"I Am My Own Grandpa" offers a treat for those who like logical loopholes. In this case, it's a legal and logical way to become your own grandfather, apparently taken from a passage by Mark Twain.
The song itself was written by Dwight Latham and Moe Jaffe in 1948. The novelty country song can pull a laugh with its fully legal logical twists as it step-by-step walks through how the poor narrator of the song became his own grandfather. (There's an at least partially helpful chart on this site.)
First, he married a widow with a grown daughter. Then, his father married that grown daughter. That made his father both his father and his son-in-law, and his stepdaughter his stepmother. Then he had a son, who was then brother-in-law to his father (due to the son being a brother to the stepdaughter who had married his father). To add the final kink, his stepdaughter/mother and his father/son-in-law had a son themselves. But the son was the son of his wife's daughter, which made her a grandmother—a grandmother to the narrator's halfbrother by his father. Which likewise makes his wife his grandmother. But he is married to his "grandmother," which makes him grandfather to those people she's grandmother for, making him his own grandpa!
Whew. See what I meant about a logical treat? It's so much fun that the vocals and music don't even matter as long as they're not horrid, and Ray Stevens certainly is better than that.
Some of the most fun in this song comes from the narrator's obvious confusion and hesitation as he starts to follow the twisted threads. It's clean, too, though the idea of a father marrying the child's daughter-in-law is a bit… strange.
Listen to it at least once if you like logical games. You'll enjoy it!
Lyrics: 5/5
Music: 3/5
Vocal(s): 3/5
Overall: 8/10
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