Small Home Gazette, Winter 2018
Yes! We Have No Bananas
Or How to Write a Best-Selling Song
In 1923, Frank Silver and Irving Cohn set out to write a best-selling song. And they succeeded, using a technique that had been, and continues to be, successful for many songwriters. They cobbled it together from bits and pieces of other people’s music. “Yes! We Have No Bananas” was published in July 1923 and became a major hit (placing No. 1 for five weeks).
Silver based the lyrics on the memorable speech pattern of a Greek who owned a corner fruit stand. The man could NOT say “No, I do not have any…” Instead he said “Yes, we have no…” The simple but catchy and arresting lyrics caught on.
They crafted the tune by finding musical phrases from other compositions that fit the lyrics—
- The opening phrase came from the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s oratorio Messiah.
- Next, they used the opening phrase of “Bring Back My Bonnie to Me,” followed by the opening phrase from Balfe’s popular 19th century aria from The Bohemian Girl—“I Dreamt I Dwelt in Marble Halls.”
- The second to last musical phrase came from “Aunt Dinah’s Quilting Party.”
- So far, every tidbit, with the possible exception of Balfe’s music, was fair game, being traditional music in the public domain. The last musical phrase of the chorus could have gotten them in trouble. They borrowed from Cole Porter’s recent—and first—hit song, “Old Fashioned Garden” (1919). But copyright laws were lax in their day.
- To finish the chorus (and to sear the song into the listeners’ heads), the team brought back the musical phrases from “Hallelujah Chorus” and “Bring Back My Bonnie to Me.”
That’s just bananas!
Lyrics
Yes! We Have No Bananas
(first verse)
There’s a fruit store on our street
It’s run by a Greek.
And he keeps good things to eat
But you should hear him speak!
When you ask him anything, he never answers “no.”
He just “yes”es you to death, and as he takes your dough
He tells you
(chorus)
“Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today.
We’ve string beans, and onions
Cabbageses, and scallions,
And all sorts of fruit and say
We have an old fashioned to-mah-to
A Long Island po-tah-to
But yes, we have no bananas.
We have no bananas today.”
For the full lyrics, listen to this recording of singer and radio star Billy Jones from 1923.
Randy Rowoldt is a long-time Bungalow Club member. In addition to working in the costume department at the Childrens’ Theatre Company, he coaches singers of all stripes. Randy started collecting music in his early teens, and his sheet music collection now numbers in the thousands.
