Word: songfulness
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Inasmuch as I originally copyrighted the version as sung by the Andrews Sisters on the Decca record and later turned it over to Exclusive Music, I believe you may be interested in knowing of several of the numerous complications about the song...
First of all, none of the words used in the song . . . were intended to have any particular meaning. Last October, Jerry Brandow and Larry Kent, two comedian-dancers, played a "lick" for me to which the words "Hold-tight, hold-tight, hold-tight, hold-tight -want some seafood mama ! Shrimpers and rice, they're very nice" went. The two boys explained that they had heard the words and music either in a New York or Philadelphia night club where a colored band was playing. . . . We made a recording of the words and music to that point in a Broadway...
Soon after, the song reached its stride, and with it came complaints from Si Oliver, arranger for Jimmy Lunceford, who claimed it came from his arrangement of Dear Old Southland, from Gene Krupa who said he made it up in one of his earlier Brunswick records, from Count Basic who has used the lick in numerous of his arrangements. Jerry Kreuger, a 52nd Street singer, said she has used the line "Don't get icky with the 1-2-3" in New York since last summer after hearing it in the Catskills...
...result of the ban on the song, new lyrics were written, with the new writers now being cut in on the royalties. With the song a hit-and because so many people were connected with its composition -the various people are billed "writer of Hold-Tight" in the numerous places they work...
...good friend in the picture is one Rose Sargent (Alice Faye), a Ziegfeld star whose worthless husband (Tyrone Power) besmirches her name by fleeing justice after he becomes involved in a bond scandal. Rose vows her loyalty and, by sobbing out from the Ziegfeld stage the song My Man, persuades her husband to give himself up, plead guilty and take a five-year prison sentence. My Man was introduced by Ziegfeld Star Fannie Brice in 1920, when her husband, Nicky Arnstein, was wanted by the police for a stock swindle...