The old 1940s Bozo records appeared in the grand fashion of the day – two 78s and a book tucked inside what might nowadays be mistaken as an antique photo album. You could read along with the dialogue and take in the glorious full color illustrations until Bozo said it was “time to turn the page in your picture book.” When I was a kid I used to spend a lot of time at the house of a friend of mine who was the youngest of nine. His parents had started buying kids’ records in the fifties, so there was a lot of vintage stuff around. I fell deeply in love with their tattered copy of Bozo Under the Sea, which my friend actually ended up giving me. (I’ve still got it and I’m still thanking him for it after several decades.) Nowadays you can download at least four of these full albums (including Under the Sea), complete with book, at Kiddie Records Weekly. Last weekend I was going through some stuff and found a 45 version of Bozo’s Songs About Good Manners which I didn’t know I had. So here it is. Sorry ’bout those Rice Krispies in the background. I did what I could.

By the way, there’s been some controversy about Bozo’s origins. It turns out that the Bozo on Capitol Records – on these records I’m talking about – was officially the first one. Pinto Colvig, also the voice of Disney’s Goofy, did Bozo and many of the other voices on the records. The Bozo we know from The Bozo Show and elsewhere, however, developed a popular persona quite independent from the Capitol version. (Alas, another early 80’s cable flashback – remember when WGN used to show that? He’d say things like “ridicle-docle” for “ridiculous.”)

“Bozo’s Songs About Good Manners” (1954)

“There Was a Pig Went Out to Dig”

“Here is as fine a group of gay holiday songs as you’ll find under any musical Christmas Tree.” (liner notes)

Christmas is for Children – “Ding Aling Dong The Sleighbell Song”

In 1975 or so my mom took us to see Lady Aberlin and two purple pandas at the Valley Fair Mall in Granger, Utah. Happy memory. This record came with a gift bag that Lady Aberlin handed out to all the kids. Hear it as it now sounds. Confession: I’ve sung the “meow meow pretty” routine at 3:11 to more than a few cats.

Fred Rogers – “Around the Neighborhood: Puppet Voices”

My parents bought this story 45 at K-mart for me when I was 8 or 9, I’m guessing. (It’s taken from the “U.S. of Archie” American history cartoons of the mid-70s.) My very favorite part of the record is still the first ten seconds. (Sometime in the early 80s, Dallas McKennon, the man who did Archie’s voice on these shows, sang lead on a hard-to-find record credited to the Archies called Drive the Boulevard.)

Archie – “The Great Divide”