His best known song as a writer, "We'll Build a Bungalow", was a chart hit for Johnny Long in 1950, and was performed by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in I Love Lucy.
By the late 1920s he also worked as a musician, according to his own account played banjo in one of Chick Webb's early bands, and appeared regularly on radio station WMCA.
His earliest recordings were made in New York in 1936, with his own small group, and were credited variously to The Blue Chips, The Hipp Cats, and Norridge Mayhams and His Barbecue Boys.
Increasingly billing himself as Norris the Troubadour, and using members of his family including his wife Shirley and daughter Betty as singers, often credited as the Little Blue Chips,[4] he began subsidizing his own recordings.
It was later recorded by Sy Oliver,[3] and a version was performed as a vaudeville duet on the I Love Lucy show in 1952 by Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz.
Other titles recorded by Mayhams included "Yamtang Yamtang Rankytang (No Meat Sweet Potatoe Swing)"; "My Christmas Time Philosophy; Theme Of The Apostropheis" (previously published as "I Want A Coed By My Side"); "Zoomba High Kicka Zoomba"; "Rock N' Rollin' Honey (You Left Me Baby Cause I Had No Money)"; and "I'am Back From Vietnam (Hold The Elevator My Baby Is Coming Down)".
[3] In later years, Mayhams used the group name The Seaboard Coastliners on many of his records, including a disco-style remake of "We'll Build A Bungalow (Big Enough For Two) (You Spell It For Two)" in 1979.