Mystery Hit

While professional musicmakers boggle, the U.S. public is quietly turning an unpromising record into a major pop hit. Oh, Happy Day, written by a lanky (6 ft. 1 in.), 17-year-old Cleveland high-school junior named Don Howard (full name: Donald Howard Kaplow), is a rudimentary little piece. To the accompaniment of his own guitar, Donnie himself moos his happy tune with the hoarse lilt of a fogbound ferry whistle. Sample chorus:

The moon is shinin',

Oh happy night,

Come to me, darlin'

And hold me, oh, so tight . . .

The melody has a folklike origin: Donnie heard it sung by an Ohio State girl friend, who had picked it up on the campus. Donnie worked it out on his guitar, changed it a bit, wrote some lyrics, sang it at parties, and prudently got it copyrighted. Six months ago, Cleveland Disk Jockey Phil McClean played a home recording of it on the air. After that, about 20 requests for it came in to station WERE every week. A brand-new record company ("Triple A") grabbed it for its first release, quickly sold 21,000 copies around Cleveland, then leased it to another label (Essex) for national distribution. By last week it was pushing the half-million mark to become the rarest kind of hit, unplanned and unplugged.

Nobody professes to understand why. Disk jockeys' enthusiasm for Oh, Happy Day runs the gamut from torpor to disgust; they announce it with such words as "Here's one everybody is asking for--I don't know why." A Boston platter spinner called it "the worst record I ever heard"; one in Manhattan vowed to eat it if it ever became a hit. "Nobody seems to like it," says Cleveland's McClean, "except the people."

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