Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah! · Allan Sherman · 1963

  Play the song.  

It can be a battle for parents to send their reluctant young campers off to their first summer camp. (Just as it was in this #2 hit by Allan Sherman in August, 1963.) But as you will observe, in the end, this boy had a positive experience at Camp Granada. Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh!

A few years before—in 1959—the boys from Camp Kookamonga had a battle of their own to fight in a song that peaked at number fourteen on the Hot 100. But that camp song was actually the second “battle” tune of the year to chart. To top it off, both songs were written to the same folk melody.

The first battle tune of 1959 was actually about the last battle of the War of 1812. The date of the battle was the eighth of January in the year 1815. Andrew Jackson and his men had defeated the British forces at New Orleans. Celebrating the victory was a song soon played by fiddlers all over the country: “The Eighth of January.”

It wasn’t until 1955 that Jimmy Driftwood wrote lyrics for that song and retitled it “The Battle of New Orleans.“

  The Battle of New Orleans · Johnny Horton · 1959
 

The Battle of New Orleans