Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!
Words by Ed Rose, Music by Abe Olman, Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor,
Sophie Tucker
Oh, Johnny! Oh, Johnny! How you can love!
Oh, Johnny! Heavens above!
You make my sad heart jump with joy,
And when you're near I just can't sit still a minute.
I'm so, Oh, Johnny! Oh, Johnny! Please tell me, dear,
What makes me love you so?
You're not handsome it's true,
But when I look at you,
I just Oh, Johnny! Oh, Johnny! Oh! Oh!
Abe Olman, a successful music publisher,
got his basic training when he became a song plugger for a song he
wrote in 1917, Oh Johnny, Oh Johnny, Oh!
He got an imposing
list of stars to sing it - Al Jolson, Eddie Cantor, Sophie Tucker, Ted
Lewis
- and it was featured in a Ziegfeld Follies. It became one of the
big
hits of World War I, selling 1 1/4 million copies of sheet music.
By
the time Wee Bonnie Baker repopularized it in 1939, piping it out in a
little-girl
voice, with Orrin Tucker's orchestra, record sales rather than sheet
music
had become the baramoter of success, but even on records "Oh Johnny"
was
a million seller.