Frankie Laine who was popular in the fifties once said that Mel Brooks asked him to sing the title song for the film "Blazing Saddles."
He thought it would be another classic western Like "The Gun Fight at the OK Corral." or "3.10 to Yuma" or the other four westerns, for which he'd sung the title song.
So he sang it like he did those.
He said Brooks didn't tell him it was going to be a comedy.
As a toddler, I as were many other young kids, were taught to sing this.
Mairzy doats and dozy doats and liddle lamzy divey. A kiddley divey too, wouldn't you?
I was in my late teens before I learned there were "proper" words to this song.
"Mares eat oats and does eat oats and little lambs eat ivy,
A kid'll eat ivy too, wouldn't you?
"wiki" gives the history of the song.
Milton Drake, one of the writers, said the song had been 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." (Cows eat wheat and sows eat wheat and little sharks eat oysters.)
Drake joined two other writers, Al Hoffman and Jerry 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.
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