Thursday, October 2, 2008

Second Tuesday Follow-Up - stereonucleosis and a church lady

This follow-up is a little more tangential than the last follow-up that I wrote.

In a Tuesday post, I pretty much established that Rick Dees is not my favorite comedian...if you can call him a comedian.

However, back in April I sang a different tune, as it were. I tweeted the following:

@lotd "kissing 2 girls with mononucleosis will not give you stereonucleosis." rick dees, "peanut prance"

If you haven't heard of @lotd, it stands for "Lyric of the day." A bunch of us tweet various lyrics to that Twitter user, and then @lotd echoes our submissions:

Via @oemperor: "kissing 2 girls with mononucleosis will not give you stereonucleosis." rick dees, "peanut prance"

And the latter tweet was referenced on topnewstrends.com. It differs from the other mononucleosis tweets that topnewstrends found.

So why am I talking about this old tweet? Because the person who wrote (or co-wrote) the song "Peanut Prance" died in May.

Now I know what you're saying - Rick Dees has been dead for years.

But I'm not talking about Rick. I'm talking about Margaret Kerr, who died at the age of 90.

So readers of the Memphis Commercial Appeal started to read her obituary:

Born and raised in the Big Ivy community of Savannah, Tenn., poet and author Margaret Kerr never hid her love of color and nature. Just ask parishioners of First United Methodist Church of Savannah, where she was active for more than 70 years and became known as "the hat lady."

OK, your usual obituary for a revered member of a local church. And she had an artistic side.

In 1950, Mrs. Kerr opened Savannah Florist and began teaching the art of floral arranging and interior design to young women.

"She planted literally thousands of tulips on our farm in Savannah. They just popped up in big circles around the big magnolias," said her other daughter, Pat Kerr Tigrett of Memphis, a fashion designer.

Tigrett said her mother taught her "to love really beautiful flowers and the different colors and how they should complement each other."


But Kerr wasn't just a flower arranger.

Always a creative person, Mrs. Kerr's writing career bloomed in the 1960s as she began to see her childhood memories in "living color." Through poetry and prose, she told the stories of growing up in rural Tennessee.

Published in several anthologies, Mrs. Kerr earned the distinction of Poet Laureate of Hardin County, Tenn.

Her works include the books "Laurels of Big Ivy," "Southern Childhood Passages" and "Recollections & Reflections."


Then we get this:

Her songwriting credits include "Peanut Prance," which appeared on the B side of Rick Dees' "Disco Duck."

Uh, what was that?

But if you search the BMI database, you will find that "Peanut Prance" is credited to Rigdon O. Dees III (the "O," by the way, stands for "Osmond"), guitarist/producer Bobby Manuel, and Margaret Ann Kerr.

I couldn't find out anything else about Kerr's work with Dees, but I did find out that I'm repeating myself again.

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