wave one hand. Now both hands. Both hands and one foot. Now both hands and both feet.” And you had to pay attention because if he had a few extra seconds on the air he might say, “Freezeburg!” Don’t move!

Credits: To Dave Dedrick and other hosts of children’s programming like his, for providing a clean, fun, safe and kid-friendly TV environment for the entertainment-needy after school bunch. And now, in the voice of Leo Hartig …

One man in each century is given the power to control time.

The man chosen to receive this power is carefully selected.

He must be kind.

He must be fair.

He must be brave.

You have fulfilled these requirements.

And we of the outer galaxies designate to you the wisdom of Solace and the strength of Atlas.

You are Captain 11!