Earliest ones I remember were "Popcorn popping on the Apricot tree," and "Give said the little stream." They were also among my favorites when I was growing up.

Music was one of the few things I really enjoyed about those early church meetings.

My first thought on doing the death-gestures and secret handshakes in the temple was, "What happened to the 'Jesus wants me for a sunbeam' church I thought I grew up in?"

Not that it was my favorite...that was probably "Popcorn popping..." But it was the first one that came to mind while I pretended to slit my throat and guts.

Surely you jest!

desertman Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Surely you jest!

I must have missed that one as a kid.
Was it in the primary songbook?

"Surely you jest, said the little stream, as popcorn was popping on the apricot tree..." ?

Feel the beat, baby!

I remember the Little Pioneer Children song and how stanza #3 used to be sung: Gladly helping each other, merry and happy and gay.

It got changed under BKP's music correlation in the mid 80s. Now it sings: Gladly helping each other, merry and happy were they.

You would have to find one of those pre-correlation Sing with Me primary songbooks to see it for yourself.

Of course it would. Gay no longer means what it used to mean. Mormonism must not use such a word depicting sexual orientation in a primary song. It might lead young minds astray.

When we were that age, it didn't take very much to distract us, truth be told. :)

Nor was there a gay movement in the 60's. That came later. It wasn't anything we even discussed whether at church, or school, or home. Back then homosexuality was so carefully covered over, it was a non-issue. (Again, describing what it was like in the Morridor.)

Moving to the Bay area my senior year of high school is what brought me up to speed in the real world. All that has changed in the intervening years. In some ways for the better.

I's always fun when Grandpa comes, when Grandpa comes we're gay..... lol.
From the old Sing With Me book.

Remember "Autumn day, bright and gay..."

"Follow the Prophet"

Why?

Yes, it is awful, but it helps Nevermos understand how heavily conditioned Mormons are from a young age.

I so testify, Amen.

I used to like primary when it was fun and before the morg made it drab and dreary. I remember the singing in sacrament meetings and all of the primary programs where we got to sit up on the stand. Also, I recall how the primary presidency spent months trying to settle us down to prepare us for our big performance. The folding seats on the stand were so intriguing that we would lift our tiny bodies up so the seat would begin to fold up, then we would flop ourselves back down. We did that over and over until we had every primary teacher standing over us. One sister had a worn out yard stick that she put to good use by smacking our heads when we acted irreverent. I usually lost my cheap-o clip on tie while sitting on the stand so whether I behaved or not, it didn't matter. I would get a good spanking while getting into the family car before going home.

As I became older, I lost interest in primary. Especially, when the bishop read a letter that stated that primary programs during sacrament service needed to be more Christ centered and less singing of the familiar primary songs. So we were all expected to read scripture excerpts to tell some sort of story. I was either 10 or 11 and I was sitting next to my peers. Each one of us had a small piece of a straw that we easily concealed within the palm of our hands. With an ample supply of sacrament programs, we started chewing on paper (yes, very nasty, disgusting and juvenile). We put our straws to use for spitballs. We actually plastered the small narrow tinted window on the wall of the 1970s era chapel. Nobody caught on to our mess. So we started aiming at the backs of people. We hit a lot of people with spitballs while sitting on the stand. We finally got caught during the SM prayer. My friend hit a sister's ear and she turned around to see him trying to hit another target. She was royally pissed. She marched up in the middle of the prayer to grab his arm. All of this commotion stopped the clueless priest and one of the BP counselors came to her assistance. My other friend tried to trip him so he too got physically dragged out of the chapel. I escaped the ordeal by looking down at my shoes. I still ran into trouble because I had either lost or spit up the scripture verse that I was supposed to read aloud. I think I said something like "God loves us." It did not over well with the primary prez.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2017 03:56PM by messygoop.

Popcorn popping, obviously. And Book of Mormon Stories. Does anyone know if this is still sung? I would imagine is needs a new arrangement--some kind of music that doesnt try to mimic "Indian" drumming.

