David DeBoy now belongs with the great ones of music.
The world trembles from the coronavirus, but DeBoy brings us laughter and song to ease our way through the troubles, always in that classic Upper Chesapeake, adenoidal Bawlamer accent.
Remember in 1981 when he gave us the novelty holiday tune “Crabs for Christmas”? It was all over the radio airwaves. It was the musical lament of a Baltimorean far from home, asking for the impossible gift of steamed crabs from a St. Nick who’s run out of miracles.
The record sold 10,000 copies in about a month and for years became a seasonal favorite around Baltimore, “which some propose has contributed to the city’s population decline,” DeBoy has always maintained, with a twinkle in his eye.
Now he’s given us “Baltimore Hon,” an up-tempo musical video of a guy stranded at home, muddling through the current quarantine quagmire with a wife who’s got “the biggest hairdo,” and more important:
“She’s my pandemic advisor/
And she makes her own hand sanitizer.”
Could Cole Porter say it any better?
He adds:
“And when I get too grouchy/
From way too much of that Dr. Fauci/
I got my Baltimore Hon.”
Could Stephen Sondheim say it any better?
Posted online less than a week ago, the response to “Baltimore Hon” has been wonderful. At last count, it’s gotten 91,317 Likes on Facebook, and another 13,817 hits on YouTube.
“I’ve never had any response like this,” says DeBoy. “I’m just blown away by it.”
Born in Hampden but eventually lured away by the bright lights of Owings Mills, DeBoy’s a 1974 graduate of Woodlawn High and the old Towson State College. He’s had minor roles in movies by the hometown guys Barry Levinson and John Waters, and done some local children’s television. He was a regular on the old Maryland Public Television comedy series, “Crabs.”
He’s also written a few plays for local dinner theaters, won a couple of regional Emmy Awards for TV scripting and did the book for a music review titled “Doctor! Doctor!” that had a brief run off-Broadway.
Mainly, DeBoy has made a living acting and writing commercials, industrial films, corporate writing and directing, and voice-overs. Every year, he does a Christmas show at Germano’s in Little Italy.
Now quarantined at home like millions of us, DeBoy says he wrote the lyrics to “Baltimore Hon” in about an hour and put together a group of musicians and “Baltimore hon” ladies — including his wife, Joellen, and longtime Jewish community activist Robyn Stevens Brody — for the visuals.
“It’s just a combination of Bawlamer and a good-natured public service,” says DeBoy.
Also, it’s got a serious message. As DeBoy sings it:
“If you go out put a mask on/
And wash your hands real good/
And take care of each other/
Like all Marylanders should.”
Although, he adds puckishly, with an over-amorous wife at home:
“At my hon’s insistence/
I’m not keepin’ any social distance.”
Could Irving Berlin have said it any better?
A former Baltimore Sun columnist and WJZ-TV commentator, Michael Olesker is the author of six books, including “The Colts’ Baltimore: A City and its Love Affair in the 1950s” (Johns Hopkins University Press). His most recent, “Front Stoops in the Fifties: Baltimore Legends Come of Age,” has just been reissued in paperback by the Johns Hopkins University Press.
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