This comes from The Josh White Songbook, Quadrangle Books, Chicago (1963):

"The tragicomic song of a man without enough money to buy the meal he wanted. This version was adapted and composed by Hy Zaret and Lou Singer in 1944, and thereafter Josh was the chief popularizer of the song. According to the folklorist Kenneth S. Goldstein, a Latin Professor at Harvard had written a ditty in 1850 called 'The Lay of One Fishball.' Twelve years later, Francis James Child, the great authority on British ballads, composed a burlesque operetta in Italian on the song, called 'Il Pesceballo.' The 'mock operetta' was translated into English by James Russell Lowell, the famous poet, and performed in Cambridge for the benefit of Union soldiers in the Civil War. The song and opera then dropped into obscurity, until 1944."

--Commentary by Robert Shelton

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This is one of the "tunes wanted." I've sent a Noteworthy file to MMario for eventual inclusion in the DT.

Lin