Mairzy Doats

"Mairzy Doats" is a novelty song composed in 1943, by Milton Drake, Al Hoffman and Jerry Livingston. It was first played on radio station WOR, New York, by Al Trace and his Silly Symphonists. The song made the pop charts several times, with a version by the Merry Macs reaching No. 1 in March 1944. The song was also a number one sheet music seller, with sales of over 450,000 within the first three weeks of release.^[1]

The song's refrain, as written on the sheet music, seems meaningless:

Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey

A kiddley divey too, wooden shoe

However, the lyrics of the bridge provide a clue:

If the words sound queer and funny to your ear, a little bit jumbled and jivey,

Sing "Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy."

This hint allows the ear to translate the final line as "[a] kid'll eat ivy, too, wouldn't you?"

History

One of the writers, Milton Drake, said the song was based on an English nursery rhyme. According to this story, Drake's four-year-old daughter came home singing, "Cowzy tweet and sowzy tweet and liddle sharksy doisters."^[2] (Cows eat wheat and sows eat wheat and little sharks eat oysters.)

Drake joined Hoffman and Livingston to come up with a tune for the new version of the rhyme, but for a year no one was willing to publish a "silly song." Finally, Hoffman pitched it to his friend Al Trace, bandleader of the Silly Symphonists. Trace liked the song and recorded it. It became a huge hit, most notably with the Merry Macs' 1944 recording.^[3]

Other recordings

In 1958, New Orleans R&B singer Tommy Ridgley released a rock and roll version of "Mairzy Doats" on the Herald Records label as a 7" 45 rpm single (number 526).

In 1963, an up-tempo rock and roll version of "Mairzy Doats" was also recorded by Carlo Mastrangelo of the Belmonts and released as a 7" record on Laurie Records the same year.

"Mairzy Doats" received a minor revival in 1967, when it was recorded by The Innocence, who took it to Number 75 on the Pop Top 100 on Kama Sutra Records.

Spike Jones was among several other artists who covered it, characteristically substituting sound effects for the "food" words.

In other media

It was featured several times on the BBC radio show I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue – most notably sung by Graeme Garden.

The song was used in movies by Stan Laurel (The Big Noise, 1944) and Woody Allen (Radio Days, 1987). The song was in the 2000 horror film The Cell, when serial killer Carl Stargher, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, sang the song to himself while in the bathtub. A version of the song can be heard briefly in the James Garner 1965 World War II espionage film 36 Hours.

In David Lynch's television serial Twin Peaks, the tragic character Leland Palmer (Ray Wise) sings the song in a frantic, maniacal way after a terrible shock leaves him in a state of madness. Shari Lewis sang it on television's Lamb Chop's Play-Along, and it was also heard in the "The Beer Hunter" episode of the British television series Minder. In the Hogan's Heroes episode "The Missing Klink", the term "Mairzy Doats" is used as part of a fake coded message. Alan Alda, as Hawkeye Pierce on an episode of the TV series M*A*S*H, recited a couple of lines from the song while teaching Korean locals how to speak English. In the M*A*S*H episode "A Smattering of Intelligence," a part of the song was used as code by a visiting C.I.A. operative (Colonel Flagg).

Song was used on The Jeffersons in the episode "The Blackout"

It was a featured song in the 2000 BBC Films and HBO television movie The Last of the Blonde Bombshells. The song was mentioned in the HBO show Vinyl.

See also

• Mondegreen
• Folklore
• Oral tradition

References

External links

• Sheet Music
• Recording by the Merry Macs