Ken Tucker- My family and I have spent a lot of time in the car listening to this frightening teacher berate her students:

"I don't know what is the matter with you children this morning" Miss Goggins was saying. "You are stupid, unruly, disobedient and vituperative.We shall continue with the singing lesson." She seated herself elegantly at the piano.

"I had a little doggie
And his name was Mr. Jiggs.
I sent him to the grocery store
To fetch a pound of figs.
A half an hour later
He came running back and said:
`The figs looked rather grim, my dear,
I bought a bone instead!'

"That is our song for today. Now, let's sing it together. Are we ready? And a one, and a two, and a three, and a four. And a one, and a two, and a three, and a four:

"I had a little doggie....................

"Silence! Stop!"

"A half an hour later....".

"Stop singing! One of you is off key. Jasper Jones - it was YOU! Report to the principal's office for punishment. The whole class will remain 3 hours after school. Silence!"

KT - The creator of that bit of incisive whimsy was Jim Copp who, it was announced this week, died recently. He was 85. Copp was a true American original, a witty purveyor of purposeful nonsense, best known for a series of children's recordings he made between 1958 and `71 featuring characters like stubborn little Kate Higgins who refuses to take her pill and a terribly grouchy teacher named Miss Goggins whom you just heard, all voices provided by Jim Copp and his partner Ed Brown. Copp led a remarkable life and we invited his business partner, Ted Leyhe, to talk a little about him:

KT - He worked with very primitive equipment to create some pretty sophisticated sound effects, didn't he?

Ted Leyhe - He did. He had a system where he took three Monaural open reel tape recorders and he would have his voice on one of the decks and he would have his original music on another one and then a third with sound effects and he would roll them all together and create these lush layers of sound and it also involved a lot of use of a razor blade and splicing tape. The original master tapes have hundreds of splices in them.

KT - Really! So the cut we played earlier, "Miss Goggins and the Gorilla,' when we hear the voices of all these little schoolchildren singing out of tune, that's Copp and his partner Ed Brown?

TL - Well, at that point for "Jim Copp Tales" it was just Jim's voice and I believe he overdubbed that 30 times. All of those 4th graders singing are the voice of Jim Copp.

KT - That's terrific! Now, as I understand it, Jim Copp was discovered by John Hammond, the legendary talent scout?

TL - That's true. Back in New York City in the early 1940's, John Hammond somehow got wind of Jim Copp and his act which Jim called "James Copp III and His Things" and booked him at a couple of nightclubs there in Manhattan: The Cafe Society Uptown and Downtown.

KT - What kind of songs was he performing?

TL - Boy, he was labeled a surrealist but I don't know that Jim went along with that. They were definitely bizarre! It consisted of him sitting at his pump organ and you have to picture a man of about 6'3" or 6'4" over this little pump organ doing these numbers with titles like "Peaches and Myrtle", "Agnes Mouthwash and Friends"; they were kind of macabre. At that point, his material was not for children.

KT - And how did he veer off into children's records?

TL - Well, he had recorded a piece called "The Noisy Eater" which he took to Capitol Records and they liked the piece but they wanted Jerry Lewis to perform it and they did that, and they had a hit with it but Jim got, I think, one or two cents per side and was pretty disgusted with that situation. So, he started his own record company called Playhouse Records and came out with "Jim Copp Tales" in 1958.

KT - And so, in recording for children, I mean he had no children himself, I wonder how his instincts led him to create these songs that were very simple, direct, and really kind of appeal to kids on a very basic level?

TL - Well, Jim claims, or claimed to me, that the reason that he recorded for children is because he knew that every generation there would be a new audience every 7 years or so, but I know that he has a fondness for children. It has to be true, because if you listen to his material, you can see that he really understands the sensibility of children and is tapped into their world.

KT - Well, thank you very much.

TL - You bet!

That's "Kate Higgins" a performance by Jim Copp who, we learned, died recently at the age of 85. Copp's tapes have accompanied my family's summer car trips to Maine for many years. My high-school-age daughter can still recite the entire Kate Higgins skit by heart and it strikes me that you have to look to otther media to find examples of humor as pointed, yet delicate. The essays of S.J. Pearlman or the movies of Buster Keaton or Preston Sturgess. Jim Copp, whose many recordings are collected on CDs and cassettes, available from Playhouse Records on the web, will remain a cult favorite, I suppose, but he also deserves to be remembered as a grown kid who retained a sense of humor, of wonder, eccentricity and bite.