Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh

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Allan Sherman's Camp Granada Game, released by Milton Bradley
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Allan Sherman's Camp Granada Game, released by Milton Bradley

"Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" (also "Faddah") is Allan Sherman's best known song parody.

The song was first released in 1963 on his LP "My Son, the Nut", and was entirely rewritten for a performance in 1964 on Johnny Carson's Tonight Show. In 1965, Swedish/Dutch troubadour Cornelis Vreeswijk translated it loosely into Swedish.

The original words begin:

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh
Here I am at Camp Granada
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we'll have some fun if it stops raining.

While the words are in the form of a letter, narrating a summer camp experience that alternates between horrifying for the child, and horrifying to the parents, the tune is the sprightly "Dance of the Hours" by Ponchielli, as seen dramatized with dancing ostriches, hippos, elephants and crocodiles in Walt Disney's 1940 classic Fantasia. The contrast between Sherman's everyman voice, the banal choice of topic, the hilarious imagined situations, and the dignified classical music has kept the tune alive in memory even now, over 40 years later.

The song was apparently inspired by letters he had received from his young son, who was attending a summer camp, Camp Champlain, in upstate New York.[1]

Unlike most song parodies, "Hello Muddah" seems to have crossed language and culture boundaries. Cornelis Vreeswijk's Swedish version, "Brevet från kolonien" ("The Letter from Camp"), has passed into folklore, and is still sung by and to children all over Sweden. In Norway, it's known as "Brev fra leier'n", as recorded by Birgit Strøm ("Titten Tei") in 1967. The song has also been translated into Esperanto and other languages, like Dutch (where it took the form of a letter from a soldier abroad and an equally silly answer from his parents). "Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah" has also been used as the title for a 2003 travelling theatrical revue of Sherman's works.

In 1995, The Simpsons featured this song in the episode "Marge Be Not Proud." Bart Simpson uses the Camp Granada tape to replace the tape in the answering machine, prompting Homer to, after the first two lines, ask Marge if they'd sent Lisa to Camp Granada. Also, one episode title, "Hello Gutter, Hello Fadder" spoofs this song.

In 2004, a version of the song beginning "Hello mother, hello father, fleas, ticks, mosquitoes, really bother...", "sung" by a puppy, was used for a television commercial for Bayer AG's K9 Advantix flea control product.

In the late 1980s, the song had been spoofed in a series of commercials for Procter & Gamble's Downy fabric softener.

The song was also featured the King of Queens episode (Season 2, Episode 5, entitled "Tube Stakes").

A deleted scene in Austin Powers in Goldmember features the Dutchman talking to Dr. Evil about Austin Power's "fazha", which is how he pronounces "father", but Dr. Evil is having a hard time understanding what he's saying, so the Dutchman sings "Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh" completely messing up the lyrics. Dr. Evil then says, "Oh, you mean his... FATHER!"

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