The boys seemed to really get into Book of Mormon stories more than the girls did. They loved playing cowboys and Indians where I grew up (in heart of the Morridor,) so it was an extension of playtime for them.

I don't think they sing "Give Said the Little Stream" much any longer. At least that is what I've been told. I liked that one, too.

Oh, one of my favorites was the one about Heavenly Father Loves Me. Oh, "whenever I hear the song of a bird or look at the blue, blue sky." I loved that song.

And I liked the one about "I have a little gospel light, I'm going to let it shine." They also don't sing that one anymore. I'm 60, so they sang this back in the 1960s. They sing it on the movie "Corinna, Corinna."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/07/2017 02:07PM by cl2.

I love that one too, 'Whenever I hear the song of a bird,..." used to sing it a lot including during my teens.

'This little light of mine' was a standard where my children and I attended following our leaving TSCC.

In the 60s the song book included "once there was a snowman" and a few other "secular" songs.

I liked "Do as I'm doing" and "tell me the stories of Jesus"

My Grandmother would sing "when we're helping we're happy " when it was time to clean up after lunch.

My favorite though is "O hush thee my baby" my mother sang it to me and I sang it to my kids and still sing it to my grandchildren.

"

I loved 'Do as I'm doing," and the 'stories of Jesus.' I'm not familiar with those other songs.

Also loved the ones sung for moms on Mother's Day each year.

"In the Leafy Tree Tops," was another favorite of mine.

When we're helping we're happy and we sing as we go
for we love to help (Grandma) mother cause we all love her so.

The other one.

Oh hush thee my baby
a story to tell
how little lord Jesus
on earth came to dwell

How in a far country
way over the sea
was born a wee baby
a wee one like thee

Rock a bye baby, rock a bye dear
Sleep little baby, have nothing to fear.
Rock a bye baby, rock a bye dear
Jesus will care for his little one dear.

My stepkids were abandoned by their bio mom when my youngest step daughter was only two. Remember, two is a vitally important bonding time in child development.

After the family dynamics blew all to hell after BioMom ran off with a mega-strange boyfriend, the court awarded total custody to Dad, so I inherited a ready-made family.

Daughter the youngest was incredibly clingy. To myself, I thought of her as "The Incredible Velcro Child." I couldn't seem to pry her loose, and it drove me crazy. My own son had been raised, as I had been, to amuse himself quietly and not be clingy. He was very much loved, but was not attached like a parasite.

I was working full time, and I worked four ten-hour days, so I could get a day off during the week, when I could be alone, without children underfoot, to tend to laundry, groceries, cleaning the house, etc. without having a small army following me everywhere.

Daughter the Youngest had NO concept of boundaries. I literally had to close and LOCK the bathroom door, in order to have privacy, because she would have happily followed me in there. She would be waiting right there at the door when I got out.

She would insist, "I want to HELP you," so I would assign chores like setting the table that would at least unwrap her from my leg and move her a few paces away from me. But within less than a minute, she would abandon the task and be right back underfoot. She was terribly needy.

Her teachers reported that she was that way at school, too, once she was old enough to attend. One teacher told me that Daughter refused to play with other kids at recess. Instead, she preferred to stand next to teacher, preferably holding teacher's hand, happy to have teacher all to herself.

Her father taught her that song about "When we're helping, we're happy," and to this day, hearing it makes me feel crazy again. She wasn't helping. She was CLINGING. And those of you who are parents know that the smaller a child is, the less capable they are of really helping. They just get in the way.

The scariest time I can remember, I had set her to work on a coloring book at the kitchen table, with crayons, and STRICT, EXPLICIT instructions to finish coloring a picture and not get up from the table until she had done so. I was busy trying to cook dinner.

