Ed Ames – "My Cup Runneth Over" (1967)

My cup runneth over with . . .  

Love!

“My Cup Runneth Over” was written for the Broadway musical “I Do! I Do!” – which opened in 1966 and ran for 560 performances.

The play has only two characters – a married couple, originally played on Broadway by Mary Martin and Robert Preston (and later by Carol Lawrence and Gordon MacRae) – and one set.  So it’s the perfect musical for a small theatre with a limited budget to mount.

In 1971, the Chanhassen Dinner Theatre in Minnesota hired Susan Goeppinger and David Anders for a six-week run of “I Do! I Do!”  The play eventually ran for over 20 years – Goeppinger and Anders got married after performance number 500, and eventually appeared together over 6500 times.

Goeppinger and Anders in 1985

The title of “My Cup Runneth Over” comes from the King James Version of Psalm 23:

Thou preparest a table before me 

In the presence of mine enemies

Thou anointest my head with oil

My cup runneth over

A recording of the song by Ed Ames climbed up the Billboard “Hot 100” in February 1967, eventually making it to the #8 spot.

Ames played Mingo, Fess Parker’s faithful Indian sidekick, on the NBC television series, Daniel Boone, for six seasons.  (He was the child of two Ukrainian Jewish immigrants, but he was often cast as a Native American.) 

One night, he was demonstrating the tomahawk-throwing skills he had picked up in that role to Johnny Carson when something unexpected happened:

Here’s “My Cup Runneth Over”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: