Category: 1945-1949

“Oh You Beautiful Doll” (1949) – Rosemary Clooney * Written by Nat D. Ayer and Seymour Brown * 78: “Oh You Beautiful Doll” / “Don’t Cry Joe (Let Her Go, Let Her Go, Let Her Go)” * Label: Harmony

This classic American song, recorded and performed a zillion times, made its biggest splash the first time around through a 1912 disc by Billy Murray and the American Quartet. That was the year a minor league baseball player named William Jacobson stepped to the plate as the song played and hit a home run, after which a lady in the stands yelled out for all to hear, “you must be the beautiful doll they were talking about!” He instantly became Baby Doll Jacobson, and would go on to bat over .300 through most of the 1920s for the St. Louis Browns. Rosemary Clooney recorded her version of the song in 1949, shortly after breaking loose from Tony Pastor’s Big Band. Its easy lilt and feminine perspective pair it up with the Jacobson story better than the ticktocky Billy Murray original.

“A-Sleeping at the Foot of the Bed” (1949) – “Little” Jimmy Dickens * Written by Luther Patrick and Happy Wilson * 78: “A-Sleeping at the Foot of the Bed” / “I’m in Love Up to My Ears” * Label: Columbia

Little Jimmy Dickens’s first record was the #7 country hit “Take and Old Cold ‘Tater (And Wait),” a negative “company’s comin'” song, which is a country music rarity. Were there any others? Yes, in fact—Dickens’s  own “A-Sleeping at the Foot of the Bed” from that same year, about the misery of getting bumped off your own mattress for the sake of hospitality. But the melody and subject matter perhaps inspired Jim Connor to write John Denver’s “Grandma’s Feather Bed,” a very positive “company” song that has no one sleeping on the floor. Songwriting credit for “A-Sleeping” goes to Happy Wilson and Luther Patrick, a former Alabama U.S. Representative.

“Sweet Georgia Brown” (1945) – The King Cole Trio * Written by Ben Bernie, Kenneth Casey, and Maceo Pinkard * 78: “Sweet Georgia Brown” / “It Is Better to Be By Yourself” * Label: Capitol

With this record, Nat King Cole (piano), Oscar Moore (guitar), and Johnny Miller (bass) run a California clinic on how to make a small jazz combo cook. All three of them rip through this instrumental version of a standard (that was only twenty years old at this point), sounding like they could twirl their instruments on a fingertip if they wanted. In Moore’s guitar playing, you hear a clear prototype of the glimmering West Coast sound Barney Kessel would later pursue in the fifties with his own combos.

“Buttons and Bows” (1948) – Dinah Shore with her Happy Valley Boys * Written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans * 78: “Buttons and Bows” / “Daddy-O (I’m Gonna Teach You Some Blues)” * Label: Columbia

This catalyst for deep baby boomer nostalgia, with its child-friendly lyrics comparing the apparel of cowboys to city girls, first appeared in the 1948 film The Paleface. In a performance that nabbed the song an Academy Award, Bob Hope sang it to Jane Russell in a covered wagon while squeezing a concertina. On record, Dinah Shore gave it a female perspective and struck gold. Although writers Livingston and Evans had softened the more stereotypically Native American effects they intended to give it, “Buttons and Bows” still retains certain cinematic Indian sound signals, with its chant-like melody over minimum chord changes.