“Sitting at Home with My Mellophone,” by Cyrus Reeper.  Great hit from the 1929 musical film, Buddy, Can You Spare a Billion?  First recorded for Gecko Records by Bung Crosley in 1930, selling millions in dime stores.  Composer-lyricist Reeper never again grasped the brass ring on the whirling carousel of life, ended in 1949 at age 46 as a carhop in a cheesy Lompoc drive-in, peddling root beer and poisonous hot dogs.

“In Your Easter Helmet,” by Oiving Ballast.  A rude romp, adapted from the obscene order to “sh*t  in your hat and wear it for curls!”  Fashioned into a tender love ballad for Fred Asskiss in the all-singing, all-talking film of 1931, Easter Brigade.  Recorded by virtually every big band and pop singer in the 1930s, till the population rebelled and screamed, “No more, for God’s sake, Oiving!”

“Begin the Buggin’,” by Coalhouse Porterhouse.  Hypnotic dance classic with mangy words from master ironist Porterhouse at the height of his powers.  Became instant hit, has never faded, though most dullards under age 50 only refer to it as “that bumpety bump song,” Although it is called “the perfect rhumba,” most inept dance hall terpsichoreans do the good old box-step twitch and let it go.

“Snortdust,” by Hoglegge Carmody.  Often cited as “the best-known single song in pop music history,” it began as a rousing football march until transformed into a tender cocaine serenade by hack lyric-scrawler Muggleton Reeves.  It was required recording for all would-be crooners, trumpet-players or superannuated scat artists for 40 years, about the time old Hoglegge gave up his career of portraying rural dolts in B movies and expired.

“Sue You!” from Goys and Doggs, by Fred Leasee.  Beloved dese-dose-and-dem idioms for epicene gangsters and their over-muscled molls by hard-boiled Leasee made this ditty a musical comedy monument.  Little remains of any cultural memory documenting how and why people once put up with such sclerotic drivel, but we are stuck with it here in the echoing halls of nostalgia!

“Sweet Patootie,” by Futz Wallow.  From Chocolate Buddies of 1928, this tune has become a double-barreled jazz/pop classic.  Best heard in Wallow’s 1934 disc, on which he ingests every syllable so thoroughly that the witty lyrics seem to be one very loud but very distinct eructation into the RCA microphone, while Futz’s piano playing is (as always) peerless, godlike and majestic beyond reckoning.