Music: A Rose Is a Rose ...

An unassuming candidate for China's 1946 hit parade was a bouncy little item called Mei Kuei, meaning "a rose." It was recorded in a thin, reedy soprano by a Chinese cabaret songstress named Hue Lee, enjoyed a modest popularity. By last week Mei Kuei's old Chinese friends would have scarcely recognized it. The Chinese lyrics had been uprooted; the new ones told the touching story of a Tommy's farewell to his Malayan sweetheart. As Rose, Rose, I Love You, the song stood No. 2 on Britain's hit parade.

The man responsible for transplanting the tune is Wilfrid Thomas, Australian disc jockey, who picked up the record in a back street in Hong Kong, brought it to London with him last winter. The oriental lilt caught the British fancy. A flood of letters and inquiries at record shops sent Columbia Records' British affiliate on a hot-breathed search for the old master copy of the Chinese record. Their Far Eastern division finally uncovered it in India, flew it to London.

For the sheet music, Chappell Music commissioned Disc Jockey Thomas to shake the rosebuds out of the oriental version, replace them with full-blown Western lyrics.

Last week, having added a few temple bells, gongs and Chinese blocks to Thomas' version, U.S. companies were pushing records by such pop performers as Frankie Laine, Gordon Jenkins and Buddy Morrow.

Meanwhile, Rose's British publishers have set aside part of their pyramiding royalties for Miss Hue Lee and the song's unknown writers, now presumably somewhere in Red China.