Various Artists - Open the Door, Richard! (The Story of a Showbiz Phenomenon,...

Open The Door, Richard began life as a vaudeville routine performed by a number of black performers, including Bob Russell, Pigmeat Markham and Dusty Fletcher at places like New York's Apollo Theatre. Jack McVea, sax and clarinet player for the Black & White labels studio band, wrote a riff to go with the routine and it developed into a song which became a staple of the performances of many different artists. The first hit version was by Count Basie, rapidly followed by McVeas, and one by Louis Jordan, along with others in early 1947, to the extent that it became the biggest-selling song in the Billboard charts for the year.\n\nOver the years many different artists recorded some variant of the song. This collection pulls together as many as we could find and fit on one CD, including the most successful along with some other interesting ones, along with some spin-off recordings. It makes for an entertaining and oblique look at a slice of music and theatre history that obviously std