Beddy Bye Top Ten: Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On the Bedpost Overnight) (#5)

Tweet

Only from the world of the wacky hillbilly will you get Midnight Oil's hard driving protest anthem one day....and this the next. As I've frequently mentioned, my brother doesn't want to ride in my car....not because I'm a bad driver, but because of the weirdness on my iPod. So, from 80s alternative we move to today's song featuring "bed" in the title. #5: Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On the Bedpost Overnight) - Homer & Jethro Yeah, I know, Lonnie Donegan. But this song goes back to the 1920s, and at least Homer & Jethro were alive then! (Donegan was born in 1931.) According to Picky Wedia, Billy Jones and Ernie Hare, the Happiness Boys, recorded this song in 1924. I remember them from a Kermit Schafer "blooper" album (where Jones accurately pointed out that "no car starts with pee"). A note in Billboard from when the Homer & Jethro version came out said that a number of covers of the song had resorted to risqué lyrics, but H&J had avoided that. Now that is funny, given how Messers Haynes and Burns billed themselves as "the juvenile delinquents who grew up to be dirty old men." And I have a long love of this song. An edited version (omitting the opening "Oh me, oh my oh you" verse that opens the song) appeared on a Camden compilation album, which we had when I was a kid. Jethro's brother-in-law, a "down on his luck guitarist" (as Jethro would frequently joke) by the name of Chet Atkins, played the guitar break in this song. I was smitten. I wanted to play guitar after hearing that. I can do something on a guitar, but it's not classified as "playing" it. I even got to meet Chet Atkins, but that didn't help. But I can always enjoy his guitar work on this song. Does the Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor (On the Bedpost Overnight) Written by Billy Rose, Ernest Breuer, and Marty Bloom Recorded by Homer & Jethro Released as a single, 1950 If you pull it out like rubber: