So how did a throwaway novelty song from a now-forgotten 1960s variety show become one of the greatest mnemonic devices in America?
Unfortunately, the song’s composer can’t tell us. Ray Charles—no, not that Ray Charles—died earlier this year at the age of 96, after a long and prolific show-business career in which he wrote, arranged, and performed dozens of compositions for stage and screen. (He’s probably best known for singing the Three’s Company theme; he also wrote music for Sha Na Na and The Muppet Show, among others.) But even when alive, Charles couldn’t shed much light on the subject. Interviewed for a South Carolina newspaper in 2008, Charles professed ignorance of how “Fifty Nifty United States” became a success after the Perry Como show: “I didn’t realize until about 10 years ago it was being used in schools,” he said.
The odds of “Fifty Nifty United States” becoming a beloved children’s classic were slim. Kraft Music Hall wasn’t exactly must-see TV—in the season that “Fifty Nifty United States” made its first appearance, it wasn’t even in the top 30 most-watched shows on TV, according to Como’s biographers. The vast majority of “special material” Charles wrote for Kraft Music was performed once, or a few times, and then forgotten. The version of “Fifty Nifty United States” that Charles wrote for Como’s show didn’t even include the roll call of state names—the ditty performed by the Ray Charles Singers was about 47 seconds long. And Como’s state-of-the-week segment never actually managed to celebrate all 50 states—Como paid tribute to only 25 states before the weekly show ended its run in 1963. (Hey, Sufjan Stevens only got around to two of them.)
As Charles’ sons Jonathan and Michael remember it, the song became immortalized because someone approached Charles about printing the song after hearing it on Kraft Music Hall. “How do you publish a tune that’s only 47 seconds long in its entirety?” asked Jonathan, 68, in an email. “He then wrote ‘the add-on,’ stacking the states in alphabetical order rather than going for the rhyme.” It does not surprise the younger Charleses that their father opted to list the states in alphabetical order. Jonathan described his father as “a saver and an archivist” who kept meticulous records and organized them carefully. “He loved putting things in alphabetical order,” Michael, 73, told me during a phone conversation. “He had a 17,000 LP collection supplemented by, like, 5,000 CDs and audio cassettes, and everything was alphabetical, either by composer or composition. He loved putting things in order like that.”