Nagasaki (song)

Nagasaki is a 1928 bawdy silly Jazz song created by Harry Warren and Mort Dixon as part of a US Novelty Song series set in exotic locations; the first in the series being "Oh, By Jingo!". The song Nagasaki even has a reference to it and the song "On the Isle of Wicki Wacki Woo". It's been covered by such groups as the Milli Brothers and many others.

Original Lyrics
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! I'ts 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 rhumatics

And then psyatics

Halatosisis, that's guarenteed.

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 pyjamas

They try to give you a kiss

Those torid 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.

Reception
The song saw great popularity in the 20s on into the 40s but fell into some slight obsucrity after 1945. It saw a revival in Australia during the 1970s after the Captain Matchbox Woopie Band covered it in Jug Band fashion.

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'."