Eddie Albert & Eva Gabor -- Green Acres

 

Welcome to the weekly Reminiscings of Youth (or toddlerhood as it is here) where I will once again dive deeply into the vaults of TV theme songs this time. This week is the 1965 "Green Acres" which had premiered about a month before I arrived on Earth. I wasn't a precocious kid at all (more undercooked, actually) but my impression of the show when I was a baby was that it was about an odd old couple who bought a terrible farm and the husband was pretty much angry all the time at the locals. In the years since, I have been surprised lawyer-turned-farmer Oliver Douglas didn't end up needing his own lawyer because he could have easily murdered the entire populace of Hooterville from frustration.

In my early years of TV viewing from the late 1960s, America's CBS was famous for having a lot of rural-based sitcoms such as "Green Acres", "Petticoat Junction", "The Andy Griffith Show" and "The Beverly Hillbillies" (yes, I know that for that last one, the setting was the titular Beverly Hills in Los Angeles, but the main characters were still down-home folks). Viewers must have wondered whether CBS stood for Cornpone Broadcasting System instead of Columbia Broadcasting System. However, when the 1970s arrived, the powers-that-be decided to go on a rural purge and all of the above sitcoms were cancelled with the focus being on more city-based and socially aware fare such as "All in the Family" and "The Mary Tyler Moore Show".

But getting back to "Green Acres", I still remember the opening credits and the theme song by Vic Mizzy. My mother used to tell me (and perhaps everyone within earshot) that I used to bounce on my diapers whenever "Mission: Impossible" came on (that was actually a CBS action drama...nothing countrified there) with its legendary theme song, so there was no way that I wasn't going to do the same with the theme from "Green Acres". At the time, I couldn't quite get the lyrics that main actors Eddie Albert and Eva Gabor sang, but I did get a kick out of the catchy arrangement and got a laugh out of Eddie tossing the pitchfork and then clapping his chest with a straight face. It would also be a while before I realized the irony of Eddie's Oliver driving a dirty tractor while wearing a full business suit.

So, in comparison, let's see what songs were winning the Japan Record Awards back in 1965. 

Grand Prize: Hibari Misora -- Yawara (柔）

Best New Artist: Hiroshi Wada & Mahina Stars & Miyoko Tashiro -- Aishite, Aishite, Aishichattanoyo (愛して愛して愛しちゃったのよ）

Best Lyrics: Hirooki Ogawa（小川寛興）for Chieko Baisho -- Sayonara wa Dance no Ato ni （さよならはダンスの後に）