This is one of those tracks that was once super-timely and now takes a ton of explaining. I came along about a decade after this song did and I’m still trying to learn some of the references!
So let’s unpack a little: MAD Magazine was a preeminent source of irreverence in the 50s and 60s (not that there was always an enormous amount of competition). Every so often, there would be a MAD-themed foray into another medium. The most famous example of this was MAD TV, a sketch comedy show on FOX that helped launch (and, according to at least one of them, subsequently stifle) Key and Peele.
Long before that, there was The Mad Show, a set of songs and sketches that ran for about two years at the New Theater in New York City. Much like MAD TV, The Mad Show did not feature any of the magazine’s recurring characters; there wasn’t an actor portraying Alfred E. Neuman or a sketch based on Spy vs. Spy. But the stage show did keep the magazine’s very skewed take on the world. And a few of the cast members went on to become pretty big names: the onstage piano player, Joe Raposo, would later write classic songs for Sesame Street like “C is for Cookie” (as well as the theme for the sitcom Three’s Company!). Linda Lavin went on to sitcom fame as the title character on Alice. And, later, it came out that the words for the show’s parody version of “The Girl From Ipanema” had been written by Stephen Sondheim (!)
And then there was Jo Ann Worley, whose post-Mad Show career included Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In and guest appearances on just about every game show I watched as a kid. But before all that, she did this number, where she lists all the drippy-sounding holiday gifts from her boring relatives before realizing that her first cousin Maggie had given her something quite sordid (and therefore wonderful!)
Whether or not one recognizes why audiences in 1966 would’ve laughed hearing about a fake album called “Bud Collyer Goes Latin,” finding a subversive present hidden among the square ones is pretty timeless. Here’s to all the Cousin Maggies out there keeping things weird at the holidays.