I had just taken a steaming, bubbling hot roast out of the oven, and spun about to set it on the counter. While I was focusing on the roast, daughter had crept up behind me and I didn't realize it. I tripped over her, couldn't disentangle myself, and began to fall forward. I had hideous visions of the scalding hot roast and its juices spilling over her head, right there in front of me.

I still had a pretty good soccer foot, and I managed to kick her laterally, toward the family room, so she was out from under me when the roast and I landed on the tiled kitchen floor. I got a liberal dose of boiling hot meat juices over my wrists (I was wearing oven mitts, thank goodness) but the Pyrex roasting pan shattered against the floor. I didn't dare eat the roast for fear of glass shards in it. So the roast was gone.

Daughter was a shrieking heap in the family room, crying out, "You kicked me! You KICKED me!" I was hurt too, because I had landed pretty hard on my elbows and knees on the tile floor, in an effort to keep the roast from hitting it, which didn't work.

It was all I could do not to beat the daylights out of her.

to have endured. She was very lucky she didn't get the brunt of that pot roast. She lacked as you say the concept of boundaries.

Her mother abandoning her that young must've left some very deep wounds and subsequent scars.

She may have been terrified you would abandon her like her original mother did.

Did she ever grow out of that??

Because her father felt that she always had gotten the raw deal when the family split up, he tended to spoil her, not holding her accountable to standards that the other kids had. She was always cut some slack. And boy, did she take up every millimeter of it!

At 13, she was sexually abused by her bio mom's sleazeball boyfriend. We knew that SOMETHING had happened, but she would not tell us what. Finally, she told a counselor at school that this man had "touched" her. This triggered a full-scale investigation by Youth Services. Since she had been very specific in telling the school counselor NOT to involve any other agencies, Daughter was angry at what she considered betrayal, and refused to say a world to Youth Services.

Youth Services recommended that we take her to counseling. She told us, "Don't bother, I won't talk." We forced her to go anyway. She sat through two sessions without saying a word. The counselor said, "Don't bring her back any more. I can't help her if she won't help herself."

We would learn later that she had thrown herself into a frenzy of nocturnal sexual activity, most carried out after we were asleep. I don't know where she got birth control, but she never got pregnant.

She insisted on getting married a month or two after turning 18. It was clear that this was for no other reason than to 1) Get away from home, 2) Avoid having to continue in school, and 3) Avoid having to get part-time work. It lasted for three years.

Since then, she has more or less orbited around home. She has spent much of the last decade working toward a college degree, and is to finish in December. I think she is growing up to some extent, but I think she will ALWAYS turn to another person to "take care" of her. Right now, that person is an old high school girlfriend who has been married, divorced. and has a pretty good track record of staying on her own two feet.

We shall see.

My favorites were -

"Anti Mormon stories that the exmo's told to meeeeeeeeee...."

And

"Pioneer children screamed as they walked, and walked, and walked, and walked".

My last calling in church was in primary. I was APPALLED at how it had degenerated into indoctrination camp. Singing time was all about following the prophet and going to the temple. The fun (and age appropriate) songs of my youth were long gone.

It felt so wrong in so many ways.

I forgot to mention, that I think the song does have beautiful music and lyrics. Here's a nice version the Motab does:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7XSE63QIc7I

My favorite is "My Heavenly Father Loves Me" because it reminds me of my dear, departed, TBM Mother. She had a beautiful voice and would sing this song to me when I was a child and to my grand kids.

Two of my daughters sang this song at her funeral. Even though I'm not religious, I always get emotional when I hear this song because of the memories attached to it.

That's a very sweet tribute to your mother.

I always liked... don't know the name now---HF do you hear and answer every child's prayer? Some say that heaven is far away....?????

It might be 'a child's prayer'?

Jesus wants me for a sunbeam haha

Choose the Right another one. Who would've guessed that 'choosing the right' would one day bring us to leaving TSCC?!

Bet our teachers never saw that coming. (And neither did we!)

Indeed if only the religion wasnt strange.

