another day in the life of mama’s family.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fqUwK1GSbo&feature=relatedoh, miss vicki, miss vicki. i love you when you’re with carol burnett, especially as cissy in gone with the wind:
so why did you have to go and spoil it by creating a melodrama of your own?
basically, this lovely ditty — which control freak sonny bono turned down when it was offered to cher — concerns a sister, a brother, a cheating wife, brother’s former best friend, and the corrupt legal system of the South. it was even turned into a TV movie at one point with kristy mcnichol, dennis quaid, and mark hamill (LUKE??? you fell to earth and landed in Georgia??) did the nation hate the South so much that people made this song a hit just to remind the South that it hadn’t amounted to much good, not even since the Civil War came to straighten it out? lawd have mercy.
anyway, some things about this song i don’t understand, not now, not in the 70s:
1) what self respecting person goes up to a friend and announces that they’ve been sleeping with their wife while he’s been away? duh. i have a death wish.
2) what sister could stand by and watch her brother go down for murders she committed?
3) and now, why is she basically confessing in song? dimwit.
4) just how did the sister hide the body? and,
5) where the hell is the amos boy? probably shacking up with the sister, i bet.
anyway, i think i see the inspiration for mama’s family here. mama’s angry, vengeful, and violent family.
(and how did this become a hit? you can’t even dance to it.)
Carol Burnett is teh bomb. I’ve mixed feelings about the song, though – on one hand, I like the melody and think Vicki Lawrence is a skilled singer. On the other hand, I agree with all your points about the storyline.
I don’t think I even knew there WAS a Vicky Lawrence version!!