On Feb. 15, 1964, Louis Armstrong’s cover of the musical title song “Hello, Dolly!” debuted on the Billboard Hot 100, one month after the show premiered on Broadway, where Carol Channing had introduced the tune. Armstrong’s recording spent 22 weeks on the singles chart, peaking at #1 on May 9, and topped Billboard’s adult contemporary chart for nine weeks, becoming the biggest hit of Armstrong’s half-century career. On Billboard’s year-end chart, the single ranked #3 overall for 1964, just below The Beatles. Below is Armstrong on the Oct. 4, 1964, broadcast of The Ed Sullivan Show.
The song was the lead single from Armstrong’s album Hello, Dolly!, which spent 75 weeks on the Billboard 200 album chart, six of them at #1, beginning June 13, when it dislodged the original Broadway cast recording from the top spot. The cast recording still ended 1964, though, as the top album on Billboard’s year-end chart.
At the 1965 Grammys, composer Jerry Herman picked up the award for Song of the Year, and Armstrong earned the trophy for Best Male Vocal Performance. So popular was Armstrong’s rendition that the Harmonia Gardens scene was restructured for the musical’s 1969 film adaptation, with Armstrong as the bandleader who sang the song to Dolly Levi (Barbra Streisand), which you can watch below.
Lyndon B. Johnson adapted the tune as “Hello, Lyndon!” for his 1964 campaign run, which Carol Channing sang at that year’s Democratic National Convention. In 1984, Channing also appeared on Sesame Street to sing the parody “Hello, Sammy!,” a love song to Jim Henson’s Sammy the Snake muppet, which you can watch below.
The song’s success led to a lawsuit from Mack David, who sued for copyright infringement, because the first four bars of Herman’s melody were the same as those in David’s 1948 song “Sunflower.” As he wrote in his memoirs, Herman had never heard David’s song and wanted a chance to defend himself in court, but he reluctantly agreed to settled before the case went to trial.
Armstrong’s version was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2001, and the original Broadway cast album followed in 2002. To get a taste of the original version, watch Carol Channing below in the 1979 Royal Variety performance during the London revival of the musical.
https://youtu.be/96MxyIJIACE