TIME
February 7, 1944 12:00 AM GMT-4
Mairzy Doats and Dozy Doats and liddle lamzy divey
A kiddley divey too, wouldn’t you?*
These iddly-oozy words were spreading fast last week from Tin Pan Alley to any place where a man could go nuts over silly syllables. Most citizens could keep their sanity at least long enough to discover that this apparent double-talk was simply nursery talk—it was a paraphrase of an old verse (“Mares eat oats and does eat oats, and little lambs eat ivy. A kid’ll eat ivy too, wouldn’t you?”).
Mairzy Doats was written two years ago by three affable-looking Broadway song writers named Milton Drake, Jerry Livingston and Al Hoffman. Drake got the idea from the infant prattle of his daughter, Niela. Last month Jack Robbins decided to take a chance on it. By last week, with a sale of 350,000 sheet-music copies, it was already the biggest Tin Pan Alley freak hit since Yes, We Have No Bananas and The Music Goes ‘Round and Around. Bandleader Al Trace, who had introduced the song at Broadway’s Hotel Dixie, had made the first recording (for Hit Records). Said he: “People get so annoyed by the words, they go out and buy it. It’s just the darndest thing.”
The editors of the Cleveland Press suggested to their subscribers a “Mairzy Doats” contest based on the following model:
Frogzy dbugs and birdzy dbugs, little dogzy dliver
A kiddley dliver, too, wouldn’t you?
* Copyright 1943 Miller Music Corporation. Used by permission of Copyright Owner.
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