Rapture Records

Song: Makin’ Whoopee! / If I Had You

Artist: Rudy Vallée and his Connecticut Yankees

Record Label: Harmony 825-H

Recorded: January 10, 1929

Location: Elevator Room of the Fraternal Order of the Raven, The Salty Oyster Bar

After you deal with the brothers of the Fraternal Order of the Raven in their chapel, you’ll find this song playing incongruously on the radio after a calm, but fearful announcement of Booker’s violent exploits at the Columbian Raffle and Fair.

The song makes another sinister appearance in the Salty Oyster Bar in the Grand Central Depot of Emporia. In Founder’s Books you’ll find a voxophone by Ronald Frank. Obviously distraught, Frank sobs out how the owner of the Salty Oyster managed to sneak into his store while the Vox Populi were attacking and kidnap Sally, possibly his wife. She is implied to be locked up in the backroom of the Salty Oyster. You’re treated to an ambush inside while the phonograph innocently plays this song, suggesting the fate of Sally.

Once inside the hidden back room, you’ll discover the Return to Sender vigor and an Infusion. On the same table is a poster of “Sally” coquettishly exposing her ankles.

Disgusted, Elizabeth says, “Really? We just risked our lives for a bit of titillation?”

“I think I knew her. Worked at bar on Houston Street”

“Huh, I bet you did.”

“Whoopee!” was a 1928 Broadway musical comedy about a woman, Sally Morgan, getting married to Sheriff Bob Wells. She’s actually in love of with Wanenis, problematic due to his Indian heritage. Morgan ducks out of the wedding and escapes with Henry Williams with the excuse that they’re eloping. Further complicating matters, Williams, (played by comedian Eddie Cantor) is a hypochondriac and warns against the rash arrangement with “Makin’ Whoopee”.

The jilted Bob chases after the pair, but falls in love with Williams’ nurse, Mary. They all arrive at Wanenis’ reservation which introduces the hit song “Love Me or Leave Me”.

A popular standard even today, the words joke about how the supposed “trap” of married life and domesticity will eventually subdue the carousing nature of men after “making whoopee”. Typically, more modern renditions omit the lyrics suggesting infidelity, subsequent divorce lawsuit, and alimony.

Though understandably, the song is usually covered by male singers, people the likes of Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat King Cole have recorded versions.

If Al Bowlly was the UK’s first pop star, Rudy Vallée was the first US mega-pop star. Spending most of his childhood in Maine, Hubert Prior Vallé he took on the name Rudy after his idol, Rudy Wiedoeft, famous for his saxophone playing. Vallée also taught himself how to play the saxophone (of course), drums and clarinet. He often listened to Wiedoeft’s records to improve his own playing.

In college, he recorded on Columbia Personal Records with his Yale classmates named “The Connecticut Yankees”. His self-published records sold very well in the college bookstore.

During the acoustically-recorded days of records, singers had to be loud and have a certain “tone” to be audible on playback. Rudy didn’t have a strong voice, but he took a cut-down megaphone that he used in the bell of his baritone saxophone and sang through it. This little megaphone would become his trademark of which he used in lieu of non-existent PA systems and primitive carbon microphones to sing over his band.

It was during these live club performances that he was discovered by radio station WABC in the Heigh-Ho Club. His soft wavering voice and his golden wavy hair and blue-eyed visage had flappers mobbing the stages where he performed, hoping to catch even a glimpse of his lips through the opening of his megaphone. He became the best of the “crooners” that populated the intimacy of radio inspiring singers such as Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Perry Como.

His show, was broadcast weekly over WOR, WMCA, and WABC with his signature greeting “Heigh Ho, Everybody” and his hits including “The Drunkard Song”, “I’m Just a Vagabond Lover”, and “Brother Can You Spare a Dime?”.

Topping his success, he was also a triumph in acting, starring in films such as The Vagabond Lover and The Palm Beach Story.

In middle age, his voice eventually mellowed into a baritone during which he moved onto Broadway starring as J.B. Biggley in the hit musical and film How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying.

Yet as he remarks in the prefatory letter written at his imagined personal address at 7430 Rue de Vallée (actually Pyramid Place) in Larry F. Kilner’s Rudy Vallée Discography :

“…I must pay homage to radio for my success and to the broadcasting medium which has always been most kind to me. Yet, strangely enough, the broadcasting industry has completely forgotten my impact on the medium, but my scrap books comfort me by reminding me of what I meant and gave to the medium of radio broadcasting!”

Listen to the flip side “If I Had You” here.