I'm Goin' Quackers...

...and you can come along!

This one’s going to take some twists and turns, so try and keep up.

Approximately six months ago, I stopped shaving my face. I realize the previous sentence should include the word “because” followed by a reason, but there really is none. I’ve been almost exclusively working from home for several years no and every now and then I’ll decide to do something weird like grow my hair out or, in this case, stop shaving. Young people attend a lot of social functions and sooner or later will get browbeaten into ending such ridiculous behavior. Me? I’m 51. Social events for me include picking up dinner in a drive-thru, groceries at Walmart’s curbside pick up, and books from the library. Eventually I get dragged into a work function or social event that forces me to clean myself up, but those invitations grow further apart the older I get.

My wife recently asked me what the ultimate plan was for the beard and I told her I wanted to grow it so long I could wrap it around myself and use it as a bathing suit. The genuine look of deep concern I got in response told me she had not grown up listening to Goin’ Quackers.

Both my sister and I had record players and stereo systems in our rooms. I got my first record player when I was six or seven years old, and my sister (who is three years younger than I am) probably got hers around the same age. I grew up listening to my dad’s records — I was listening to The Who, Blondie, and Queen in first grade — but my sister and I also had a collection of kids records we shared between the two of us. Each of us had our own “Read-Along” records (I had Star Wars and Scooby Doo; she, Strawberry Shortcake and the Smurfs) but we also had lots of Sesame Street and Disney albums we shared, including this one.

According to a (the?) Disney Wiki, Goin’ Quackers was released in 1980 and contained 14 songs. My sister and I turned four and seven in 1980, but a lot of our records came from garage sales and so it’s possible we didn’t acquire this one until it was a year or two old. Most of the albums we owned were hand-me-downs. Long before vinyl was cool, vinyl was cheap.

I don’t know if they make albums for kids like this anymore. (No, Kid’s Bop doesn’t count.) With Donald Duck on the cover the average person would assume this to be a collection of Disney-related songs, but only about half of the album’s tracks have any connection with Disney properties. The first (and title) track, “Goin’ Quackers”, features Donald Duck and a bunch of kazoo-blowing kids singing, but mostly during the song’s chorus. There’s a cover of “If I Only Had a Brain” from the Wizard of Oz with Goofy on vocals, and a version of “Dueling Banjos” featuring comments from Goofy and Donald, because what better way to prepare kids for Deliverance than through a Disney album.

The rest of the songs are silly sing-a-long songs, the kind kids use to drive their parents crazy by singing over and over. A couple, like “On Top of Spaghetti”, are familiar while most are originals. One my sister and I loved was “Throw it Out the Window,” which owes an awful lot to Benny Bell’s “Shaving Cream.” In this take, one performer presents classic nursery rhymes while his partner sabotages each one by changing the last line of the rhyme. Old Mother Hubbard’s dog, Yankee Doodle’s hat, and Little Bo Peep’s sheep are all unceremoniously “thrown out a second story window” until, inevitably, so is the performer.

And then there’s the song I remembered, “Daddy’s Whiskers,” another campfire-style sing-a-long song. “They hide the dirt on daddy’s shirt they’re always in the way!” The man’s whiskers are so long that his wife can’t avoid them in bed (“Mother eats them in her sleep, she thinks she’s eating shredded wheat!”) and, as I remembered, “when daddy goes a-swimmin’, no swimming trunks for him, he wraps his whiskers ‘round him, and gayly plunges in!”

If you have 70 free seconds in your day, here you go:

Hang on — things are just starting to get weird.

When you’re a kid there’s an illusion surrounding these types of records. As a child, it never occurred to me that while those old Sesame Street records were being recorded… nobody was actually performing the Muppets. As an adult it seems relatively obvious that there would be no reason for anyone to perform pullets while recording an audio-only record, but as a child I was convinced that somewhere, all of these things existed as television shows or movies I just hadn’t seen yet. In retrospect I’m not sure which is funnier; the idea of Jim Henson and Frank Oz performing Muppets in a studio where there were no cameras, or a bunch of grown men doing silly voices and singing while staring into each others’ eyes. The same holds true for these old Disney albums. As a kid I was sure that Goin’ Quackers was a movie or television special I just hadn’t seen. In my mind’s eye, the kids singing the chorus to “Goin’ Quackers” were 100% in the same room with Donald Duck. It never dawned on me that behind the album were, for the most part, just a couple of dudes playing campfire songs with the voices of kids and cartoon characters layered in.

Those dudes turned out to be a two-man act named Willio and Phillio. Willio and Phillio were a musical act that spent many years performing live shows and and making late night television appearances. The duo appear on on multiple Disney albums, but also had a few albums of their own. One of their biggest non-Disney-related hits was “The Cleveland Stroll.”

Willio’s real name is Will Ryan, and Phillio’s name is Phil Baron. If you’re a Disney fan, you may recognize those names. Will Ryan has provided many voices for various Disney projects, including singing voices for Rabbit and Tigger and the regular voice of Eeyore in Welcome to Pooh Corner. Ryan also provided the voice for Petrie in The Land Before Time and tons of has a long list of voice acting credits. Phil Baron provided the voices of Piglet in Welcome to Pooh’s Corner and has a long list of voice acting credits as well.

Of course I’m burying the lead here. Phil Baron was also the voice of Teddy Ruxpin — the toy, the songs, and the animated TV specials. Will Ryan voiced Teddy Ruxpin’s best friend, Grubby.

Yes. Willio and Phillio were also Teddy Ruxpin and Grubby.

There’s a magical age where kids are either disinterested or incapable of “pulling back the curtain” to expose reality. Imagine being that age again, the age of not wondering what Chuck E. Cheese or the Rock-afire Explosion were doing when their performances ended and the curtains closed. How old was I when I stopped believing Muppets could actually drive cars and started feeling bad for all those Muppet performers who had to hold their arms up in the air for hours on end. One day you’re legitimately terrified of the Rancor from Return of the Jedi and the next you realize, to quote from Monty Python and the Hold Grail… “it’s only a model.” It’s that day you realize Robin from the SuperFriends sounds an awful lot like Casey Kasem and instead of worrying whether or not the Legion of Doom will finally come up with a plan to put an end to the Hall of Justive once and for all, all you can think about is that the guy from American Top 40 has a side gig.

So, where were we? Oh yeah. Last weekend, I shaved off my beard. I got tired of people holding doors for me and treating me like I was 80 years old and calling me “sir.” While I’m not sure a beard this long will hide the dirt on your shirt, I will say that it prevented multiple stains by catching food before it ever hit my shirt. Lots and lots of food. It’s a real treat, combing spaghetti sauce out of one’s facial hair.

I’m not sure how many years one would have to grow a beard before it could double as a bathing suit. Assuming there are no weddings or funerals to attend next year, maybe I’ll let you know.

If you survived all of that, you deserve this: