The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #73052 Message #1265080
Posted By: Jim Dixon
06-Sep-04 - 01:34 AM
Thread Name: Lyr Add: Twelfth Street Rag
Subject: Lyr Add: 12TH STREET RAG (J S Sumner, E L Bowman)
Thanks, John of Brisbane, for posting those lyrics, but I'm afraid all those extra hyphens will make them impossible to find with our search engine, so I've reformatted the lyrics without them.
12TH STREET RAG Words, James S. Sumner. Music, Euday L. Bowman. 1919.
1. In a certain city, where the girls are cute and pretty, They have a raggy, jazzy, jazz-time tune. When you hear that syncopated jazz-created melody, You could dance all morning night and noon. When the slide trombone and moaning saxophone begin to play, It will make you sad; 'twill make you glad. Oh boy! What joy! Burn my clothes for I'm in heaven. Wish I had a million women. Solomon in all his glory could have told another story, Were he but living here today. With his thousand wives or more, a jazz band on some Egypt shore, He could dance the night and day away. I will tell you how they dance that tantalizing 12th Street Rag.
CHORUS: First you slide and then you glide, then shimmy for a while. To the left, then to the right, "Lame Duck" "Get Over, Sal." Watch your step, then pirouette, fox trot, then squeeze your pal. Over you comes stealing such a funny feeling Till you feel your senses reeling, Tantalizing, hypnotizing, mesmerizing strain, I can't get enough of it. Please play it o'er again. I could dance forever to this refrain, To that 12th Street, oh you 12th Street Rag.
2. Jazz time music is the rage. This is a syncopated age. Ev'rybody loves a jazz-time tune. For the music captivating sets your heart a-palpitating. You just can't make your feet behave. Ancient youths of sixty-four do steps they never did before. Father time is mad. No one grows old. Oh boy! What joy! Put your loving arms around me. Say, Babe, ain't you glad you found me? Cleopatra on the Nile could vamp right in the latest style, If she'd only known this ragtime tune. Old king Cole, a merry soul, called for his pipe and then his bowl, And the first jazz band, his fiddlers three. Play, oh play me while I dance that tantalizing 12th Street Rag.