"Dont spread butter on the floor...." can you tell me where to find this song?

[j***@gmail.com]

There's a song I remember from my childhood that goes something like
"Don't spread butter on the floor;
that isn't what it was made for;

John,

That song was written by Alan Arkin. My wife remembers him performing it for their nursery school class in Greenwich Village in the 60s. It became pretty popular in kid/parent circles, and apparently Alan was happy to perform it and several other kids songs he wrote for his own kids .

I don't know for sure, but I believe that it was recorded by his group, "The Babysitters" which did folk inflected songs for kids: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Baby_Sitters_(folk_group) Good luck finding their music unless you come across it on vinyl. I've been looking for years and there's nothing online.

You might try writing to Alan himself and asking if he would re-issue on iTunes. Then again, he may not entirely own the rights, and that may be what's prevented this music from being made available again up until now.

Good luck and let me know if you find out more.

John

[s***@gmail.com]

It's from The Babysitter's Menagerie. I remember a few more lyrics:

Don't scream into your daddy's ear
That will make it hard for him to hear
Things will be terrible I fear if
You scream into your daddy's ear

Don't throw tomatoes at your friends
That's the beginning of the end
They'll say you're going round the bend if
You throw tomatoes at your friend.

( I think my folks have the LP somewhere but I can't find anything digital)

[Brooke Brookens]

i think these songs were from a kids' album from the 60s or 70s called Animal Menagerie. I remember Don't, Fooba Wooba, and Donkey in the Stable so clearly that they get stuck in my head to this day. i cannot find it for the life of me. anybody had any luck??

[Agent DoubleOOP]

Man, so cool to be able to add to a discussion that goes this far back on the 'net. To start, Alan Arkin & Carol Burnett performed Don't in a TV special they did here:

This is what got me searching into it. Happy to say that just in the past few months, all of the albums have finally found their way onto YouTube, uploaded by a person who appears to be part of the Kaplan family that founded The Baby Sitters.

Hope this reaches someone who happens to look up "don't spread butter on the floor", just like I did, haha.

Post by Brooke Brookens
i think these songs were from a kids' album from the 60s or 70s called Animal Menagerie. I remember Don't, Fooba Wooba, and Donkey in the Stable so clearly that they get stuck in my head to this day. i cannot find it for the life of me. anybody had any luck??