Trans-Siberian Orchestra concerts are another.
All have more cultural merit than the holiday happenings I most look forward to.
Then again, I’m a child of the ’60s.
Likely because of that, it just undoes me every time some radio station plays the skit in which the Cheech Marin character tries to explain the enduring childhood mystery of Santa’s ability to travel through chimneys to a Tommy Chong character more geologically stoned than the Grand Canyon.
What I best like about it is the Peanuts-like innocence of the speaker and listener as they go hook, line and sinker for the powers of “Magic DUST” — a dust that falls like a gentle snowfall in the alley and over the cardboard box in which I envision the two of them talking.
Still, nothing gives me that building sense of holiday joy like hearing the opening words of the 1966 classic hit, “You’re a foul one, Mr. Grinch.”
It was, of course, the hit song from the original cartoon version of “How the Grinch Stole Christmas,” a production that brought together two figures who should be carved on the Mt. Rushmore of children’s humor.
The first, of course, is the genius author and versifier Theodor Geisel, Dr. Seuss. As a boy who grew up with “Horton Hatches a Who,” “Bartholomew and the Ooblick” and “Green Eggs and Ham,” Seuss was, is and always will be just what the doctor ordered. He, of course, wrote the lyrics to that memorable song.
The other giant comic talent involved in the original cartoon was Chuck Jones.
A cartoon icon whose credits include Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts, Jones also served as director for a host of cartoon hall-of-famers: Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, the Road Runner, the smooth talking skunk Pepe Le Pew and, de-deet, uh, de-deet, uh, Porky Pig.
The original Grinch cartoon attracted other heavy hitters, too.
Among them was narrator Boris Karloff, the actor who made Frankenstein’s monster come alive.
I’d always assume Karloff had sung the song that accused the Grinch of being “cuddly as a cactus (and) charming as an eel;” who indicted the green fiend for having “garlic in your soul (and) termites in your smile;” and who, finally, alleged the Grinch had a scratch-and-sniff heart “full of unwashed socks.”
I was wrong. The real voice, uncredited, belonged to the late Thurl Ravenscroft, a name that seems too theatrical to be real, but is not. He’s the same man — and this is my Christmas present to those who hadn’t known it — who for 50 years was the voice behind the Frost Flakes phenom “Tony the Tiger.”
At this point, I envision the Tommy Chong character saying, “Man, I believed what you said about the Magic Dust, but this Tony Tiger thing, man, I just don’t know.”
Online biographical material says that Ravenscroft originally wanted to use his basso profundo voice to sing opera. He instead went pop. He used pipes that would have given James Earl Jones a run for his money as Darth Vader, to do a lot of Disney work. His was the voice of the Russian Cat in the “Aristocats,” and the pig in the Mary Poppins song “It’s a Jolly Holiday.” He also helped to sing the theme songs of the “Mickey Mouse Club” and the television series “Zorro.”
The Website “All Things Thurl” reports that Ravenscroft also sang with the Norman Luboff Choir, the Johnny Man Singers and the Mellomen and was with the Randy Van Horne Singers when they recorded the theme songs for “The Flintstones,” “Huckleberry Hound,” “The Jetsons,” “Magilla Gorilla” and “Yogi Bear.”
Finally, we come to the man who composed the music for “You’re A Foul One” — a man with connections to Hudepohl and Hitler.
Born Albert Marcuse in Berlin, he became Albert Hague when he was adopted by a Cincinnati man who helped young Albert escape from Nazi Germany after the boy was nearly inducted into the Hitler Youth. The induction might have proven fatal because, although raised as a Lutheran, Albert’s parents were of Jewish descent.
The adoption allowed Hague to accept a music scholarship to the University of Cincinnati, where he reportedly was known for a raucous version of the “Beer Barrel Polka,” and launch a successful composing career. Generations before the cable series “Breaking Amish,” he in 1954 wrote the Broadway Musical “Plain and Fancy,” which was about the Amish, and five years later shared a Tony Award for his work on the musical “Redhead.”
Some will remember Hague as the character Benjamin Shorofsky, a music teacher in both the film and television versions of “Fame,” and for a bit role in “Space Jam,” in which he played a psychiatrist for professional basketball players.
Knowing all this may make it even more enjoyable this year when I hear “Mr. Grinch.”
Then again, it may not.
It will be hard to beat the uplifting feeling I had a couple of years ago while waiting for an order at Mike and Rosy’s Deli in Springfield, looking at a huge glass jar of some kind of pickled delicacy and hearing the final two lines describing Mr. Grinch:
“You’re a three-decker sauerkraut and toadstool sandwich — with arsenic SAUCE!”
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