The catchy little ditty called Rum & Coca-Cola has been banned by all four major networks, but it is sweeping the U.S. Its sheet-music sales have climbed to a whopping 37,000 a day. Recordings of it by the Andrews Sisters and others are selling like cigarets.
Rum & Coca-Cola has been banned from the radio on two counts: 1) free advertising for a well-known soft drink, 2) the reference to rum and the general lustiness of the lyrics might corrupt the youth of the land. As sung in Trinidad, in its native state, the song might have been censored with more cause. Rum & Coca-Cola burgeoned on the Port-of-Spain waterfront in 1943. Its composer was a stocky Negro calypso singer named Rupert Grant, known for professional purposes as "Lord Invader." For Rum & Coca-Cola he took a tune, with alterations, from a popular Trinidad paseo (two step), and dogged out some doggerel:
Since the Yankees came to Trinidad,
They have the young girls going mad,
Young girls say they treat them nice,
And they give them a better price.
They buy rum & Coca-Cola,
Go down to Point Cumana.*
Both the mothers and daughters
Working for the Yankee dollars.
Lord Invader's ditty caught on with the U.S. troops, who bellowed it lustily in Trinidad's barracks and cafes. For more than a year Coca-Cola's local branch failed to notice the song's commercial potentialities; then they suddenly caught on and made furious attempts to obtain the rights to the song. But by then the Trinidad rights had been sewed up and the song imported to the U.S. by an up-&-coming radio funnyman named Morey Amsterdam.
Amsterdam, who describes himself as a "well-dressed hangover" has a well-stuffed musical memory. He is the son of Max Amsterdam, who plays with the San Francisco Symphony. Morey has explained: "The tune is calypso, of course, and then again it's not. It's really just an old Jewish melody with maracas [rhythm gourds] added."
In a watered-down, scrubbed-up version, tailored to Tin Pan Alley standards, Rum & Coca-Cola was plugged at Manhattan's Paramount Theater by a blond singer named Jeri Sullavan. It quickly became the biggest selling calypso song in history. Last week the Pepsi-Cola Co. was reportedly urging Rum & Coca-Cola's Manhattan publishers and Decca's Jack Kapp to make recordings with "coca" changed to "pepsi."
* Point Cumana is a bathing beach near Port-of-Spain where cottages may be rented.