Ice Cream Vans & Their Tunes

Tracer you have overestimated the DJ skeelz of the icecream trucks. One tune with three names does not a medley make.

It was on a wind up motor, and the only fun to be had was to occasionally see what it sounded like as the wind-up wound down, as it were. On one particularly hot and steamy (well, for North Manchester anyway) day, I even started doing upper body dances to the tune as I was going quite mad.

I also worked in a car wash. But don't go there. Just don't. It's not a feelgood disco tune, but a song of alienation and oppression.

I knew a guy in HS who did the ice cream van gig. There was a dragon painted on the side, with his jaws wide open. In the center was hole for the trash. A five year old approached it cautiously with his wrapper to discard. As his hand went into the dragons mouth my friend let forth a roar from inside the van, grabbed his hand and pulled him in up to his shoulder. Pure terror, a furor ensued.

!

I had an old fashioned van - none of that air filled rubbish whippy stuff. The van was old fashioned too - so old that the gear stick once lifted out of the housing whilst driving, which caused some consternation at the time, though I can laff now. Arf. There.

I could have as much ice-cream as I could eat (which at the time was a lot), but wasn't allowed to eat the packaged products. My nascent Marxism took over though, and by the end of the day, I was chomping down on Feasts, Cornettos and Tongue Twisters.

It was a horrible job. Even though the ice-cream might add a few pounds, that was lost in nervous sweat as little children showed what sweeties they were by hanging off the back of the van as I drove along and generally doing things to give you heart attacks. Bless.

As for the young whippersnapper (whippysnapper? Ho Ho!) he ran straight in front of me. And his parents tried to sue me twice, in the days when Declan Swan was just a figment in a lawyer's mind. They were in the pub at the time, natch. Any lingering guilt I had was expunged by being beaten up as I got out of the van by some cretin who thought I'd hit his cousin. It wasn't, but to be fair to him, he was absolutely arseholed and it was 2pm in the afternoon, so it was an easy mistake to make.

North Manchestoh. Can't beat it.

I like that. Might use it as a sig.

actually i have never heard a ice cream van in dunedin, don't they have them here?

http://www.ianhocking.com/Pictures/ice_cream_van.JPG

1
2
3

I think they originally came from the WFMU blog, but I couldn't say for sure.

http://musicthing.blogspot.com/2005/04/why-do-ice-cream-vans-sound-way-they.html

Other theory: it's called Turkey In The Straw.

And my mum SWEARS that around 1990 or so, there was an ice-cream van regularly playing "The Stripper" and no one in the neighbourhood seemed to know or mind.

My mum also used to swear that when the ice-cream van played its tune, it had won out of ice-cream

I was going to call someone about getting a job driving an ice cream truck today.

The owner of the truck was a nutjob. He told me to yell, "Uno dollar mas" all the time in construction sites. Not really a good sales tactic, I thought. But every day I came home w/smaller dividends than hoped and he blamed it on my lack of employing this magic phrase. I'm not sure he knew what it meant.

He also told me he didn't want to hire me at first since I was a girl. "No one says ice cream girl, they say ice cream man."

The guy had scriptural references all over the trucks, too.

"HELLO...?"

an ice cream van has just parked outside my office and started to play "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head". Shurely rain and ice cream are things which should not be associated?

Up until today the van played the Blue Peter theme music.

i finally heard the "hello" song forilz and was overcome with happiness

http://www.ektopia.co.uk/ektopia/images/twinkicecreamtrucking.jpg

There was one in New Brunswick that just played the same three-measure phrase over and over again, like a broken record. GOD was it awful.

We had the hello one too, and the Mr. Softee (which bolsters the theory that those are all from the WFMU blog)

One of the cutest things ever -- when my younger brother's kindergarten-aged baseball team, and the opposing team, cleared the field mid-game because an ice cream truck pulled up.

i heard one the other day playing a common football chant, but i forget now which one

The ice cream truck in our neighborhood only plays "Do Your Ears Hang Low" over and over and over and over and over... super fucking DUD, especially since that damn "Chain Hang Low" song came out.

ha ha mark, we just heard the same ice cream van!

it's a new type of way of producing the sound though isn't it JB? Might be on an mp3 or cd, certainly not an old mechanical one.

