SUNDAY, DECEMBER 18, 2016 lifestyle MUSIC Gayla Peevey, singer of that enduring Christmas classic, ‘I Want a Hippopotamus For Christmas,’ stands next to an image she drew of a hippopotamus in her home in La Mesa, California. — AP Photos Want a hippo for Christmas? The story of a girl who got one ll a cute, curly haired 10-year-old girl named Gayla season until New Year's Day. But that's part of its charm, says kids love. And who knows, singing it may actually get a kid a Peevey by Columbia Records' legendary producer and A&R Peevey wanted for Christmas in 1953 was a hippopota- Tim Moore, iHeart Radio's New Hampshire programming hippo. Unlikely, perhaps, but it did get one for Peevey. Her man Mitch Miller, who backed her with his orchestra. Amus. And amazingly enough, after "I Want a director who over the decades has played it plenty of times. hometown zoo, hippoless at the time, teamed with the local She did resurface briefly in 1959 with "My Little Marine," an Hippopotamus For Christmas" became the biggest hit song of "It's got the sound of an old-time recording," Moore says. "It newspaper to encourage people to send in enough money to aching teen ballad she'd written about her first crush. She that holiday season, she actually got one, a 700-pound baby sounds dated. It sounds a little corny. But that's the thing buy her one after she debuted the song on television's "The recorded it under the name Jamie Horton, her manager not named Matilda. She promptly donated it to the Oklahoma about it. Also, not to be discounted is its effect on children." Ed Sullivan Show." Three thousand dollars later, Matilda wanting people to dismiss it as another hippo song. It peaked City Zoo, where it lived to be nearly 50, a ripe old age for hip- Yes, definitely don't discount that. For years, Peevey has been arrived on Christmas Eve, a fitting gift for someone who would at Number 84 on Billboard's Hot 100. "A hit but not a big hit," pos. As for Peevey's song, it may never die. "That one just real- hearing from schoolteachers around the world who tell her so enthusiastically declare, "No crocodiles, no rhinoceroses. I she says now. "Certainly not a hit as big as the hippopotamus ly took off, and it's still going strong, stronger than ever. Sixty- their students perform the song and can't get enough of it. only like hippopotamuses. And hippopotamuses like me too." song." Soon after, she was off to college, then marriage and three years later! Hard to believe," Peevey, an ebullient woman "Over 15 years now we've done it, and I don't think we're stop- Soon after, however, Peevey left her hippopotamus motherhood. Eventually she founded her own advertising of 73, says during a recent phone interview from her San ping," laughs Dana Caro, who directs the second-grade behind, moving to California. She had been singing profes- agency, keeping her hand in music writing commercial jingles. Diego-area home. Christmas music program at a suburban Southern California sionally for two years before recording "Hippo," moving up Retired and married for 53 years now, she still sings regularly So much so that it's used as a cell phone ringtone these school. Other songs come and go, says Caro, but "Hippo" stays from local watermelon festivals to radio shows and then a in church. "But not the hippo song," Peevey says, laughing. "It's days, included on holiday ornaments and Christmas cards, in the mix every year at Arcadia's Longley Way Elementary spot on television's "Saturday Night Revue" hosted by Hoagy not really a church song." — AP available for download on iTunes. It's even featured in a US School. Carmichael. But her hippo fame caught her off guard, and for Postal Service commercial in which the post office boasts it months afterward she couldn't move around Oklahoma City ships more online gifts, hippopotamuses included, than any- A hit but not a big hit without being mobbed by fans. Her parents figured she'd body. Some people will tell you it's an annoying ear worm, a "Even in class today, we weren't in rehearsal yet when one blend in as just another "normal kid" in California while tune with such silly lyrics and a melody so maddeningly mem- kid started singing it, and then they were all singing it," added recording a few more songs. None would have the impact of orable that it will play endlessly in your head every holiday the teacher, who says it has a bounce and a cheeriness that that first one, written by John Rox and personally selected for Nine Inch Nails return with 'impenetrable' music ndustrial rockers Nine Inch Nails on Friday announced their first release in three years-an