While watching the Mormon history program on PBS the apostate I knew who refused to go on a mission because he thought it was horses#¡t started crying when "I want to be a missionary" was sung. I thought that strange and also sort of pathetic.

That's a lie. You are all that ever made me cry. The truth hurts. It comes in spurts. You don't have joy - so says the boy. Your memory is worse - quite the curse.

MM nli

This is sister's looking glass.
This is mother's table.
These are father's knives and forks.
And this is baby's cradle.

This is the ward house.
This is a steeple.
Open the doors and see all the people.

Open the doors and see all the Sheeple!!!

"I'm a little teapot short and stout ,

Here is my handle, here is my spout.

When I get all steamed up here my shout

Tip me over and pour me out."

Another one was five little monkeys jumping on a bed ...

:)

Our favorite, hands down, Eliza R. Snow's masterpiece:

1. In our lovely Deseret,
Where the Saints of God have met,
There’s a multitude of children all around.
They are generous and brave;
They have precious souls to save;
They must listen and obey the gospel’s sound.

Hark! Hark! Hark! ’tis children’s music—
Children’s voices, oh, how sweet,
When in innocence and love,
Like the angels up above,
They with happy hearts and cheerful faces meet.

2. That the children may live long
And be beautiful and strong,
Tea and coffee and tobacco they despise,
Drink no liquor, and they eat
But a very little meat;
They are seeking to be great and good and wise.

Hark! Hark! Hark! ’tis children’s music—
Children’s voices, oh, how sweet,
When in innocence and love,
Like the angels up above,
They with happy hearts and cheerful faces meet.

3. They should be instructed young
How to watch and guard the tongue,
And their tempers train and evil passions bind;
They should always be polite,
And treat ev’rybody right,
And in ev’ry place be affable and kind.

Hark! Hark! Hark! ’tis children’s music—
Children’s voices, oh, how sweet,
When in innocence and love,
Like the angels up above,
They with happy hearts and cheerful faces meet.

4. They must not forget to pray,
Night and morning ev’ry day,
For the Lord to keep them safe from ev’ry ill,
And assist them to do right,
That with all their mind and might
They may love him and may learn to do his will.

Hark! Hark! Hark! 'tis children's music-
Children's voices, oh, how sweet,
When in innocence and love,
Like the angels up above,
They with happy hearts and cheerful faces meet.

Eliza was very clever with taking standard hymnal melodies and adapting them to Mormon theocracy.

'Jesus loves the little children' is the standard written in 1871. She wrote her version in 1878.

One of my missionary companions had alternative lyrics:

"We don't smoke or drink or chew
And we don't go with girls who do"

That's all I learned. Surely there is more? Anybody???

A roommate at the "lords university" sang somewhat cruder lyrics:

I don't smoke and I don't chew,
and I won't screw girls who do"

Those were the only two lines he knew.

(done by boy cheerleaders wearing the pleated-skirt uniforms of the girls!):

"We don't smoke, and we don't chew.
And we don't associate with those who do.
Knit one, purl two -
Eeew, eeew!"

This brought down the house on Football Rally Fridays.

"When Joseph Went To Bethlehem", from the post-correlation songbook, is quite pretty.

I always liked "I Often Go Walking", and "A Child's Prayer".

"I often go walking ..." was one I really love/d as well.

It's funny how kids like to sing "a Sun BEAM" yelling the "BEAM" word louder and louder until some kiddies cover their ears before the song ends.

Other churches also sing that song. I wonder if they scream out the BEAM like mormons do.

Kids from other churches don't seem to be as tightly wound as little Mormon boys and girls are.

Growing up in a dysfunctional church has that effect.

;-)

Cheryl Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> n/t


And you're ight. The kids from other denominations don't sing it that way.

WE always yelled "BEAN".

Jesus wants me for a Bosch.

I learned it this way...

I'm a mormon, bright and jolly.
We don't swear, we just say "Golly!"

