The U.S. Army last week had the kind of song it likes — a simple, lively number on which it is easy to ring changes. While the radio networks plugged the original version, Army camps from coast to coast took care of the variations.
Sample stanzas from the original: Said the private to the sergeant, "Don't you think the bugle blew too soon?'" Said the sergeant to the private, "You can sleep till noon." Said the private to the sergeant, "Mother kissed me when I went to bed." Said the sergeant to the private, "I'll kiss you instead." Said the private to the sergeant, "I'll be getting back to camp quite late." Said the sergeant to the private, "I'll sit up and wait."
Chorus : Move it over, move it over, move it way over there; There's another dirt load coming up the road, So move it over there.*
Product of Broadway Tunesmith Sunny Skylar (real name Selig Shaftel), vocalist with Vincent Lopez' band, Move It Over at first did not impress Boss Lopez. When Skylar prevailed upon him to play it once as an experiment at Manhattan's Taft Grill, the audience seemed to agree with the bandleader. But later he dug it out again for a program at Camp Upton, L.I., and the doughboys ate it up.
Move It Over was promptly bought for $1,000 advance royalties by Santly-Joy, Tin Pan Alley song publishers. Broadcasters, suspicious of what sort of "load" the song was delivering, were responsible for a change in the lyrics from "There's another big load" to "There's another dirt load." Within two months of this Nice-Nellyism, the song's sale rose to 50,000 copies. Ethel Merman's Victor recording sold 80,000 discs and kept on going. The U.S. Army morale division ordered 25,000 copies. By last week, members of the U.S. Army themselves had flooded Bandleader Lopez' mail with more than 600 uninhibited versions of the ditty.
* Copyrighted 1942 by Santly-Joy, Inc.