CharlesPaolino's Blog

During the movie Same Time, Next Year, which was the topic of my last post, Alan Alda’s character sits down at a piano a few times, and one of the songs he plays is “If I Knew You Were Coming, I’d Have Baked a Cake.” I don’t think I’ve heard anyone perform that song in decades, but I do remember when it was a big hit. That was in 1950, and in that era, novelty songs, as they were called, often made it to the charts and sometimes in a big way.

The one Alda played was written by a committee: Al Hoffman, Bob Merrill, and Clem Watts (a pseudonym for bandleader Al Trace). Like many popular songs, it was an expansion of an expression, the title, that already existed in popular culture. The lyric went, in part:

If I knew you were comin’ I’d’ve baked a cake
baked a cake, baked a cake
If I knew you were comin’ I’d’ve baked a cake
Howd-ya do, howd-ya do, howd-ya do
Had you dropped me a letter, I’d a-hired a band
Grandest band in the land
Had you dropped me a letter, I’d a-hired a band
And spread the welcome mat for you

Oh, I don’t know where you came from
’cause I don’t know where you’ve been
But it really doesn’t matter
Grab a chair and fill your platter
And dig, dig, dig right in.

The first and iconic recording of this song was made by Eileen Barton. The tune arrived on the Billboard magazine chart in March 1950 and stayed for 16 weeks, peaking at No. 1. A recording made that same year by Georgia Gibbs was on the Billboard chart for six weeks. The best-known performance of the song, with good reason, was by Ernie in an encounter with the Cookie Monster in 1969 during the first season of Sesame Street. You can see that scene by clicking HERE.

Another of Al Hoffman’s collaborations, this one with Jerry Livingston and Milton Drake, was the nonsense song “Mairzy Doats,” which the trio composed in 1943. The song has been recorded, and has charted, many times. The Merry Macs, a popular harmony group, took it to Number 1 in March 1944. According to Drake, the inspiration for the song was an English verse he heard his young daughter singing: “Cowzy tweet and sowzy tweet and liddle sharksy doisters.” (Cows eat wheat and sows eat wheat and little sharks eat oysters.)

You can hear the Merry Macs’ hit recording by clicking HERE. This song was a particularly good fit for the wack-a-doodle bandleader Spike Jones, and you can hear his recording by clicking HERE.