Thoughts on CornDoggie, Potential Musical Knock-Offs, and How There Aren't Any Worthwhile Gifs of Corndogs
Welcome back to another very strange blog post about another very strange thing I spent my hard-earned money on on the internet!
This week, I have something called CornDoggie: an Original Rock-n-Roll Era Musical. And much like my previous post about Alec in Blunderland, it’s going to be a hard one to explain because of the limited information I was able to find on the internet.
Also, as a disclaimer, the gif at the top is one I cut myself from a vintage Coke commercial. It has next to nothing to do with CornDoggie, but the corn dog gif selection was VERY LACKING.
Anyway.
Let’s start with the facts. It’s a musical. It’s called CornDoggie. The album art appears to be a rip off of the Coca-Cola logo. The album came still in shrink-wrap, so it’s never been played. The back of the album notes that the entire show (book, music, lyrics) was written by Mike Fingerut and David Cothrell. It was recorded at the Portland Civic Auditorium in Portland, Oregon on December 27th, 1972.
Click on the image above to see it bigger!
The back of the album also includes a wacky synopsis, full of casual language and interesting descriptions of characters. I will attach a photo of it for your viewing/reading pleasure, but let’s just say it includes gems like: “CornDoggie, who has a strange ability to dream the future,” and “CornDoggie realizes he should have taken Betsy Lou to the prom. They could have taken a bus or something,” and “You know the parts of the Superman comic books where Superman saves Lois Lane? Where she always falls in love with him. Well sometimes CornDoggie likes to pretend that he’s Superman and Betsy Lou is Lois Lane, because he’s still in love with her.”
Huh?
Weirdness aside, the plot seems basic enough. CornDoggie is a high school kid (who has fortune telling dreams??) who likes to hang out with his friends at Pop’s Pop Shop and hate on the dreaded Jocks. When CornDoggie’s dream girl, Betsy Lou, starts dating the leader of the Jocks, he’ll do anything to get her to date him instead, including — gasp — wear a letterman sweater. Like a Jock. As the synopsis summarizes it, “CornDoggie — a lively musical depicting the late 50s has been well received because it takes people back to those days when for fun, the whole gang would meet down at the malt shop.” Ah, yes. Those days.
CornDoggie sounds a little like it might be a poor man’s Grease (with a Biblical/Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat Prophetic-Dream-Having touch?), and it technically could be. Grease opened Off-Broadway in February of 1972, only ten short months before CornDoggie opened Off-Off-Off-Broadway in Oregon. So while it’s definitely possible that they drew inspiration from Grease, Fingerut and Cothrell would have had to have been fast writers.
Beyond the album, the internet has very little to offer. There is no trace of CornDoggie, at least not in this form, anywhere. What I did find is something called “Rock ‘N Roll,” also by Mike Fingerut and David Cothrell. It is available for license through Samuel-French, and it appears to be a different version (?) of CornDoggie, as according to the summary, it includes all the same characters (plus a couple not mentioned on the back of CornDoggie), and many of the same plot points.
It has only one review, from someone named “Robert D.” It’s from 2014, and reads simply:
“In my Junior year of High School (mid-70s), we put on this play for a two-week run. It was sold out every night, and we ran it a third week--again to sell-out crowds. I still think fondly on the play, and occasionally sing excerpts to my family. I still look for times & places where it is playing.”
Samuel-French also has a tool to see where upcoming productions are so that you can attend. There are none… in the whole world.**
**I feel it’s important to mention that I did this original research a few months ago, so the fact that nobody is putting on Rock ‘N Roll has nothing to do with the global pandemic.
When I googled the show “Rock ‘n Roll,” (which, first of all, only has THREE PAGES OF GOOGLE RESULTS) only three things of even vague relevance popped up: an ad for a high school production in 2002, a scanned newspaper article about a high school production in Colorado in May of 1976, and someone who posted lyrics to a song from it on a Cricket Magazine forum asking about people’s favorite song lyrics (anyone remember Cricket Magazine?? And its sister magazine, Ladybug?) in 2011. They said it was from “the play [they] were doing for musical theater.” Other songs on the forum included several selections from Sondheim shows, a church hymn, “Happy/Sad” from The Addams Family Musical, and Adele's “Rolling in the Deep.”
So regardless of whether or not anyone actually performs CornDoggie 2.0, “Rock n’ Roll,” luckily for me (and you!), you can read the first 34 pages of it for free on Samuel French’s website. It includes a song list, confirming my suspicions that the shows are basically the same. Rock n’ Roll includes two extra songs (“Disappearin’ Rainbow,” a duet for Pops and a Delivery Boy (?), and “That’s How I Make Them Mine” for Forest, the leader of the Jocks). The song “Forever and a Day,” the second number in CornDoggie’s second act, appears to have been cut.
I have read the script sampler and it is…really something. We all know that I could go on and on, but I’ll boil it down to a few major points.
The boys all talk like surfers, or maybe like Gen Z girls. Nearly every sentence begins with the word “like.”