We don't smoke and we down't chew,
and we don't go with boys that do.

Well you might think we don't have fun...
well, we don't.



I always like the "Whenever I hear the song of a bird" song, and just changed the end to "Mother Nature created for me." I also liked the song about walking in meadows of clover, and I gather armfuls of blossoms of blue. That song is for mothers, and I don't have to change anything. At least, in the first verse. I don't know any other verses.

Journey Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> I learned it this way...
>
> I'm a mormon, bright and jolly.
> We don't swear, we just say "Golly!"
>
> We don't smoke and we down't chew,
> and we don't go with boys that do.
>
> Well you might think we don't have fun...
> well, we don't.
>
Hahaha. A nice Catholic woman and her hubby told me that Mormons were the most somber group of people she'd ever been with at a New Year's Eve party long ago. They were visiting from South America, and she couldn't believe how serious every single person was in that room. They left early.
>
>
> I always like the "Whenever I hear the song of a
> bird" song, and just changed the end to "Mother
> Nature created for me." I also liked the song
> about walking in meadows of clover, and I gather
> armfuls of blossoms of blue. That song is for
> mothers, and I don't have to change anything. At
> least, in the first verse. I don't know any other
> verses.

I love/d those too. :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HTDdSGKHz0c

My sunbeam son answered that question:

"Gimme a,
Gimme a,
Gimme a rednecked girl!"

Yes, everyone laughed. Except me. I spent a lot of church with my hand over my face.

That is funny.

The junior Sunday school once asked my brother who was five or six at the time, to sing a solo for them. He didn't tell mom or dad of his assignment, but prepared what he would sing on his own.

He got up and belted, "The old gray mare" song only the version dad had taught us children. Instead of singing "she ain't what she used to be," he sang "she pooped on the Maple tree" rendition, substituting the word 'pooped' with a long farting sound like a kazoo. The little children were delighted. The Sunday school teachers looked aghast. He pulled a coup d'etat that day. :)

They didn't invite him back to sing a second time. (He was convalescing from cancer, and passed away shortly after his sixth birthday.)

Amyjo Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> That is funny.
>
> The junior Sunday school once asked my brother who
> was five or six at the time, to sing a solo for
> them. He didn't tell mom or dad of his assignment,
> but prepared what he would sing on his own.
>
> He got up and belted, "The old gray mare" song
> only the version dad had taught us children.
> Instead of singing "she ain't what she used to
> be," he sang "she pooped on the Maple tree"
> rendition, substituting the word 'pooped' with a
> long farting sound like a kazoo. The little
> children were delighted. The Sunday school
> teachers looked aghast. He pulled a coup d'etat
> that day. :)
>
> They didn't invite him back to sing a second time.
> (He was convalescing from cancer, and passed away
> shortly after his sixth birthday.)


Poor little guy. I'm glad he went out with a bang and left you all with a sweet memory of his brief career as a vocal soloist.

Oh, Amyjo! How painful a loss for you!
Thank you for sharing this with us.

Amazing Grace, sung with bagpipe accompaniment.

Only in that it freaked me out. "Give, Said the Little Stream" disturbed me. I got that the stream was dissolving itself in service. At some point it would be no more. And I also got that I was supposed to be that stream, consumed with service, evaporated or fed into a river. Absorbed by the collective as in "Invasion of the Body Snatchers."



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 09/21/2017 03:16AM by donbagley.

Didn't pay enough attention to 'em back then. Couldn't tell you what any of them were.

The only one I could stand was "Book of Mormon Stories," and only because it reminded me of the "Hamms--The Beer Refreshing" ad of my childhood.

The Lord is my Shepherd.

This is one I may want to have played at my funeral when the time comes.

There's another song I really love called "Crossing the Bar," lyrics by Sir Alfred Lord Tennyson. That too is one I would love to have played as a funeral benediction.

It is beautiful.

https://youtu.be/PAdLYCk83UM