Alright, let’s move on from the apocalypse as we understand it. It’s time for something more cheerful.
The Politburo in China has been forced to cut off the supply of bananas as customers are increasingly aggressive and threatening. They are informing the young and unvaccinated that antibiotics and face masks are out of stock. I don’t know why everything else is made in China, but I presume it’s just like that in the Sunshine State or anywhere else. In the course of the conversation, it was also mentioned that there was a run on bananas. Nevertheless, Howie wants to talk about the great toilet paper stampedes that he has heard on the air, but I’m not really sure what he wants to do and which job he is referring to. The rest of the time, I help out the young lad who works at Publix supermarket, who is also Howie’s assistant at his Florida redoubt, doing photocopying and whatnot. Two weeks ago, I was listening to the radio colossus, Carr Howie, in New England.
And when Howie refused, what you should tell them is: “Indeed, we have no bananas. We have no bananas today.”
I refer interested readers to Paddy Devlin’s book, which bears the same name as the outdoor relief in Belfast from 1920-1939. We do not have any bananas to answer the Irish Question. Who knew that both Papists and Prods cherished it as a rare cultural artifact? This communal chant of Belfast’s petitioning protesters for relief under the Poor Act of 1601 was widely used in the English-speaking world during the years of the Great Depression because it was the most commonly used vernacular expression. We don’t have any bananas. Yes! We have them. In the late Twenties, under the Act, we would have had them, but I couldn’t tell the kid if he had the reference.
At any rate, before it became a Publix shelf-filler’s mournful refrain during the Coronapocalypse, it was an enduring song. All together now:.
In June 1923, it was conveyed to Silver that Irving Conn, a leader of a Boston-born band, had his name changed subsequently. Irving, who was an immigrant-born individual from London, actually wrote it. However, the word about it spreads through mouth, like a nonsensical ditty, when humans gather around a campfire or in a messy hut at night.
I am an American, of Jewish ancestry, with a wife and a young son. About a year ago my little orchestra was playing at a Long Island hotel. To and from the hotel I was wont to stop at a fruit stand owned by a Greek, who began every sentence with ‘Yess.’ The jingle of his idiom haunted me and my friend Cohn. Finally I wrote this verse and Cohn fitted it with a tune:
Yess, we have no bananas We have no bananas today We have stringbeans and onions Cabbages and scallions And all kinds of fruits, and, say We have an old-fashioned tomahto A Long Island potahto But yess, we have no bananas We have no bananas today!
The crazy song has captured the country and a fortune is coining my way.
The verse that introduces the tale of “Somebody Loves Me” and “Lonesome Pine” by lyricist MacDonald Ballard and “Trail Of Me Loves Somebody” and “Lonesome Pine” by lyricist MacDonald Ballard and “Somebody Loves Me” by composer Hanley F Jamey, and many more, supposedly contributed to the song “Second Hand Hose” and “Bananas” were among those who allegedly got help from Silver and Cohn. They were not too impressed by the number of staff writers who were able to help them out, but they liked the idea and found a publisher, Bernstein Shapiro, one of the largest music houses in Tin Pan Alley. Then, the two guys set out to find a restaurant in New York City, Murray’s, where they sang it again. It seemed to go down well, so they did it again on Long Island at a roadhouse. That is certainly a true bit.
There’s a fruit store on our street It’s run by a Greek And he keeps good things to eat But you should hear him speak! When you ask him anything He never answers no He just yesses you to death And as he takes your dough He tells you…
Yes! We Have No Bananas…
Starting from those initial recordings in 1923, here is the highest-selling track by one of the radio’s beloved Happiness Boys, Billy Jones.
It was a big event. As Time magazine reported on July 2nd, 1923:.
YESS! we have no bananas. This fact, although somewhat mitigated by the adequate supply of onions, cabbages, tomatoes, is the outstanding musical fact of the hour.
We have no bananas today. Where is the clergyman, college president, banker, lawyer, beggarman, society or labor leader or Congressman who is not thoroughly alive to this unprecedented situation?