I am very, VERY, sad that the song “Disappearin’ Rainbow” is not included on CornDoggie. Pops AND A RANDOM DELIVERY BOY sing it to give CornDoggie advice on how to talk to girls.
Along with being being fairly uneventful and slow-paced, this show really, REALLY wants you to remember that this is the 1950s, damn it. Real dialogue includes things like:
BUTCH: Wanna go tonight, Frankie?
FRANKIE: Naw. ‘I Love Lucy’ is on tonight.
And later:
CORNDOGGIE and BETSY LOU enter, holding hands.
CORNDOGGIE: Hi gang! What’s happenin’?
MANFRED: Like, wow! It’s Debbie Reynolds and Eddie Fisher!
So. That’s what we’re dealing with here.
Anyway, let’s listen! Or, as CornDoggie himself might say, “Like, let’s make like James Dean, and get this show on the road! Hohohohoho!”
SIDE ONE
1. Surfside in the Golden Summer (Prelude) — Johnny Saphire
So I guess this song exists as a “mood setter,” because it happens as soon as the show starts, before anything has happened. It’s a ballad, or, rather, a love song — a sappy ode to all to all things 1950s. And according to “Johnny Saphire,” whoever he is, there are some very specific, very boring things to be nostalgic about.
“Faded jeans in a bucket seat. Sidewalk surfing on a lonely street.
Holding hands underneath the trees. Sunbleached hair scattered by the breeze.
Showing off your brand new keys to the car.
Terry cloth under tennis shoes. Read the comics and ignore the news.
Where do all those good times go? Please don’t ask me, ‘cuz I don’t know.
I just got here and it’s time to go
away.”
Honestly, Johnny Saphire, if this lullaby of a song is any indication of what’s to come, it might be time for me to go (away) too. This one has nothing to do with the plot. It’s like the “Grease is the Word” of CornDoggie. Only it’s NOT, because CornDoggie is a whole six years older than the Grease film. I guess “Grease is the Word” is the “Surfside in the Golden Summer” of Grease.
2. Knock the Jocks (Around the Clock) — Manfred, CornDoggie, Duffy and Company
Opens with a dialogue intro featuring one of the kids (Manfred? CornDoggie?) with a raspy voice detailing a recent football game. Then the song begins very abruptly. It starts as a high school fight song and then turns into something else. Whoever is singing the song (according to Rock n’ Roll, it’s Manfred) is chronicling how they love to “Knock the Jocks Around the Clock,” which I would have thought meant “beat up,” but now I think might just mean “diss?” It’s all very “Officer Krupke” from West Side Story, as CornDoggie and his friends all impersonate the Jocks to make fun of them. It’s also includes a section that is just the actual song “Rock Around the Clock.”
3. What’s Happen’en — Manfred and Company
“Whaddya wanna do?”
“Hold it, cats! Because ____ is here to tell ya what’s happenin’!!!!!!!!”
This starts with a… spoken word rap type thing? My bad, it doesn’t start with one. It just IS one. Whoever this is (I can’t make out what he says his name is at the top of the track) is telling the kids what’s going to happen in the next couple days. Namely, a school dance and a football game. Revolutionary.
It then turns into a call and response song?
4. Rock, Rock, Rock and Roll — Johnny Saphire
Okay so apparentlyyyyy Johnny Saphire is an actual character in this play, because now he’s playing in Pop’s Pop Shop. IS Johnny Saphire famous? Is he a high schooler? How did he book the gig at Pop’s Pop Shop, and why are the kids so excited about this?
I will say, “Rock, Rock, Rock, and Roll” is a much bigger bop than his sleeper “Surfside in the Golden Summer.” Woof. Always lead with this one, Johnny.
5. There’s a Place (Alma Mater) — Company
This is an alma mater that was absolutely written for a musical and does not resemble any alma mater I have ever heard.
6. Oh How Keen — CornDoggie, Bumpers, Darlene, Manfred and Duffy
According to the synopsis, this song details a dream that CornDoggie had. In case you don’t remember (and honestly, why would you?), CornDoggie’s whole ~thing~ is that he can tell the future with dreams. This is the weirdest song and the weirdest dream I have ever heard. It is so absurd that I have laid out the whole song for you below. Is it supposed to be funny? I… don’t think so. Is it funny? Yes.
“I saved all my money up to ask you out. I worked overtime on my paper route.
I asked you to the Prom. You said “okay.” I thought it really was my lucky day.
Oh, how keen. You said you’d go with me, with me. You said you’d go with me.
I knew that we’d have fun, my Betsy Lou. I like strawberry malts and so did you.
We’d dance and listen to the featured band. We’d sit and talk a while, maybe hold hands.
Oh, how keen. You said you’d go with me, with me. You said you’d go with me.
I got into my suit. It fight real tight. My shoes were brown and black. My socks were white.
You wore your ponytail tied up with bows. And traded bobby socks for mother’s hose.
