Gordon's papers in the Library of Congress include the letter from real estate speculator Charles Bell Emerson of Los Gatos, Calif., in 1925 explaining that he'd learned the song from the cook ("an unmistakable 'mick'") in a makeshift "bo" (hobo) camp somewhere out West. Like most such informants, Emerson didn't bother to say just where or when.) The title the cook gave it was "The Hoor's Lamint and Chorust" (sic).

Emerson noted that the cook claimed to have once been an assistant chef at a posh NYC hotel, but he had lost his job through chronic alcoholism.