Nagasaki

About Nagasaki

"Nagasaki" is an American jazz song by Harry Warren and Mort Dixon from 1928 and became a popular Tin Pan Alley hit. The silly, bawdy lyrics have only the vaguest relation to the Japanese port city of Nagasaki. It was one of a series of US novelty songs set in "exotic" locations popular in the era starting with Albert Von Tilzer's 1919 hit "Oh By Jingo!"; "Nagasaki" even makes reference to the genre's prototype in the lyrics. Even more directly the song "On the Isle of Wicki Wacki Woo" was written by Walter Donaldson and Gus Kahn in 1923. "Nagasaki" was covered by many big band jazz groups of the late 1920s through the 1940s, and the music remains to this day a popular base for jazz improvisations. The song was most famously covered by the Benny Goodman Quartet in 1952. Others who performed the song include Fats Waller, Fletcher Henderson, Cab Calloway, Don Redman, Django Reinhardt, Louis Jordan, Adolph Robinson, Stéphane Grappelli, and Chet Atkins. Willie "The Lion" Smith performed and recorded the song throughout his career; although he sang different lyrics that he changed back in his vaudeville days. Writing for Time magazine, Richard Corliss described "Nagasaki" as "something like the definitive gotta-get-up-and-do-the-Charleston song, with Warren's effervescent syncopation dragging the folks onto the dance floor and Mort Dixon's lyric goading them into a singalong: 'Hot ginger and dynamite / There's nothing but that at night / Back in Nagasaki where the fellas chew tobaccy / And the women wicky-wacky-woo'." more »

Year:

1974

2:56

311 Views

Playlists:

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Fellows, if you're arn I will spin a yarn
That was told to me by Able Seaman Jones
Once he had the blues so he took a cruise

Far away from night-clubs and from saxophones
He said, "Yo ho, I've made a certain port
And when you talk about real He-Man sport"

Hot ginger and dynamite
There's nothing but that at night back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky, woo

The way they can entertain
Would hurry a hurricane back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky, woo

In Fujiama you get a mama
Then your troubles increase
In some pagoda, she orders soda
Earth shake, milk shakes, ten cents a piece

They kissy and huggy nice
Oh, by jingo, it's worth the price back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky, woo

Now when the day is warm
You can keep in form
With a bowl of rice beneath a parasol
Every gentle man has to use a fan

And they only use suspenders in the fall
That's where the girls don't think of rings and furs
Gosh, it's the nicest place that ever weres

They give you a carriage free
The horse is a Japanee back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky, woo

They sit you upon the floor
No wonder your pants get sore back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky, woo

With sweet Kimoner, I pulled a boner
I kept it up at high speed
I got rheumatics and then psyatics
Halatosisis, that's guaranteed

You just have to act your age
Or wind up inside a cage back in Nagasaki
Where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky, woo

With an ice-cream cone and a bottle of tea
You can rest all day by the hickory tree
But when night comes round, oh gosh, oh gee
Mother, Mother, Mother, pin a rose on me

Those pretty mamas in pink pajamas
They try to give you a kiss, those torrid teases
In B.V.D.ses
Heaven help a sailor on a night like this

Not too gentle and not too rough
But you've got to tell them when you've had enough
Back in Nagasaki where the fellers chew tobaccy
And the women wicky wacky, woo

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Cab Calloway

Cabell "Cab" Calloway III (December 25, 1907 – November 18, 1994) was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City, where he was a regular performer. more »

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