Crazy in the Coconut! Trivia Quiz

Answer: Frontier Psychiatrist

The Avalanches, an Australian club music group, released this single in 2000 from their album "Since I Left You". Producers Robbie Chater and Darren Seltmann, also members of the band, amply sampled from other songs and from the Canadian comedy duo Wayne and Shuster, who frequently appeared on the Ed Sullivan Show in the USA.

A spoken sample at the start ("Is Dexter ill?") comes from John Waters' eccentric comedy film "Polyester" (1981) -- replayed atop the theme music from the epic drama "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962).

The song is full of such mish-mashes! "Frontier Psychiatrist" hit number eighteen in the UK Singles Chart and number forty-nine in Australia, but failed to chart in the USA.

Answer: Harry Nilsson

This goofy song was originally the third single from "Nilsson Schmilsson" (1971) and reached #8 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. The only chord in the song is a C7, so it's very easy to play on guitar. Harry Nilsson (1941-1994) does the voice of the narrator, the sister, and the doctor throughout the song. The song has also appeared in a number of films and TV programs, including "House M.D.".

As for covers? Australian pop diva Dannii Minogue, not her sister Kylie, covered "Coconut" in 1994 on a hidden bonus track in in her album "Girl" (1998). In 2005, Coca-Cola changed the line in the chorus to "You put the lime in the Coke, you nut" to sell Coke with Lime, which was discontinued the following year. (Diet Coke with Lime continued to be sold in the USA for a number of years, however.) A rapper named Tyga debuted with his song "Coconut Juice"; its first lines were "Put the lime in the coconut and twist it all up, twist it all up." I guess everybody has to change poor Harry's lines. (Tyga was actually referring to his preference to drink Coconut juice rather than imbibe alcohol at parties).

Answer: Harry Belafonte

Harold George Bellanfanti, Jr. (b. 1927) was the son of a Jamaican housekeeper and a Martiniquian chef. In his debut as a performer, Belafonte was backed by the Charlie Parker band (including Parker himself). He learned folk songs from the the Library of Congress collections and also wrote his own music.

His signature song was "Matilda" (1953) before "The Banana Boat Song (Day-O)" (1956) hit number five on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100, but he never performed "Day-O" on television until "The Muppet Show" in 1978. Belafonte is responsible for bringing calypso music, a style of Afro-Caribbean music rooted in West Africa and Martinique, into the Anglo-American mainstream.

He was also an ardent civil-rights activist, blacklisted during the McCarthy era, and a humanitarian, who helped organize the "We Are the World" effort to raise money for Africa in the mid-1980s.

Answer: Robert Mitchum

Robert Mitchum (1917-1997) is most famous for playing film noir anti-heroes, not to mention disturbing, predatory characters like the murderous phony preacher in "The Night of the Hunter" or the menacing rapist in "Cape Fear". But he was actually a talented singer as well, and he used his own singing voice in many films including "Rachel and the Stranger" (1948) and "The Night of the Hunter". Though never released as a single, the song "Coconut Water" comes from the album "Calypso -- Is Like So..." on Capitol Records, and in the 2010s began circulating on the Internet.

The local music that Mitchum heard during the filming of "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" (1957), on location in Trinidad and Tobago, inspired him to cut the record. Mitchum additionally made a country-music album, "That Man, Robert Mitchum Sings" (1967), and he wrote and performed the theme music to the film "Thunder Road" (1958).

In fact, "The Ballad of Thunder Road" reached number sixty-nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1958, and number sixty-two in 1962. Apparently, coconut water is an excellent tonic (and is now available in America).

Answer: The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

The band has a long history dating from the 1960s, with considerable turnover in membership since its inception in Long Beach, California in 1966. They were initially a novelty act that made cameo appearances in films like "Paint Your Wagon" (1969). Their cover of Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr. Bojangles" soared to number nine on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1971, while their cover of Hank Williams, Sr.'s "I Saw the Light" stalled at number fifty-six on the Billboard Hot Country chart. They had actually renamed themselves The Dirt Band when they released "American Dream" with Linda Ronstadt in 1979, when it hit number fifty-eight on the Country chart but sailed to number thirteen on the Hot 100. By 1982, however, "Nitty Gritty" returned to their name.

