Skinny, bushy-haired James Anderson of Port Arthur, Texas was one of the thousands of U.S. soldiers who spent more time during the war pushing a mop than firing a rifle. He never won any medals, but last week it began to look as though his old G.I. mop had brought him a share of both fame & fortune.
"Deacon" Anderson, 26, had worked out a kind of K.P. chantey as he swung his mop. As he explains now: "It's hard to think up words with any sense when you're tired, and I got to spelling out r-a-g m-o-p."
To Anderson, who now plays in a Western band in Beaumont, Texas, the result added up to a song; he gave it a hillbilly beat and tried it on his steel guitar. After the war, he tried to sell the song, but everyone around Beaumont thought the whole idea was just plain silly. Last year he made a recording—he didn't know how to write the notes down—and sent it to a friend with the Johnnie Lee Wills band. Says Tulsa's Johnnie Lee, the idol of the Southwest's square-toe boot and blue-jean set: "At first I thought it was crazy. Then it kinda irritated me." He rearranged it, added some notes and a little pep & polish. Sample of the finished product:
M, I say mo, mop, m-o-p-p, mop . . . R, I say . . .
Said Wills: "We played it again and darn it, everybody kept asking for it."
Part-Cherokee, part-Irish Johnnie Lee Wills recorded it (for Bullet Records), and last week just about everybody in the U.S. seemed to be going through the alphabet. Rag Mop was at the top of the hit parade.
Drawled Deacon Anderson: "People don't know it got born because I got tired of mopping. Now I'm doing real swell."