Stan Freberg is an old Hollywood renaissance man, doing everything from animation to voice overs to puppets to advertising. In the early 1950s he began creating satirical songs and skits for Capitol Records, including today's Best Song Ever.
Recorded in late 1953, Freberg (with the help of classic voice actors extraordinaire Daws Butler and June Foray) retells the story of St. George and the Dragon via the lens of the famed police procedural drama Dragnet: '8:05 pm, I was walking out of the castle when a call came in from the chief: A dragon had been devouring maidens. Homicide.'
This isn't a song. I know it's not a song. A lot of the jokes are groan inducing, and there's no doubt that it's well past its expiration date. The reason I love the recording (aside from how ridiculous it is) is that it sat at number one on the charts for four weeks when it debuted.
That would never happen today, and probably shouldn't have happened then- but it did. It's facts like that which make me grin ear to ear. I suppose in some ways recordings like these were the YouTube of their day. The internet is overflowing with short and sweet parodies of television shows and movies, St. George and the Dragonet is- well it seems a little too serious to say it was the great-grandfather of those parodies. Let's just say it was definitely a great something. And if THAT isn't a glowing recommendation, I don't know what is.
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