Smothers Brothers - "It Must Have Been Something I Said"

A Very Funny Smothers Time, Where the other Albums?

This album is Very Funny and crack up to listen to, it's been awhile since i heard this gem i'm glad it's on CD. the Clarity and crispness of how clear the recording is no more pops or skips like on the well worn Lp i have, for me anymore, just fun enjoyment listening and laughing along with it. Oh for you Comics, this was recorded at the Ice House In CA . just thought you'd like to know that little bit of trivia.

i do wish that Laugh.Com would get on the ball and release the other albums: Two Sides, Think Ethnic, Live At the Purple Onion, Mom Always like you best and the others Please. From a fan. July 22, 2008

Hiawatha the shin kicker, he wore mocassins so he wouldn't leave marks

I love them, and I can never understand how I can never seem to find anyone thats even heard of them. Being in my 20's I don't particularly expect people my age to have heard of them, unless they have fairly random parents like mine. I've been listening to this album since elementary school and I have to attribute slithery dee, crabs walk sideways, and Hiawatha to mine own rather random sense of humour and smothers love. What an interesting 10 year I must have been running aroud singing " No you won't catch me you stupid ol' slithery dee, you may catch all the others but you arha-----------" Well, I am very happy to finally be able to have this as well as sibling revelry on my ipod. Now it would be lovely if they'd get the show on dvd. November 29, 2007

The singing is as good as the comedy on the Smothers Brothers' fifth album

"It Must Have Been Something I Said!" was the fifth Smothers Brothers album, released in 1964, back when Tom and Dick were "America's great unstrung heroes." As the liner noted by Jinx Kragen remind us, this was a time when the boys had "clowned and sung their way through hundreds of concerts" and with each appearance were winning "new friends for their deliciously irreverent approach to music." Produced as always by David Carroll, the album was recorded at The Ice House in Pasadena, California and offers up these eleven tracks:

1. "Slithery Dee" (0:32)
2. "Hiawatha" (9:25)
3. "The Shrimp" (1:03)
4. "Crabs Walk Sideways" (5:10)
5. "Michael, Row the Boat Ashore" (1:58)
6. "Civil War Song" (2:11)
7. "Jenny Brown" (5:05)
8. "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" (4:14)
9. "Population Explosion" (1:33)
10. "Anne Marie and Jean Pierre" (1:42)
11. "Carnival" (6:12)

For this album the Brothers Smothers made a effort to include more serious songs. The B side of their second album, "The Two Sides of the Smothers Brothers," consisted of studio recordings of songs such as "The Four Winds and the Seven Seas" and the "Sailor's Lament," and their ninth album would be all about "The Smothers Brothers Sing it Straight" (almost). But I have a preference for their singing on stage, accompanied just by Tom's guitar and Dick's fat friend. The boys proved they could sing on their first album when they did a beautiful duet of "Down in the Valley." On this album they top themselves with an exquisite version of "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair," their haunting harmonies making us forget that only two albums earlier they had turned the song into a comic take off on the Miss Clairol "Does She...or Doesn't She?" commercials. Equally strong is there version of "Carnival," the theme from the movie "Black Orpheus," once you get past Tommy's thoughts on kibbutzes. But that is the charm here: One minute Dick is trying to reign in Tommy and the next they are signing a song and convincing us they could have totally madet it as "just" folk singers.

"Michael Row the Boat Ashore" is also done simply and straight, as is "Anne Marie and Jean Pierre." But you always have to watch out that the boys are going to go for laughs at some point, as they do in the two Shel Silverstein songs, "Slithery Dee" and "Civil War Song." The best examples of this practice on this particular album would be "Crabs Walk Sideways," the song about the star-crossed lovers Sally the lobster and Herman the crab where the audience is exhorted to really sing the chorus, and "Jenny Brown," the tragic tale of the lovely "teen-angel" who turns out to have "a rotten sense of humor." There are also quick bits as Tom tries to start a new dance craze called "The Shrimp," and shares his practical solution to the "Population Explosion." After all, this is the album where Tommy explains to his brother, "Words to me are a play thing," which is has been my personal philosophy ever since.

The centerpiece of the album is the longest track, "Hiawatha," which takes the subject of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's famous poem and turns it into a song about the young Indian warrior "going from poverty to puberty" and hunting a bunny rabbit. Along the way Tommy explains why he is "sore at the Indians" and introduces the song "in Indian" (as in that fake Indian language spoken in countless westerns). Kragen asserts that Tommy's "befuddled interpretation of American History is one that even Big Chief Sitting Bull would love," but since Tommy says the Sitting Bull is a "stupid name," I doubt that would really be the case. However, I always did like Tommy's idea that the Indians knew exactly what they were doing when they introduced tobacco to the white settlers. Still, it is strange to look back at this particular routine, especially knowing what would happen by the end of the decade to the Smothers Brothers and their controversial show on CBS, and reconsider it from contemporary concerns of political incorrectness where you are off base as soon as you call Native Americans "Indians." At least I think you will find the humor to be relatively benign.

When "Curb your tongue, knave!" came out on CD in 2002 from Laugh.com I thought it would be the start of the quick release of all of the Smothers Brothers albums on CD. But it took two years for "Aesop's Fables the Smothers Brothers Way" to come out, and now we have had to wait for 2007 to get this third album. Of course I have all eleven of the Smothers Brothers albums on vinyl, but I do not own a record player anymore so a fat lot of good that does me. I would hate to think that there is an arithmetic progression at work here and that we will have to wait four more years for the next SmoBro CD. At that rate it will be the year 2065 before we have all of the albums out, at which point we would have to wait another dozen years for Dick Smothers' solo album "It's a Saturday Night at the World." The Smothers Brothers have set the mark as the longest running comedy team in history, but at the start of their second half-century together you have to admit that they are not going to be around in another fifty years. It would be nice if all of their albums were out on CD while the boys are still out on the road. April 20, 2007

More reviews at Amazon.com ...