OPEN THE DOOR, HOMER
“Open the Door, Richard” is a song first recorded by the saxophonist Jack McVea for Black & White Records at the suggestion of A&R man Ralph Bass. In 1947, it was the number one song on Billboard’s “Honor Roll of Hits” and became a runaway pop sensation. Bob Dylan and the Band recorded a version of “Open the Door, Richard” in 1967, officially released under the name “Open the Door, Homer” (though with “Richard” sung in the chorus line); it was included on the double-LP The Basement Tapes. The song was first included on the bootleg album Great White Wonder, with the name of the song shown as “Open the Door, Richard!”.
Great White Wonder opened up a whole world for me. To me, many of these songs are now as familiar and as solidly in the Bob Dylan canon as anything that I have heard on the Columbia Records studio albums released in the 1960’s, “The Death of Emmett Till” (a great old-school protest song), “Only a Hobo” (my favorite song on Great White Wonder and one of the earliest songs by anyone about the plight of the homeless), “Black Cross”, “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)”, “If You Gotta Go, Go Now (Or Else You Got to Stay All Night)”, “Poor Lazarus”, “Baby, Please Don’t Go”, “I Shall Be Released”, “Open the Door, Homer”, “This Wheel’s on Fire”, “I Ain't Got No Home”, and “(As I Go) Ramblin’ ’Round” (the last two being Woody Guthrie songs) among them.
(September 2017)
