“Mr. Magician (Won’t You Bring My Honey Back to Me?).” Words and music by Charles O’Flynn, James Cavanaugh, and Frank Weldon (1934). Recorded by Elsie Carlisle and Sam Browne with orchestral accompaniment on June 22, 1934. Decca F. 5079.

Elsie Carlisle and Sam Browne – “Mr. Magician” (1934)

O’Flynn, Cavanaugh, and Weldon were prominent Tin Pan Alley songwriters, but their 1934 “Mr. Magician” does not appear to have inspired many recordings. It may have seemed outrageously corny even by the standards of the time (consider the lines of the refrain: “Hocus, pocus, Mr. Magician, won’t you bring my honey back to me?”). All the same, this melodramatic arrangement (complete with an anonymous carnival barker, with Sam Browne as a grandiose, boasting circus magician, and with Elsie Carlisle as an earnest girl who wants to “find [her] man somehow”) has a certain appeal. Elsie plays the Dorothy to Sam’s Great Oz with a comical insistence; the whole piece is cartoonish, funny, and sweet.

New York-based Sam Robbins and His Orchestra had done a catchy version of the song in January, 1934, followed by Ozzie Nelson and His Orchestra (with vocalists Ozzie Nelson and Harriet Hilliard) in February). In Britain Harry Roy and His Orchestra had recorded it with vocals by Bill Currie in mid-May; the latter version includes the following priceless exchange:

— “I say, Mr. Magician, won’t you bring my baby back to me?

— “Sorry, I need her for myself!”