Pam Johnson, Wayne Parker, and Eric Miller
- Our Dinosaur Friends for the Early Years
  - My Name is Stegosaurus [aka The Stegosaurus Song] Time: 1:46
  - Pterodactyl Time: 1:21
  - Brontosaurus Time: 1:28
  - Triceratops Time: 2:11
  - Tyrannosaurus Rex Time: 2:11
  - Our Dinosaur Friends Song Time: 1:47
  - Narration Time: 1:51

Art Barduhn Our Dinosaur Friends - for the Early Years LP (ARA, 1978)

This one is an absolute gem. I found this at a thrift store with it's companion volume, The Intermediate Years. It was, as you will hear, two bucks well spent and further proof that for every 100 shitty children's record out there, there is an absolute gem. As I've written before, what makes a great children's record is music that does not "talk" down to kids, music that treats them as the creative, spontaneous, intelligent beings we seek to destroy. Our Dinosaur Friends is just that.

"A dinosaur records? Eh how hard is that?" you ask. Sure, dinosaurs are an easy sell to young'un, perhaps easier than firemen and candy. Few kids aren't fascinated with our reptilian cousins or second cousins or wherever they fall in this animal soup. So anyone can make a good dinosaur record. No only is that not so, it means you've never heard this one. I've listened to many a kid's record and the only one that hits it like this is Stark Reality's record of Hoagy Carmichael songs (reissued as Stark Reality Now on Stones Throw). (To be fair, Stark Reality stands alone. Our Dinosaur Friends is great, but as good as it is, it pales next to Now.) Like Stark Reality, Art Barduhn has come up with some songs that sound more avant garde than they do children's. Our Dinosaur Years sounds more like Tom Waits' Frank's Wild Years period (done five years earlier) or Moondog (created decades earlier) than Raffi. Every time I listen to this I am taken aback over how much freedom the children's music genre gives musicians.

Art Barduhn started his music career playing vibes on the Seattle TV show Boreson & Barduhn in the 1940s. By the Fifties he was in Los Angeles recording polkas and playing jazz. He composed and arranged for TV, taught voice and music lessons, and created kids music. Here he is joined by Eric Miller and Pam Johnson (pictured below). As of 2005, Art was still alive and playing music in Palm Springs, fronting a Beach Boys=styled band called The Arthur Barduhn Trio.

Oh yeah, one of the really great things about this record is that the first side is vocals and music. The second is the music sans vocals. When you hear the cuts below, you will know what a treat that is. Happy hunting!