Yes, we could not banish bananas! However, most drinkers were immediately given up alcohol for the rest of their lives when they saw the success of the prodigious bottle that could banish the deep funk. I was aghast by the success of the “Sixteen Sweet” and “Moon Man” songs written by Thornton James, the old-time songwriter. In those days, the horror situation mostly kept men, including congressmen, beggarmen, and clergymen, alive, setting them aside.
As Will Rogers wrote, others regarded the “Bananas” phenomenon as an indication of the irreversible decline of America.
I have read quite a lot in the papers about the degeneration of America by falling for a thing like it. Some lay it to the effects of prohibition, some say it is the after effects of war, that it is liable to follow every big war. I see where some have written editorials on the song claiming that things are always in an unsettled state the year before a presidential election. I claim it’s due to none of these causes at all; neither is it due to the French occupation of the Ruhr*. I claim that it is the greatest document that has been penned in the entire history of American Literature…
I would rather have been the Author of that Masterpiece than the Author of the Constitution of the United States.
The song emerged long before it was recounted in the Philippines that American troops had regularly used it as a way to keep busy, crying out loudly like a cat’s meow or a cat’s pajamas. It was claimed by Tad Dorgan that he had used it in a cartoon newspaper as the most prolific creator of American paperhangar cartoons. One must seriously take into account his claim, as he filed a copyright suit for ownership of the expression.
This year, of course, the annual performance of the Royal Albert Hall’s Good Friday Choral Society was a great success. The opening chorus, “Hallelujah,” from Handel’s Messiah (1741), is well-known. According to Sigmund Spaeth, a frequent expert in plagiarism suits and the star of the radio show “Detective Tune,” the song contains at least one musical phrase that is not original. However, the writers of the song, with the exception of three notes in the melody, helped to create an amazing number that is truly exceptional. The origin of the title and the song itself remains a mystery.
The next line of the Scottish folk song “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean” is best known in Charles Pratt’s 1881 assemblage, titled “Here’s Charles Version of the Beatles”.
Joan Sutherland, Australia’s Dame, adored the song from the famous 1843 operetta “The Girl Bohemian” by Alfred Bunn and William Michael Balfe. She cherished this tune throughout her entire life and performed it with the London Symphony Orchestra, led by her husband Richard Bonynge.
The third section of “Home Nellie Seeing” comes from the backporch of an American favorite from the 1850s, with a bit of help from Kyle Frances and Fletcher John. It is an old-fashioned garden party, fashioned in the style of Cash Johnny’s early success, with a very first and real song from Porter Cole.
And now we have Olive Kline performing Cole Porter’s “Old-Fashioned Garden” from Hitchy Koo of 1919.
If you want to find an instrumental version and sing the words, Spaeth’s Sigmund theory proposes that he will test you. In the Philippines, several US soldiers, including Dorgan Tad Handel Frideric George Bunn Alfred Balfe William Pratt E Charles Fletcher John Kyle Frances Porter Cole MacDonald Ballard Brown Lew Hanley James, never needed thanks to one and never hit another and never hit another and Silver Frank Cohn Irving explain why may someone else have written “Bananas,” which was known well by all aspiring songwriters in 1923 except for every other thing above.
Hallelujah, bananas Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls The kind that you seldom see I was seeing Nellie home To an old-fashioned garden But hallelujah, bananas Oh, bring back my Bonnie to me!
In their sole success, Silver and Cohn remain the exclusive songwriters with five additional successful songs. Accomplishing this task is more challenging than anticipated: combining, for instance, two measures of Pachelbel’s Canon, four measures of “F**k Tha Police,” and intertwining it with a snippet of the theme from The Magnificent Seven. Regardless of its originality, the outcome will be a distinct creation in itself, if you merge a couple of measures from Handel, a couple from Cole Porter, and link them with a fragment from a London operetta from the 1840s. However, Silver and Cohn never managed to achieve such success again.
He sure took those bananas and made them peel, but in their day, his mannerisms and tics were mocked much. I miss Anthony Newley quite a bit, let’s close it out with a guy I was close with these days.
Eddie Cantor, this one’s for all the people in a Florida Publix. As a result, James F Hanley, one of those Shapiro Bernstein songwriters who contributed, came up with an “answer song”. By the way, PS, it’s a quick one and, Oh.
*Historical reference note: Further information on the French presence in the Ruhr can be found here on Tuesday.
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