Before the internet sent us all to our myopic little corners to gaze into our digital navels, we were actually living in the real world and being exposed to things outside our limited spheres. So when I finally came to hear Charles Ives’ “Central Park in the Dark,” I was able to recognize a quotation of “Hello, Ma Baby,” thanks to Michigan J. Frog. I’m glad I grew up in a world where kids were still watching Boris Karloff movies, Groucho Marx was still common knowledge, and we could all still hum a Tin Pan Alley tune written in 1899.
As the most sentimental of avant-gardists, Ives worked popular tunes, barn dances, church hymns, parlor songs, patriotic marches, and classical music quotations into his compositions all the time, as he strove to evoke the “universal” – intimations of the ineffable – through a collage of music of great personal, almost talismanic, significance from the world around him, especially that recollected from his boyhood in Danbury, Connecticut.
When listening to this music, the more you know, the more you know. Happy birthday, Charles Ives, with a tip of the top hat to Warner Bros.’ Merrie Melodies!
Michigan J. Frog in “One Froggy Evening” (1955)
“Central Park in the Dark” (1906; “Hello, Ma Baby” quotation beginning around 4:22)