Buy a Beer, Monsieur Shane

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        Word soon spread about the new song and fans flooded record stores with requests for "the new French song," "Buy a Beer, Monsieur Shane," "Mr. Barney McShane," "My Dear Mr. Shane," and "My Mere Bits of Shame." They may not have known how to pronounce the title, but they bought the record. A woman's leg was broken when she was knocked down by a crowd that mobbed a record store to buy copies. The song even reached the Navajo Indian reservation in Utah where it was chanted by Navajo and Utah Indians at a "squaw dance" to aid polio victims in a ceremony celebrating President Roosevelt's birthday.
        "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" entered the charts on January 1, 1938, and hit number one for the first of five weeks on January 22. It sold 100,000 copies in its initial release, and by the end of January had sold a quarter million copies. Bing Crosby was the only other Decca artist with records surpassing the 100,000 sales mark. "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" became a hit before it was published as sheet music, a rare phenomenon in those days. Twelve other artists, including Ella Fitzgerald and Kate Smith, recorded the song in hopes of cashing in on its popularity. The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (ASCAP) named "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen" the most popular song of 1938.
        The original composer of "Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen," Shalom Secunda, had sold its rights to song publishers J. and J. Kammens for only $30 a few months before the song was recorded by the Andrews Sisters. The Kammens sold the rights to Harms, Inc. to publish the English version. After much publicity about Secunda receiving nothing for the enormously popular song — including an item in Walter Winchell's column — the Kammens gave Secunda 20 percent of the royalties they collected from Harms.
        A columnist for The Billboard noted: "Not since the days of the 'Music Goes Round and Around' has any tune received the publicity that 'Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen' has. In the past few weeks columns have been devoted to the interesting human-interest story behind this tune in newspapers and magazines all over the country." The song became such a national sensation that Life, the leading photo-news magazine of the day, published a photo essay on January 31, 1938, giving its version of the song's history — including a very unflattering photo of the Andrews Sisters.
        The three "dirty little Greeks" from Minneapolis, the homely daughters of poor immigrant parents, made it to the most popular newsmagazine of the nation with their runaway best-selling record. The Andrews Sisters were on their way, and they would not stop until they reached the very top.

  

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