The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #173846 Message #4216215
Posted By: and e
29-Jan-25 - 03:02 PM
Thread Name: Origins: The Lady Red, Tune: The Streets of Cairo
Subject: RE: Origins: The Lady Red, Tune: The Streets of Cairo
C. To avoid confusion, it should be noted that another satirical college songs exists, also entitled "The Lady in Red (II)." Sometimes "The Lady in Bed," given here as sung by a college girl, age twenty, in Ithica, New York, 1946:
Oh! the lady in red, makes her living in bed, For fifteen cents she does it nice, For twenty-five cents she'll do it twice. Now here I stand with a nickel in my hand-- Brother, can, you, spare, a, dime?-- Or twenty cents!?
Reuss, p. 291, mentions this song in a footnote but does not quote it. The Indiana University Folklore Archive held ten texts of this in 1963, all but one collected from girls; the one from Miss Zedonna Horr, East Lansing, Michigan, 1947, being the closest to the Ithaca text above, and the only other one having the final tag.
1992. Unprintable Ozark Folksongs and Folklore., p.246-247.