"Peanut Duck" by Marsha Gee

A strange song that had me in groovy stitches the first time I heard it, "Peanut Duck" veers from a simple R&B/pop shuffle with gruff (drunken?) vocals to a barnyard freakout as Marsha Gee riffs on the word "quack" and introduces a new dance craze. Reportedly, the track was recorded in the mid-sixties but discovered on an acetate in the late seventies (essentially trashed before making it to the final vinyl pressing stage) and released on a compilation of novelty songs in the early eighties. Where then did the picture/record sleeve below come from? I don't know. I do know that I first heard it on the four-disc box set One Kiss Leads to Another: Girl Group Sounds Lost & Found and fell in love with it's cool backing track and uncomfortably sexual vocal track almost immediately.

There's a lot of speculation about the song, mostly involving the mysterious Marsha Gee, a musical nom-de-plume if you will, whose true identity has never been revealed. It's been suggested that the person singing was an intoxicated celebrity intent on protecting her privacy and sparing herself the embarrassment of being associated with such a peculiar record. Others have postulated that it was the studio’s cleaning woman, loopy and high on the fumes of chemicals and floor wax, that was ushered into the studio and coaxed into getting down with the get down. And get down she does. Though the tune is as generic a tune as any other mid-sixties dance-instruction composition (the mashed potato, the twist, the locomotion, the jerk, the watusi, et al), it really takes off when Gee goes bananas and takes a goofy trip down the improvisational scat path. I can't even begin to transcribe the shit that comes out of her mouth, but the lip-flapping and guttural humming accentuate it and serve as a laughable, danceable exclamation point on an otherwise forgettable dance song.

Joke songs aren't necessarily my thing, but this lady sounds like she's dead serious. And while it is plenty funny, it's also completely irresistible. The piano roots the track as the guitar chimes in time with the drums. It's rhythmic enough to incite movement and if you follow Gee's instructions, you too will be doing the "Peanut Duck" in no time!