Judy In Disguise

Speaking of karaoke--I did it once.  One night in 1992, I met up with some fellow members of the Crunchland BBS at a restaurant in Laurel, Maryland, for karaoke night.  I decided I would try it if and only if they had John Fred's "Judy In Disguise (with Glasses)," so that I could finally read the lyrics I didn't understand if nothing else (being the days before lyrics databases on the Web).  They had it, I sang it (the untranscribable lyrics being "and your new rah-rahs," whatever rah-rahs are), they gave me a tape of my performance, I played it for my friends, they were amused at the wooden quality of my singing.  At some point in the intervening 15 years the tape was lost, which is a shame because that's the kind of personal artifact I would like to post here.  Maybe I will recreate it someday, but in the meantime here is the original version:

The wild popularity of this poke at the Beatles displaced the Beatles from the #1 chart position in January 1968, but it completely overshadowed the fact that John Fred Gourrier and his band had been playing serious "swamp rock" in their home state of Louisiana for ten years.  They continued in the serious vein, but could never shake the novelty label that "Judy" saddled them with, and broke up around 1971.  John Fred later became a record producer, radio DJ and basketball coach, and he released three more albums (two solo and one as a member of the Louisiana Boys) before his death in 2005.

In 1992, as the new owner of a used record store I had access to tons of music that I didn't before, so I did what any music geek would do and made a mix tape.  The local oldies station, "Oldies 106.9," had one DJ who always pronounced "oldies" as "odies," so naturally that's what I called my oldies mix tape.  The "Odies" tape got played over and over through the years; my children grew up listening to it in the car.  I'm not sure where the tape is now, so I'll attempt to recreate it here with entries tagged "odies."  "Judy in Disguise (with Glasses)" was the first song on the tape, and it even became a part of my son's bedtime ritual: I would sing the lyrics while he accompanied me on a little chord-organ (a gift from my brother).  That was a lot of fun.

New Wavers may remember the silly synthpop version of "Judy in Disguise" by Silicon Teens, a.k.a. Daniel Miller (who also recorded as The Normal), founder of the Mute Records label:

I don't know who will remember the Brazilian cover by Rogerio Duprat (1932-2006), riding the wave of the "Tropicalia" fad in 1968, but it's pretty sweet:

New York punk band Cracked Actor recorded "Judy in Disguise" in 1982, releasing it as the B-side of their "Nazi School" single, which I vaguely remember from the college radio station.  As an experiment in expediency I'll try embedding the Seeqpod player here:

The completist in me wants to post every version ever recorded, but the pragmatist in me has decided to make do with a link to all the versions on eMusic, where you can listen to 29-second samples of them.  Don't miss the Norwegian Big Band's take!