The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #123101   Message #2706652
Posted By: Azizi
23-Aug-09 - 12:08 PM
Thread Name: Lyr Req: We Wear Our Hair in Curls
Subject: RE: We Wear Our Hair In Curls
I failed to mention that the tune for "We Are The Catty Girls" was the song "Ta-ra-ra Boom-de-ay".

That Pittsburgh examples differs from the other versions that I've read to date. All of those versions mention the girl's city or group and not what the girls considered to be an admirable attribute.

I think that the "Catty" word that Barbara Ray remembers using in the first line of that version means "sassy" and "tough" and not "vicious" or "spiteful". It's possible that this more positive image of being "catty" was influenced by the comic character "Cat woman" from the Batman comic book series. But I'm really not sure how whether these girls would have known about that comic book character. (Note that the Batman television series which sometimes featured Catwoman didn't begin to air until the mid 1960s.)
I'll have to ask Barbara about this.

**

By far the most popular version of this rhyme is the one which was chanted during the Stonewall Riots. I'll post that example next.