Fred West used to be an ice cream man. It was running down a kid and killing him and the subsequent furore that made him leave Scotland for Gloucester.

They can actually be a little menacing..after dark at least (not really in the 'scary clowns' kind of way). theres one on the corner of my street, he turned his jingle on for about 2-3 minutes, then turned it off. stayed parked for a little while, turned it on again for a couple of minutes

then slowly turned the corner, and drove up to next door but 2 or 3, parked, turned on his jingle again for a couple of minutes.

its only 9 but its dark, theres no one around..not sure who he's waiting for

Oh god, hello.mp3 ! How I missed you! :-)

xpost caterers to the dogging?

Our local ice cream van plays the Harry Lime theme, which can be quite menacing. I imagine the hatch sliding back and the face of Orson Welles emerging from the shadows, perhaps to sell the children the counterfeit medicines that will in time kill them.

ok so its back at 00:20?

a friend of mine wrote his dissertation on ice cream truck music

ah wasnt his dissertation just a paper. anyway here it is http://homepages.nyu.edu/%7Edtn9606/NeelySoftServe.pdf

I eat red lite pushup :))))

I Enjoy is to ate this as the favorite candied frozen !!!!!

Creepy ice cream van tune:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=97IV2XK2l3U&feature=related

It's made much creepier by what appears to be an econoline van with some kind of half-busted hydraulic system.

playing a james brown song i don't know the name of over a very tinny speaker. it sounds like someone is walking around the neighborhood with a crappy boombox cranked all the way up instead of the normal ice cream truck chimes.

The ice cream van tune in my neighborhood was always Scott Joplin's The Entertainer. It's been a few years since that van came by here, though. Probably not enough business here.

Tehre was one that used to do the rounds of Rusholme in myown personal summer of love (that'll be 1992 then) which did the theme form the GOdfather. Really.
― misterjones, Thursday, April 18, 2002 5:00 PM (9 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

was gonna post abt a godfather one

I got really baffled by all the mentions of the "hello" song, so I just looked it up on YT and god damn, wtf is that? Its hideous 8 bit midi horror!

All I have ever, ever heard is tinny, music-box bell like renditions of "Greensleeves" thru over-amped, broken speakers.

lars von trier's ice cream truck tunes

Jaime Hernandez ‏ @xaimeh
Has anyone in the Pasadena/Altadena area ever not hear the ice cream truck that drives around saying "hello"?

hee!

Saw this on Kottke

Ice cream maker Good Humor has teamed up with legendary rapper/musician RZA to produce a new ice cream truck jingle to replace the ubiquitous “Turkey in the Straw”, a tune that gained popularity as a minstrel song with racist lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vQhCFm--cI

The track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=broo2NZmiDE

raekwon did it first and better

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jgh10of6DKA

wu tang is for the children

cool story, too bad the tune sucks ass :(

rong

it’s really good!!

As a much older Gen Z'er (can't believe those words just came out of my mouth, will people ever wake up and realize 1997-1999 are millennials, end of story?), I grew up with the creepy weird "hello" one Chaki mentioned, as well as the one that plays Music Box Dancer. Currently we get one that plays a variety of music ranging from Christmas carols to show tunes to public domain children's songs to even a brilliant 8-bit rendition of "Taboo" by reggaeton legend Don Omar, which I would have NEVER expected to hear coming from an ice cream truck. lmao

sad to report that local ice cream trucks have not returned to the streets since, oh, march of 2020.

at least in the parts of the city i frequent.

My little town still has one. I've never seen it stopped for a customer; it's the Flying Dutchman, always jingling sadly along.

Our main ice cream man uses the "hello" song. He's been a neighborhood fixture for years and we all love him and will go running out the door to buy soft serve whenever he's around. However, this summer, a second ice cream man appeared. His songs are mainly Christmas music, and not just Christmas music, but it's out of tune and horrible. I won't give him a dime.

i see the occasional ice cream truck here in chicago but much more often the guys who have little freezers attached to bikes. there are usually a couple of them hanging around when school lets out. they have bells but no music.

we had one that played “turkey in the straw” - but yeah i havent seen hide nor hair since pandemic