Last week another one of those catchy tunes and goofy phrases fairly leapt across the nation. Every radio blared Open the Door, Richard! Five record versions were on sale, and 13 more (by Louis Jordan, Dick Haymes, the Pied Pipers, etc.) were being rushed to market. A quartet known as The Yokels sang it in Yiddish. Bing Crosby (an accessory after the fact), Bob Hope, Fred Allen and Bea Lillie had only to mention the word Richard on the air to put their studio audiences in stitches.
Open the Door, Richard! made no more sense than Kilroy, or Chickery Chick or The Hut-Sut Song—and was obviously in for the same flash fame. Its simple-minded chorus, something that any fool could sing and many did:
Open the door, Richard,
Open the door and let me in,
Open the door, Richard,
Richard, why don’t you open the door?*
The title came out of an old burlesque theater drunk skit. Jack McVea, leader of a small West Coast Negro jazz band, had heard the skit years ago—and the phrase stuck. Last summer on a rainy day in Portland, Ore. he wrote a simple riff tune for it and later recorded it—leaving out the references to whiskey. Disc jockeys in Los Angeles started plugging it last month, and soon McVea’s record had sold 300,000 copies, mostly on the West Coast. As soon as it caught on, McVea heard from the lawyers of John Mason, an old-time Harlem comic who had written the Richard skit back in 1919. Mason was hastily cut in for half the profits.
Last week Richard had even made a hit out of McVea’s little-known jazz band. After singing the tune for what he estimated was the 500th time, McVea said: “It’s just one of those things. I might not be able to do anything like it again.” But he was willing to try. He had a sequel all ready, called The Key Is in the Mailbox.
* Copyright 1947 by Duchess Music Corp.
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