Here is the original song. Hearing a young Arlo Guthrie making all these jokes to an audience who hasn't heard them a million times is the best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m57gzA2JCcM
But later he added a part to the end - here's a link to the new part https://youtu.be/TuSBv5xim-o?t=1020 And if you've heard the original before, I do recommending skipping back to the beginning and listening to this one at least once, because hearing an old Arlo tell the story to an audience who has memorized every word and is still engaged and listening intently is also pretty special.
For non-Americans who might take this article at face value: As an American this has never been a tradition in my family or any I've known, and it's not a Thanksgiving staple on any radio station I've listened to. (America's huge and diverse, so YMMV of course.)
FWIW this seems to be a NY focused publication and my understanding is that the tradition started on WNEW. I grew up listening to it, but I have no idea how far it’s spread outside of the NYC metro area.
I think it's a northeast thing. But not everyone in the northeast knows it, either. You're more likely to know it if you have to drive for at least an hour for Thanksgiving dinner and you like to browse radio stations.
Thank you for that. Also as an American, I too have never heard of this. When I saw the words Alice and restaurant, I thought back to the TV sitcom called Alice from the 1970's-1980's who worked at Mel's Diner.
As far as American Thanksgiving staples I'm aware of, it's:
FWIW I've heard this song exactly once, driving into Dallas around 22 years ago on the classic rock station to go watch an NFL game. I was amazed by how long it went on.
The only reason I remember it is the same riff is used in The Doors (who I really got into around the same time) song "WASP".
It's very big in the tri-state area around NY. At a recent friends-giving I brought it up and everyone except one person who grew up in the midwest didn't know what this was.
It mainly became a tradition in those pop radio markets which were already well-established during the Vietnam war, and where there was wide sentiment against the idea of being drafted into the military to fight for someone else's country. A lot of young people (now boomers) would have rather been doing something worthwhile for America itself instead.
Here's the original incident[1], as reported in the November 29th, 1965 edition of the Berkshire Eagle.
No mention is made in the article of the 27 8x10 color glossy pictures, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one, as entered into evidence by Stockbridge Police Chief Willian J. Obanhein.
I believe Arlo's telling of this story has earned him a place of notoriety and firmly took him out of the shadows of his father, noted ballad singer Woody Guthrie. We listened to this quite a few times in my youth, from a neighbor's record.
It's nice that Arlo and Officer Obie ended up becoming friends and Obanhein embraced ways to make positives from the event, song, and eventual movie, in which he played himself.
Alas, according to Wikipedia, that story is slightly too good to be true. Obie did pose for Rockwell, but was not the officer from "The Runaway", who was instead Massachusetts state trooper Richard Clemens: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Obanhein
A few years ago I would amuse myself by queuing this song up whenever I was at a bar that had a Touch Tunes jukebox. Inevitably nobody would notice or care. Nice song, though.
Went to an Arlo Guthrie performance about a decade ago. It was interesting how he removed some of the more non-PC lyrics by breaking out of the song from time to time to engage the audience in the performance and then would pick back up on the other side of what he wanted to exclude. It worked much more naturally than changing the lyric or adding some sort of disclaimer.
While true, the Wikipedia article[0] has this to say:
“Alice's Restaurant of Sky Londa, California, founded in the 1960s, was originally founded by Alice Taylor with no direct connection to Alice Brock. Subsequent owners of the restaurant kept the original name as a homage to the song, eventually adding a "Group W bench," because the name had made the restaurant a tourist attraction that was "good for business."”
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[ 8.4 ms ] story [ 75.8 ms ] threadBut later he added a part to the end - here's a link to the new part https://youtu.be/TuSBv5xim-o?t=1020 And if you've heard the original before, I do recommending skipping back to the beginning and listening to this one at least once, because hearing an old Arlo tell the story to an audience who has memorized every word and is still engaged and listening intently is also pretty special.
As far as American Thanksgiving staples I'm aware of, it's:
* Macy's Thanksgiving Parade
* (American) Football
* Turkey dinner
* Charlie Brown Thanksgiving (+ maybe Garfield)
The only reason I remember it is the same riff is used in The Doors (who I really got into around the same time) song "WASP".
Woody's son, but he's eclipsed his father in some ways.
No mention is made in the article of the 27 8x10 color glossy pictures, with circles and arrows, and a paragraph on the back of each one, as entered into evidence by Stockbridge Police Chief Willian J. Obanhein.
I believe Arlo's telling of this story has earned him a place of notoriety and firmly took him out of the shadows of his father, noted ballad singer Woody Guthrie. We listened to this quite a few times in my youth, from a neighbor's record.
[1] https://www.newspapers.com/clip/39766863/alices-restaurant/
<https://www.bytesdaily.com.au/2013/06/alices-restaurant-part...>
A much higher-resolution image:
<https://image.invaluable.com/housePhotos/ROGALLERY/64/675364...>
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Tv1l1eUhN-E
For the Xmas season, listen to Stan Freburg's "Green Christmas". Banned from radio play at one time due to advertiser objections.[1]
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5IXlfJSEi4
“Alice's Restaurant of Sky Londa, California, founded in the 1960s, was originally founded by Alice Taylor with no direct connection to Alice Brock. Subsequent owners of the restaurant kept the original name as a homage to the song, eventually adding a "Group W bench," because the name had made the restaurant a tourist attraction that was "good for business."”
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice%27s_Restaurant