Oh, how keen. You said you’d go with me, with me. You said you’d go with me.
Betsy Lou!”
Please note the confusing tense changes in the section of the song above. At this point in the song, CornDoggie monologues.
“Oh Betsy Lou. When you said that you’d go with me to the prom with me I felt so proud. I really did, Betsy Lou. The prom could have been so exciting. We could have had so much fun together. Talking, and dancing, and holding hands. But, Betsy Lou, I really had no idea of what could happen to us… afterwards.”
I’m sorry, what?? CornDoggie continues singing as if that monologue didn’t just set a super weird tone.
“As we were driving home, I held you tight. I thought everything would be all right.
I was distracted. I could not see that other car coming towards me.
I heard the screeching tires. I heard your cry. I saw the headlights flash into your eyes.
I hoped and I prayed that I’d find you. Oh, where can you be my Betsy Lou?
I didn’t know that you were really going to die. Oh, I didn’t know you’d go.
Oh, how keen. You said you’d go with me, with me. You said you’d go with me.”
So this song is about how CornDoggie can’t ask Betsy Lou to the Prom because he had a prophetic dream that they went and he killed her?! I’m sorry, what?
7. Alone on Prom Night — Betsy Lou, Manfred, CornDoggie and Duffy
This track starts with a quintessential “Teenager Talking on the Phone Scene,” which I will lovingly spell out for you below. If you are looking for a Fresh, Hip monologue, look no further than this piece of ART.
*The Phone Rings*
“Hello? Oh, hi Gwen. What? No, he hasn’t called yet. Oh, I don’t know, he probably got a flat tire or something. You know how bad his car is, I’m surprised it hasn’t blown up! Oh, I don’t know. You’ll go next year for sure. Hey, I’ll tell you all about it when I get back, okay? Okay, bye!”
*She Hangs Up the Phone*
“…If I ever make it there. I can’t believe it, CornDoggie’s standing me up! Oh, of all the nerve, the biggest prom of the year! The only prom of the year… When I get my hands on that boy I’ll tell him a thing or two! No, I won’t tell him anything. I’ll never speak to him again. Ever! Well, not for a long time, anyway.”
A slow clap for that. Also my roommate pointed out that Betsy Lou sounds like the girl from Frosty the Snowman and now I can’t un-hear it.
Humph.
As far as the song goes, I dunno. This is a little too close to Grease’s “It’s Raining on Prom Night,” right down to the fact that it involves a girl singing along to a radio, and she sings a song where she rhymes the phrase “hair a mess” with “dress.” Also this might be more of a comment on the fact that all music from the 50’s sounds the same, but I’m pretty sure if you try to sing “Beauty School Dropout” over this, you can. Let me know if you try it.
SIDE TWO
1. He Stood His Baby Up — CornDoggie, Manfred and Duffy
For the record, this track starts with CornDoggie musing, “You know, maybe I should have gone ahead and taken Betsy Lou to the prom anyway. We could have taken the bus or something.” Yes, well, that really was your bad, wasn’t it, CornDoggie?
I’m not sure which of these boys is supposed to be singing this song, mostly because it sounds like whoever it is is doing an Elvis impression… regardless, as the title would suggest, this is a song bemoaning CornDoggie’s bold choice to stand up Betsy Lou.
2. Forever and a Day — Darlene, Bumpers and the Twins
Okay, WHAT ARE THESE VOICES THESE PEOPLE ARE USING?
To be honest with all of you, I am running out of snarky things to say because HONESTLY all of these songs sound exactly the same. These are not tunes you can hum. Or maybe they are. Because you could hum all of them at once.
3. So Much More — Betsy Lou and Girls
Two observations:
The twin characters speak in unison.
I’ve already half-mentioned this, but Betsy Lou straight up sounds about 14 years old, so they either cast a real teenager, or this is some of the most impressive voice work I’ve ever heard.
4. I Want You and I Need You — CornDoggie, Manfred and Duffy
My snark well has totally run dry, but this included an excerpt of the song “Teenager in Love.” Is that legal…?
5. I Want You and I Need You; So Much More (Reprise) — Bumpers and Duffy
“… what. what. what. why.” That’s what I wrote as my original notes for this song. It has to be heard to be believed. I have nothing else to say beyond that. It’s like if a love song were sung by Goofy.
Also if you were wondering what “WHAT ARE THESE VOICES THESE PEOPLE ARE USING?” meant on the second song on this side, the recording below should explain it.
6. Eats — Company
This possible knock off of “We Go Together” is about all the food all of these kids want to eat. Me too, kids. Me too.
The End.
So, that’s CornDoggie. I have a lot of questions. Is CornDoggie inspired by Grease? Is it just a wild coincidence? And I’m also really wondering about all the 1950s nostalgia that was swirling around in the 1970s. Grease? Happy Days? CornDoggie? I know this new decade has just begun, but I can’t say I’m expecting a sudden influx of early 2000s nostalgia in the form of idealistic art about the decade. Prove me wrong though, I dare you.