On the U.S. TV show "Saturday Night Live", the band, billed as The Toot Uncommons, backed Steve Martin on his novelty-disco ditty, "King Tut" in 1978 (number seventeen on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100). President George Bush (the elder) famously called them "Nitty Ditty Nitty Gritty Great Bird" at the Country Music Awards gala in Nashville in 1992. Their last number one song in the twentieth century was "Fishin' in the Dark" which hit number one on the U.S. Hot Country chart in 1987.

Answer: Looney Tunes: Back in Action

"Shake Your Coconuts" appears on Danish power-pop group Junior Senior's album "D-D-Don't Don't Stop the Beat", their first international release. "Shake Your Coconuts" also serves as background menu music in the video game "Worms 3D". It never reached the charts in any country. "Looney Tunes: Back in Action" combined live action with animated drawings and featured the classic Warner Bros. characters Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, and Porky Pig, to name a few.

By the way, "anatine" is to "duck" as "bovine" is to "cow". The lisping partner is Daffy Duck. "Who Framed Roger Rabbit?" is about a bunny, and Daffy Duck appeared in it in a piano duel with Donald Duck, but it was released in 1988.

Answer: Jimmy Buffet

Jimmy Buffet (b. 1946) is a country singer who he made his name celebrating "island escapism" a genre he termed "gulf and western". The album "Coconut Telegraph" was Buffet's first of the 1980s, and it ranked number thirty in the U.S. Billboard 200. The coconut telegraph or coconut wireless is slang in Hawaii and other tropical islands for gossip.

The song "Coconut Telegraph" has some funny canards:
"Now I'm not one to deal in gossip
But was he that big a fool
To do a belly-buster high dive
And miss the entire pool."

This ditty was never released as a single, however. The only track from the album to chart was "It's My Job", which peaked at number fifty-seven on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100. That would be Buffet's *last* top-100 hit until 2003 -- "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere", a duet with Alan Jackson.

Answer: Willie Nelson

Patsy Cline (1932-1963) took Willie Nelson's "Crazy" to number two in the U.S. Country Singles chart in 1962. Although covered innumerably, the song is still associated with the late country superstar. Willie Nelson has stated that he always liked her rendition best as it was "magic".

Willie Nelson (b. 1933) has been active in country music since the 1950s. Some of his biggest hits were "Blue Eyes Crying in the Rain", a 1975 remake of Fred Rose's 1945 song, and "On the Road Again" (1980). He is also an activist for peace, for animal welfare, and for legalizing cannabis. In 2012 he received the first Lifetime Achievement Award of the Country Music Association. The "Coconut Tree" duet was on Kenny Chensey's album "Life on a Rock" (2013).

Answer: The Piņa Colada Song

In "Escape", a man bored with his marriage buys a personal ad, in which he states the respondent must like "piņa coladas and getting caught in the rain"; he invites her to "come with me, and escape". (Ironically, the respondent proves be his wife!) Infinity Records recognized that no one realized the slow-selling single was "that piņa colada song", so Holmes agreed to rename it "Escape (The Piņa Colada Song)". It worked; the song soared up the charts and became the last number one song of the 1970s on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 (and the first number two song of 1980 before it returned to number one). It also reached number one in Canada (RPM), and number three in Australia (ARIA).

By the way, piņa colada is a delicious cocktail made from pineapple juice, coconut cream, and rum, shaken with ice (sometimes blended). It is the official drink of Puerto Rico, and "Escape" made the cocktail enormously popular in the late twentieth century and beyond.

Answer: Mormon Tabernacle Choir

Fred Heatherton composed the ditty, about the coconut toss at English county fairs. It was a huge hit for Freddy Martin and His Orchestra in 1949, and yes, Merv Griffin, the creator of "Jeopardy!", really led the vocals. The following year, singer-dancer Danny Kaye took the song to number twenty-five in the Billboard Best Sellers in Stores chart. Nicolas Cage intoned a little of it in "National Treasure: Book of Secrets" (2007). Rowan Atkinson offered his brief interpretation as the voice of Zazu the red-billed hornbill in "The Lion King" (1994). On TV, Dr. Bellows (Hayden Rorke) and Col.

Healy (Bill Daily) sang it, accompanied by ukelele on "Uncles a Go-Go", a 1969 episode of "I Dream of Jeannie". Even the Beatles have covered it; in the telemovie "Magical Mystery Tour" (1967), Ringo broke out with a quick rendition. If the Mormon Tabernacle choir covered it, however, then I'm crazy in the coconut!