I tuned into SiriusXM satellite radio the other day just in time to hear a record that was one of the biggest, and least likely, hits of the 1940s: “Rum and Coca-Cola,” in which the Andrews Sisters sing about prostitution.
The song is all about soldiers and sailors stationed in Trinidad during the war and having rather too good a time. They’re drinking “rum and Coca-Cola” with the locals, both mothers and daughters, who are “working for the Yankee dollar.”
Comedian Morey Amsterdam was also working for the Yankee dollar, and then some. The short sidekick to Dick Van Dyke in his eponymous show had been part of a USO show that traveled to Trinidad in the early to mid-1940s. Never let it be said that Amsterdam didn’t have an ear for a good tune — he heard the original version of the song on the island and brought it back to the United States — just that his showbiz ethics were about what one could have expected from somebody with showbiz ethics. When Amsterdam presented the music for “Rum and Coca-Cola” to a publishing house in New York, it was his name on the music as lyricist.
Amsterdam might well have gotten away with it if the song hadn’t been such a smash hit. But selling millions of records meant huge royalties and enough publicity that the real author of the words stepped forward. The calypso artist known as “Lord Invader” was, as his stage name suggests, no pushover. He not only sued Amsterdam’s publisher, but he hired one of the most formidable trial lawyers of the day, Louis Nizer. After three years of litigation, Lord Invader prevailed.
The song is rarely heard today, but the drink, rum and Coke, remains a standard. It isn’t a drink likely to stump a bartender, not only because it is regularly ordered but also because the name of the drink discloses just how to make it. I should point out that many make the mistake of assuming that the Cuba libre is just another name for a rum and Coke. But they are actually separate drinks: The rum and Coke is made of rum and Coke, over ice in a tall glass, while the Cuba libre is a rum and Coke with the juice of a small lime added to the mix and half of the lime’s shell tossed in as garnish.
Trinidad, the Andrews Sisters notwithstanding, is not a big market for rum and Coca-Cola. When I was in Trinidad a few years ago, I did not find it to be much of a rum-drinking place. Beer was the drink of choice, either Carib or Stag, which is advertised as the brew mainly for manly men.
There was, however, a drink with Coca-Cola that I was served several times while out “limin’.” To lime, in Trinidad, is to hang out. The most popular sort of lime is the “river lime,” in which one picnics along a stream cooking up curries over an open fire. And as incongruous as it may seem, sitting as I was on river rocks in a West Indies island, I was poured Johnnie Walker Black Label Scotch whisky and Coke — a drink that is otherwise something of an Australian specialty.
Countries have proved to be surprisingly willing to adulterate their national beverages with Coca-Cola. Chile, for example, contests with Peru about which is the true home of a fine New World brandy called pisco. Each has its own version of a superb drink called the pisco sour. And yet, for all that, Chileans primarily consume pisco on ice with Coca-Cola, a drink called a “piscola.” In the U.S., there is probably more Jack Daniel’s mixed with Coke than there is savored straight. In Mexico, one can ask for a “batanga” to get tequila, Coke, and lime juice on ice.
I have one other drink to suggest, an original of my own. (I can attest that Morey Amsterdam had nothing to do with it.) Take a nice icy rum and Coca-Cola and add a dash or two of Trinidad’s angostura bitters. I call it a Lord Invader, whose take on “Rum and Coca-Cola” was bitter indeed.
Eric Felten is the James Beard Award-winning author of How’s Your Drink?
