Arild Andresen, piano with guitar and bass recorded it in Oslo on March 11, 1955 as the first melody of the medley "Klaver-Cocktail Nr.

Ken Dodd performed the song as part of his ventriloquist's act with his puppet Dicky Mint during his performance on the LWT series An Audience With... Singer Eddie Fisher was always called "Sonny Boy" by his family because of the popularity of this song, which was recorded the same year as Fisher's birth.

In his autobiography, Fisher wrote that even after he was married to Elizabeth Taylor in 1959, earning $40,000 a week performing in Las Vegas, spending time with Frank Sinatra and Rocky Marciano, and had songs at the top of the charts, his family still called him "Sonny Boy".

According to 1986 British TV documentary "The Real Al Jolson Story," "Sonny Boy" was written in a single sitting in a hotel room in Atlantic City as a joke.

In the 1956 DeSylva, Brown, and Henderson biopic "The Best Things in Life Are Free", the songwriting trio are tired of being pestered by Al Jolson.

True to style, Jolson did not hate the overt sentimentality of the song and it became one of the biggest popular hits of the early 20th century.

The reference is a nod to the blackface minstrelsy performed by Jolson, as the song's protagonist is a fascistic cult leader and espoused racist.