This is Morning Edition. I'm Bob Edwards.
It's hard to believe, considering all of the sophisticated high tech toys available today, but it really is not hard to get children's attention. All it takes is a good story. And some music helps. Jim Copp and Ed Brown had stories, music, and imagination. In the late 1950's and throughout the 60's they made records for children. They called their company Playhouse Records. Using just a few tape recorders and a lot of creativity, they produced a series of stories and songs that are beginning to find an audience among today's children through compact disc. NPR's Bob Boilen reports:
"Ladies and Gentlemen. Before continuing, an announcement: we've had numerous requests for Miss Eula Mole to play a selection on the pump organ."
(from 'Eula Mole')
Bob Boilen: Imagine it's 1939 in New York. You go to a nightclub to hear Billie Holiday and out walks the opening act. A tall man, he's billed as "James Copp the III and His Things" . And he sits himself down at a small pump organ and he plays songs and he makes funny noises and best of all he tells stories, stories like 'The Bridge Game':
Why yes, I'd like to deal. Grace it was a lovely meal! The chocolate cake was just divine and say, the aspic turned out fine! As Janet said when she was sick:
"It's food and bridge that makes us tick!" I saw her girls, she sent regards
Oh dear, we'll have to count our cards. I saw her just the other day and she looks awful by the way. I'm sure she goes to Lydia's to buy her hats, (they're hideous)."
BB: But with the passage of time, Jim Copp moved his act out of the nightclub and into the Playhouse. (Jim Copp): "I really did these things just because I liked them. I didn't really do them for children. However, I thought that maybe that was the best way to sell them." And he and his partner, Ed Brown, would create these records, nine of them, from 1958 to 1971. Copp would write the stories, funny, quirky, sometimes grim stories right out of a child's imagination.
"I'm a Duck."
"And so am I."
"When the animals hold a parade , by gum, I march in front. I beat the drum. Boom, boom, boom." "So do I."
(from 'The Duck, the Tiger, the Shrimp and the Owl')
BB: And using three big tape machines and some inventive recording techniques, he and Ed Brown would create a crazy cast of characters. They would record the sound effects; some were easy: the ocean, a schoolroom bell and many of the others they would improvise. Like the time Copp started a small fire in the shower stall just to get the right crackling sound. (JC): "When we got everything, the frogs jumping around on the kitchen sink and all this stuff, then we got the music and that was the hardest thing of all. Finally we had a record."
" When the Animals hold a parade , oh see! An octopus marching so elegantly." "The Kitty is tired ...."
"I'd think she would be "
"When the animals hold a parade."
(from 'The Duck, the Tiger, the Shrimp and the Owl')
BB: And it dawned on them, they had a record but what were they going to do with it? So they hopped on a plane with tape recorders, records, phonographs, props and set themselves up in the middle of some of the more exclusive stores in America: I. Magnin, Bloomingdales, F.A.O. Schwarz. (JC): "We were both fairly good at selling them I think but Ed was the better of the two and he worked harder at it feeling kind of guilty because I'd been working all year making the record. We'd stand there in the store and he had these gimmicks that he'd made : like one of the records opened up into a theater and had little characters that by listening to the record you could move them around on the stage. And that type of thing and we'd demonstrate these and almost hypnotize these ladies and gentlemen. Then they'd buy it!"
BB: And so for thousands of children in the late 1950's and 60's, Jim Copp and Ed Brown became the Disney alternative. A musical Dr. Seuss, filling impressionable minds with stories, characters, and songs that time wouldn't dispel.
"Once upon a time the 4th grade had a teacher named Miss Goggins who not only was very ugly but had a temper."
(from 'Miss Goggins and the Gorilla')
Ted Leyhe: "My name is Teddy Leyhe and when I was a child we had several of the Copp/Brown records that my dad had picked up in F.A.O. Schwarz in New York. And I can remember sitting on the floor cross-legged in our playroom listening to these records on our portable phono. I mean, I can remember Miss Goggins in particular. My brother and I, used to listen to 'Miss Goggins and the Gorilla' over and over and in fact, I think we taped quarters onto the phono cartridge to get the needle to stay in the groove because the record was so worn out."
"I had a little doggie and his name was Mr. Jiggs I sent him to the grocery store to buy a pound of figs A half an hour later he came running back and said: 'The figs looked awfully green, my dear, I bought a bone instead.'"
(from 'Miss Goggins and the Gorilla')
TL: "And so later on you know, those records were trashed and I think my mom threw them out but as an adult and as a record collector, I was always tying to replace those records. So one day I was in the record store and theyhave a reference book in there called the Phonolog, and I looked up Playhouse Records in the index and sure enough it was in there with a phonenumber and an address. Well, when I got home, I called up PlayhouseRecords expecting a receptionist to answer the phone and Jim Copp himself answered the phone."
BB: Leyhe had learned that Copp had closed down the Playhouse and there was other sad news: Jim's partner Ed Brown had died. "The pancreas thing" he would say. Twenty years had gone by since their last record and though the phones would ring from time to time with fans, this call would revitalize Jim Copp's interest in his own recordings. (TL): "And then I started thinking about the fact that there is a group of kids out there now, a whole new generation of kids who should know about these records. so I called Jim back and we had several conversations about the fact that these should be available again. And over the period of a couple dozen visits we've become buddies and we've become business partners now and we've re-released all nine of the original LP's on audio cassette and then we've come out with two CD's which contain the "Best of" Volume I and Volume II."
"It was exactly 15 minutes before 12 noon when the Glup Family, Feeble Phoebe, the Man in the Union Suit and Bossy Cow sailed into San Francisco Bay."
(from 'A Journey to San Francisco with the Glups')
BB: The Glups were a favorite of Copp and Brown. In this story, the provincial family from Maine crossed the country in their jalopy. Their cow Bossy sits up front though they almost lose her to the slaughterhouse back in Chicago. And their son Glue, smarter than his Momma and his Poppa, sits in the back. They're off to San Francisco on a deadline to collect what they think is a $1,000.00 inheritance from their Uncle Ike :
"We're the Glups. We've come to..." "Ha! The noon whistle. One more second you'd have been too late. Ha!Ha!"
(from 'A Journey to San Francisco with the Glups')
TL: "He doesn't talk down to the kids. He speaks to them as individuals and I really think he's tapped into their world. "
BB: And after 13 years of writing , recording, and going store to store, Jim Copp felt they'd pushed their machines and their imaginations to their limit. (JC): "For one thing, our equipment was wearing out and we were just....I, I was running out of ideas. Ed said: 'We have to make another record.' And I said 'I don't think so.' I wish we had."
"A thousand dollars! A thousand dollars? Oh boy, there must have been a misprint in the letter I sent that Maine lawyer. Your uncle didn't leave you a thousand dollars. " "He didn't?"
"No...."
"Oh dear......."
"Your uncle didn't leave you a thousand dollars. No, heh, heh, heh. He left you a million dollars! "
"A million dollars!?!"
"Thank you"
"We'll build us a big house in Kennybunkport" said Mrs. Glup. "We'll have eighteen servants", said Mr. Glup. "And we'll all live happily ever after", bragged little Glue. And do you know what happened? That's exactly what happened!
(from 'A Journey to San Francisco with the Glups')
BB: Copp and Brown didn't become millionaires. They did all right though and now with the help of a fan, the Flibbertigibbets are on parade again ! Look out Barney! Here they come! For National Public Radio, I'm Bob Boilen.
"When the animals hold a parade no doubt You'll wish you were home and had never come out No joking, no choking, no smoking allowed When the animals hold a parade."
(from 'The Duck, the Tiger, The Shrimp and the Owl')
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