Lyr Req: Your Feet's Too Big (from Fats Waller)

Subject: REQ: Your feets too big
From: Wolfgang Hell
Date: 16 Oct 97 - 10:53 AM

I'm looking for the lyrics to this song. Perhaps not folk, I do not know.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: Harald
Date: 16 Oct 97 - 12:38 PM

I know that one performed by the Beatles. Could be folk-originated at it´s original transcription, but I don´t know. Getting the lyrics will be hard, due to the very poor sound quality of that old Star-Club record.

Harald

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: Harald
Date: 16 Oct 97 - 02:36 PM

Ok then. I found it on my Fats Waller record. So the original is a lot slower than the Beatles-version. But well, also Fats is hard to understand...

Harald

Subject: Lyr Add: YOUR FEET'S TOO BIG (from Fats Waller)
From: Joe Offer
Date: 16 Oct 97 - 03:10 PM

Yeah, it'ds a hard one to transcribe. I found a reasonable transcription on a Dejanews search, which saved me a lot of work:

YOUR FEET'S TOO BIG (Benson-Fisher), from a recording in 1939:
(spoken over piano intro:)
Who's that walkin' around here? Mercy!
Sounds like baby patter... baby elephant patter, that's what I calls it...

Say up in Harlem at a table for two
There were four of us: me, your big feet and you
From your ankle up, I'll say you sure are sweet
From that down there's just too much feet
Yes your feet's too big
Don't want you cause your feet's too big
Can't use you cause your feet's too big
I really hate you cause your feet's too big
(two scat lines here with "where'd you get 'em?" interjected)

Your girl she likes you, she thinks you're nice
Got what takes to be in paradise
She says she likes your face, she likes your rig
Man oh man them things are too big
Oh your feet's too big
Don't want you cause your feet's too big
Mad at you cause your feet's too big
I hate you cause your feet's too big
Oh your pedal extremities are colossal
To me you look just like a fossil
You got me walkin', talkin', and squawkin'
Cause your feet's too big

(spoken at end of song:)
Yo, your pedal extremities really are obnoxious...

Hope that helps.
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: John Nolan
Date: 16 Oct 97 - 08:58 PM

Joe, I don't think that's "obnoxious," it's a sort of Brooklyn accent "enoimous."

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: Scott Swinney
Date: 16 Oct 97 - 09:55 PM

You can get a really fine version of this song on the soundtrack of "Ain't Misbehavin". It was a broadway production around 1979 (I think) that did a superb job of putting many of Fats Waller's best songs together. It was also available on video, so I'm sure you can find it somewhere. I used to have a cassette of it. I'm not sure if it ever came out on CD. You'll enjoy it...they perform it with all the humor it deserves.

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: Wolfgang
Date: 20 Oct 97 - 07:14 AM

Thanks all for helping; the version Joe has found is somewhat close to the one I heard (from a folkgroup). A good start to do the rest of the work myself.

Thanks again Wolfgang

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: Joe Offer
Date: 21 Oct 97 - 03:10 AM

Waitaminit!!! Did somebody say there's a Beatles recording of this song? This I gotta hear. On what album?
-Joe Offer-

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: Wolfgang
Date: 21 Oct 97 - 05:02 AM

Joe, you did a search job for me, so I do one for you: As I know now, the Beatles did it way back in 1962 in Hamburg, Germany. More information is here.

The version you found for me was not so close as I had hoped (I know it from the a cappella group Wild Flowers). One of four verses and the chorus was close enough for me, but they had three totally different verses which still beat me. So if anyone knows another verse I'd be grateful.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From:
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 06:31 PM

It was also done by the ink spots with the first verse above as last verse but totally different lyrics apart from that. and its fab. just great. sorry no time to transcribe lyrics.

Subject: RE: REQ: Your feets too big
From: wysiwyg
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 07:24 PM

Heard a number of folkies perform it in a set of mixed-genre old stuff. Lots of improvising on verses, either on the spot of in having created their own version. I think it's as if they are paying homage to Fats and sharing back what they think he might have liked-- jamming in their heads, back in time. No one "right" version. Like MJH had some interesting approaches to some of his own material-- tending to be done a little differently each time. Those creative types play hell with documenting what REALLY happened, eh? :~)

~Susan

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Feet's Too Big
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 08:17 PM

You can hear Fats Waller's recording of YOUR FEET'S TOO BIG at The Red Hot Jazz Archive. It says it was recorded March 20, 1941, and it was written by Ada Benson and Fred Fisher.

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Feet's Too Big
From: Arkie
Date: 13 Dec 04 - 09:01 PM

Don't know this one but I have access to "Don't Let Your Big Mouth Take You Where Your Feet Can't Walk You Out".

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Feet's Too Big
From: GUEST
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 02:54 AM

Jim Lloyd does a fine version of this on his CD "Jim Lloyd and Friends." If you haven't heard Jim play and don't know the bunch of brilliant old-time musicians that he plays with (Jimmie Costa, Wayne Henderson, John Hollandsworth), you ought to grab a copy. Camsco has a couple or they did when I gave Dave a couple in October.

Biglappy

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Feet's Too Big
From: Splott Man
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 03:55 AM

There are more verses in the Fats Waller Song Book which I'll dig out.

Splott man

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Feet's Too Big
From: Cool Beans
Date: 14 Dec 04 - 10:49 AM

Fats Waller definitely says "obnoxious." And he concludes with the immortal words, "One never knows, do one?"

Subject: RE: Lyr Req: Your Feet's Too Big
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 28 Apr 08 - 07:04 PM

You can see and hear Fats Waller performing YOUR FEET'S TOO BIG at YouTube: Click to play.