“BANANAS” AND OTHER SONGS
Reading edition
It was not my happiness to have heard Yes; We Have No Bananas first in America: and to understand phenomena one must know them in their natural setting. The phrase itself was created, or brought to notice, by Tad; as I have said in my wholly inadequate reference to his work, he is a master of slang and a creator of it; some acknowledgment to him might well appear on the cover of the song. His use of it was immeasurably more delicate and more amusing than the song, because he used it as a contradiction of all the blah and high-hat nonsense in the world; it is in his hands fantastic, funny, and impertinently pertinent. In the song I can’t see it; nor am I exceptionally taken with the music, which is largely synthetic.
However, if I cannot understand the success of the song (or misunderstand it, for it seems to me to be “merely” popular) there are those who understand better. I do not think that my quite secondary powers of analysis would have risen to the following, by J. W. T. Mason, correspondent of the London Daily Express, in New York:
New York slang usually changes monthly. Of late there has been a falling off in inspiration, and picturesque argot culled from the city’s polyglot interminglings has fallen sadly behind New York’s quick-witted reputation. At last, however, after months of waiting a creative effort has been made, and one of the most effective phrases descriptive of life in New York has resulted.
One hears it on the stage, in the drawing-room, in the kitchen, on the streets, everywhere: “Yes; we have no bananas.” A song has been written about it, and is the musical rage of the moment.
Cardboard imitations of bunches of bananas are making their appearance bearing the legend, “Yes; we have no bananas.” Business men hang these ornaments in their offices, as a reminder that, after all, there must be a way out of every difficulty. The phrase originated in the fruit shops kept in New York by Greeks, Italians, and Jews, whose knowledge of the English language is limited in verbiage, but not in volubility, nor in willingness to try.
These ancient races come to the New World for profit, and never like to turn a customer away. So they have evolved a curious positive and negative for the same sentence. Why the slangmakers hit on bananas has not been discovered. It might as well have been any other commodity. But the phrase means that one having asked for bananas in a fruit shop where there are none, the anxious proprietor, seeking to be ingratiating and not desiring to displease, answers: ‘Yes; we have no bananas.’ Thereupon he may seek to sell a cabbage or a bunch of beets instead, since most fruit shops in New York are vegetable establishments as well.
The phrase is a tribute to the optimism of the newly arrived immigrant; to his earnest fight to master the language of his temporary country, and so, somehow, is supposed to take on the American characteristic of “getting there,” even though by way of an affirmative in a negative sentence.
It is, I believe, a generation at least since the English began to say “Yes I don’t think.” And they talk about the cable having brought the two countries closer together. O God! O Montreal!
An Incomplete List of the Songs Written by Irving Berlin
When I Lost You When I Leave the World Behind Alexander’s Ragtime Band Oh, How I Hate to Get Up in the Morning (From Yip-Yip-Yap-hank) Everybody’s Doing It I Want to Go Back to Michigan Ragtime Violin When That Midnight Choo-Choo Leaves for Alabam’ Mysterious Rag Yiddle, On Your Fiddle My Wife’s Gone to the Country That Mesmerizing Mendelssohn Tune Kiss Me Call Me Up Some Rainy Afternoon Grizzly Bear I Want to Be in Dixie Keep Away from the Fellow Who Owns an Automobile International Rag In My Harem Snooky-Ookums Somebody’s Coming to My House You’ve Got Your Mother’s Big Blue Eyes Araby My Bird of Paradise This Is the Life They’re on Their Way to Mexico He’s a Devil in His Own Home Town He’s a Rag-picker Along Came Ruth Sadie Salome, Go Home Wild Cherry Next to Your Mother Who Do You Love Sweet Italian Love Piano Man When I’m Alone I’m Lonesome Ragtime Soldier Boy Goody - Goody - Goody - Goody - Good Pullman Porters on Parade At the Devil’s Ball Old Maids’ Ball San Francisco Bound If You Don’t Want Me, Why Do You Hang Around Down in Chattanooga When It’s Night Time Down in Dixieland If That’s Your Idea of a Wonderful Time, Take Me Home { The Hula-Hula { Girl on the Magazine Cover { I Love a Piano { The Ragtime Melodrama { When I Get Back to the U. S. A. (From Stop! Look! and Listen!) I’m Gonna Pin My Medal on the Girl I Left Behind Settle Down in a One-Horse Town (From Watch Your Step) Mandy (From Ziegfeld Follies) A Pretty Girl is Like a Melody (From Ziegfeld Follies) Some One Else May Be There While I’m Gone My Sweetie Good-bye, France The Hand That Rocked My Cradle Rules My Heart I’ve Got My Captain Working for Me Now You’d Be Surprised If I’d Have My Way (I’d Be a Farmer) Nobody Knows and Nobody Seems to Care I Never Knew Homesick All by Myself Some Sunny Day When You Walked Out Music Box Revue, 1922: Say It With Music Everybody Step Music Box Revue, 1923: Lady of the Evening Crinoline Days Pack Up Your Sins
Good-Bye to Dear Old Alaska By John Murray Anderson and Irving Cæsar
The scene it is Alaska and beneath the setting sun We see a brave young miner toiling there. He’s thinking of the home folks and when his day’s work is done, To a humble little shack he doth repair. He’s dreaming of the happy days When he was but a boy, The places he frequented long ago; On memories’ wings he flies again to his dear mother’s knee. ’Tis then we hear him whisper soft and low. REFRAIN Good-bye to dear old Alaska. I’m going across the sea, Back to the dear old home land, My country, the land of the free. I can picture a love nest at twilight Where the old folks for me sit and pine, So good-bye, Alaska, for I’m going home To that old-fashioned mother of mine. Once again the scene is changed, he’s on a special train And lands down at the Battery safe and sound. He wends his way on Broadway and on every side again The old familiar faces can be found. He lingers but a moment as he passes City Hall, And there he hears the national anthem sung, And just to prove he’s Yankee, aye, Yankee through and through, He sings the chorus in his native tongue. —Sung by Jack Hazzard in “The Greenwich Village Follies,” with dissolving views by Walter Hoban.
Heaven Will Protect the Working Girl
Words by Edgar Smith. Music by A. Baldwin Sloane. Copyright, 1909, by Charles K. Harris. British copyright secured.
A village maid was leaving home, with tears her eyes were wet. Her mother dear was standing near the spot; She says to her: “Neuralgia dear, I hope you won’t forget That I’m the only mother you have got. The city is a wicked place, as any one can see, And cruel dangers ’round your path may hurl; So ev’ry week you’d better send your wages back to me, For Heaven will protect a working girl. CHORUS “You are going far away, but remember what I say, When you are in the city’s giddy whirl, From temptations, crimes, and follies, villains, taxicabs and trolleys, Oh! Heaven will protect the working girl.” Her dear old mother’s words proved true, for soon the poor girl met A man who on her ruin was intent; He treated her respectful as those villains always do, And she supposed he was a perfect gent. But she found different when one night she went with him to dine Into a table d’hôte so blithe and gay. And he says to her: “After this we’ll have a demi-tasse!” Then to him these brave words the girl did say: CHORUS “Stand back, villain; go your way! here I will no longer stay, Although you were a marquis or an earl; You may tempt the upper classes with your villainous demi-tasses, But Heaven will protect the working girl.”