Remembering “Chicken Fat”

I usually have a song playing in my head – a sort of background soundtrack.  Some people refer to these as “earworms”, but that sounds so unpleasant, and I don’t mind the music. 

There are medical terms for this phenomenon.  One is “musical obsessions”, where the songs become intrusive or anxiety producing, especially in people with OCD.  Another term is “stuck song syndrome”.  That’s one I can live with.  

According to the British Journal of General Practice, “up to 98% of the Western population has experienced these earworms”.  So there’s a good chance a tune is playing in your head right now… or will be later today. 

Most of the time, what I’m hearing is something I’ve listened to in the last day or so.  As I wrote the first draft of this post, I was hearing “Rollin’” by Elvin Bishop.  It’s a rockin’ little tune that I’ve enjoyed in a Spotify playlist for the last couple of weeks.   When I sat down to revise the draft, “Tower of Babel” by Natalie Merchant was playing in a loop.  That was probably my favorite song of 2023.  

But one day last week, the song that started playing was “Chicken Fat” – a song I hadn’t heard since I was in elementary school 60 years ago.

If you were a grade school student in the United States in the early 1960s, there’s a good chance you heard this song, too.  Practically every school in the country had a copy of it.  The records were distributed as part of a national fitness program initiated by President John F. Kennedy. 

Decades before Zumba or spin classes made us sweat to a beat, “Chicken Fat” provided a soundtrack for a second grade gym class.

The six and a half minute “school version” of the song was sung by Robert Preston, the star of the Broadway musical and later film, The Music Man.

Preston recorded the song on the soundstage where the recordings for the film were being made.  

With Preston’s booming voice encouraging us, we touched our toes, did push ups, marched in place, rotated our trunks, did jumping jacks, raised our arms and made circles in the air, breathed deeply, and ran in place.  

I don’t remember much more about that experience, but the song is as vivid as ever.