Lyrics are by Milton Drake (who also wrote the words to Mairzy Doats). The words need to be taken off the page and into a song to make sense ... perhaps this is the very opposite of poetry?
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the jiving and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!
I love java, sweet and hot
Whoops! Mr. Moto, I'm a coffee pot
Shoot me the pot and I'll pour me a shot
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!
Oh, slip me a slug from the wonderful mug
And I cut a rug till I'm snug in a jug
A slice of onion and a raw one, draw one.
Waiter, waiter, percolator!
I love coffee, I love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the jiving and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!
Boston bean, soy bean
Lima bean, string bean.
You know that I'm not keen for a bean
Unless it is a cheery coffee bean.
I love coffee, I love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the jiving and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!
I love java, sweet and hot
Whoops! Mr. Moto, I'm a coffee pot
Shoot me the pot and I'll pour me a shot
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup!
Oh, slip me a slug from the wonderful mug
And I cut a rug till I'm snug in a jug
Drop me a nickel in my pot, Joe, Taking it slow.
Waiter, waiter, percolator!
I love coffee, I love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the jiving and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup
The words hide mysteries ... Mr Moto was the fictional Japanese secret agent in eight films starting in 1937, but how is he connected with coffee?* "A slice of onion" - ? - lunch counter slang is one suggestion for that ... or just filling up the lines. "Think prohibition slang" is another suggestion, which leads to the idea that "a raw one" could be a hangover cure - and wasn't coffee itself a remedy for hangover?
"Cut a rug" = to dance, especially in a vigorous manner and in one of the dance styles of the first half of the twentieth century. "Tea" is slang for weed [itself slang for cannabis], "cabbage" and "green" can refer to money. "Drop me a nickel" ... from Louis Armstrong's delightful account of being busted in 1931 we learn that to drop a nickel is to put a nickel (5 cents) into a telephone is to call the cops and stoolpigeon on someone ... but is that relevant here?
Of "cheery coffee bean" Wikipedia says: "The song "Java Jive", a hit song for The Ink Spots in 1940, originally featured the couplet "I'm not keen about a bean / Unless it is a 'cheery beery bean'", as a pun on Ciribiribin, but the Ink Spots' lead singer inadvertently sang it as "cheery cheery bean", and recordings by subsequent artists have generally either followed suit or changed it to "chili chili bean"."
*As with "true" poetry, there are layers under the surface, and varying readings. One interpretation (halfway down this page) suggests the entire song is about personal recreational use of controlled substances:
'Whoops, Mister Moto, I'm a coffee pot' is, on the surface, a reference to pop culture: Peter Lorre films. At that surface level the line is incoherent. Everything falls into place if we interpret it as drug slang:
Whoops, Mr Moto!
(Whoops, Mr Marijuana Supplier!)
I'm a coffee pot!
(I blend pills/beans with my pot!)
Shoot me the pot
(Give me the marijuana)
and I'll pour me a shot
(I'll pour in my special ingredients)
As with other cryptic songs, from 'Follow the Drinking Gourd' to 'Proud Mary' and 'Poker Face', the surface meaning of the words is what gets the lyrics past censors and makes the song acceptable to a general audience. The words make a kind of sense on a surface level as long as the listener isn't paying much attention. Attentive listeners find quickly, though, that the literal surface meanings have trouble adding up to anything coherent. The difficulties point to code--slang--as key in understanding the song.
Whoops, Mr Moto!
(Whoops, Mr Marijuana Supplier!)
I'm a coffee pot!
(I blend pills/beans with my pot!)
Shoot me the pot
(Give me the marijuana)
and I'll pour me a shot
(I'll pour in my special ingredients)
As with other cryptic songs, from 'Follow the Drinking Gourd' to 'Proud Mary' and 'Poker Face', the surface meaning of the words is what gets the lyrics past censors and makes the song acceptable to a general audience. The words make a kind of sense on a surface level as long as the listener isn't paying much attention. Attentive listeners find quickly, though, that the literal surface meanings have trouble adding up to anything coherent. The difficulties point to code--slang--as key in understanding the song.
(If that's the case, what might Mairzy Doats (1944) be about...? Nothing, it seems: it's a novelty song based on a nursery rhyme.)
All that speculation aside, I love the unexpectedness and sheer nonsense of "waiter waiter percolator" in the song.
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| 1940s percolator - the colour of coffee splashing up into the glass knob showed how the brewing was coming along |
1 comment:
I am most familiar with the Manhattan Transfer version, and always loved some of those sillier and "perkier" lines. Had no idea I should dig so deep for true meaning! A lot of songs that came out of this era had drug references - less hidden than these - that didn't seem to bother anyone. I remember my dad scoffing at the hippies and their marijuana, relating that when he was growing up in the thirties lots of people smoked it, tossing a blanket over their heads for maximum effect - nothing new here. DAD! Yeah, he led a pretty rowdy life before he met my mother, so I think this was as close as he felt he could come to admitting he'd smoked it as a kid.
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