An unlikely result of organizing the all-day shape note sing at the Depreciation Lands Museum: my discovery of this old novelty hit and, more happily, the amazing Slim Gaillard:
And what does this have to do with shape-note singing? The day before the sing I happened to call the museum office to check on a detail, and the nice woman there informed me that there would be a cement mixer running in the parking lot in front of the church we'd be singing in. In the end this didn't happen (thanks, Karen!) but I had a pretty tense time for a little while. I was describing all this to my parents on the phone, and one of them said, "cement mixer, putty putty". I said, "what?" When they explained this was an old popular novelty hit, I said, are you kidding me? and immediately went to the internet to check it out. Pretty soon I was standing with the phone in my hand playing this video and they were laughing hysterically.