IEP that frontman Trent Reznor described as "impenetrable." Reznor, who last year promised new Nine Inch Nails music within 2016, made good on his word with days to go and said that the five-song EP, "Not the Actual Events," would come out December 23. "It's an unfriendly, fairly impenetrable record that we needed to make," Reznor said in a statement. "It's an EP because that ended up being the proper length to tell that story." Reznor did not further characterize the sound but said that it marked a departure from his recent material. Since the last Nine Inch Nails album, 2013's "Hesitation Marks," Reznor has pursued various side projects with a more ambient sound. His recent music has included work on soundtracks including to the new film "Before the Flood," a Samba gets new rhythms 100 documentary on climate change led by Leonardo DiCaprio. Reznor created Nine Inch Nails in the late 1980s as he was working as a janitor at a Cleveland recording studio and quickly won years after first recording both an underground and mainstream audience. With albums such as 1994's "The Downward Spiral," Nine Inch Nails pioneered a brand of industrial rock rooted in post-punk but guided been a longtime collaborator of Reznor, working starting in 2017. Reznor said the effort required onday nights feel like Saturdays in Since that recording of "Pelo Telefone," by electronic elements and Reznor's searing with him on the Oscar-winning score to the 2010 "an insane attention to detail that you probably Rio's Little Africa neighborhood samba has picked up layers from the voice of despair. Facebook drama "The Social Network" and the won't notice," but that he hoped to create defini- Mwhen the sun sets and the samba Argentinian tango, the jazz-influenced Reznor said that the new EP would mark the Grammy-winning music to dark thriller "The Girl tive versions of the albums. — AFP starts to play. Surrounded by a mostly Bossa Nova, samba-funk and today every- arrival of British sound engineer Atticus Ross as a with the Dragon Tattoo." Nine Inch Nails also young crowd, seven musicians sit around a thing from samba-rock to samba-rap. full-fledged member of Nine Inch Nails. Ross has announced that the band was re-mastering all of table with the small four-string guitar One of the biggest sources of regenera- its major albums for vinyl editions to be released called a cavaquinho, the cuica drum and a tion for samba can be traced to another Rio tambourine. The instruments and the neighborhood, Lapa, which was also long relaxed format, known as a "roda de sam- run-down but re-emerged in the late 1990s ba," has changed little since its infancy in as a nightlife hub. Clubs like Carioca da the late 19th century, when Afro-Brazilians Gema and Rio Scenarium were catalysts for first developed the style in this same neigh- a more professional and adventurous set of borhood, officially known as Saude. samba musicians like Moyseis Marques, "It's our samba, folks, it's your samba!" Teresa Cristina, Mariene de Castro, Julio called out percussionist Walmir Pimentel, Estrela, Nilze Carvalho and second genera- 34, to applause from the crowd that fought tion stars, like the children of well-known off the evening heat with cold beer and sambista Serginho Procopio. "Our genera- caipirina cocktails. Pimentel's group has tion has this idea that everything is samba. been playing Monday night "rodas" here at So we have no qualms about adding a gui- Pedra do Sal square since 2006, performing tar or a piano," said Marques, 37. "We're right at the steps where slaves once seeking more harmony." unloaded sacks of salt. The lively perform- ances have helped resurrect the long From 'telephone' to WhatsApp depressed center of Rio de Janeiro. But The lyrics are also adapting to the new exactly 100 years from the first ever record- sounds and new times. If the historic first ing of samba-a song called "Pelo telefone" recording sang about the then new-fan- ("On the telephone") -- the likes of Pimentel gled telephone, current star Arlindo Cruz are also helping to rejuvenate the venera- peppers his lyrics with talk of social net- Writer, comedian and actor Roy Hudd, who plays the character “Mother Goose”, is pictured in the midst of a costume change during a performance of ble art form. works and messaging service WhatsApp. the pantomime ‘Mother Goose’ at Wilton’s Music Hall in London. The group Moca Prosa has been break- "Samba is alive, strong and creative," said ing new ground at the same symbolic historian Andre Diniz, although he added space in the Little Africa neighborhood that the music was not "for the masses.