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Yes, We have no bananas

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In the United States, copyrights pass into the public domain 95 years after creation. But this is keyed not to the date of the creation of the work: it is keyed to the following New Year.

So when the ball dropped this year, a lot of creative stuff from 1923 entered the public domain (including the novel Bambi). You have to be careful about Bambi, of course, because the armada of lawyers working for Disney are notoriously aggressive about claiming that any use of the underlying work is actually a violation  of their earlier use of that same work. 

Anyway, I think it is now safe for me to use in this blog post in full, without paying anyone, the full lyrics of the most famous song about bananas ever written, a 1923 classic.

(And yes, I feel some non-mandatory gratitude to Frank Silver, who wrote these words, and to Irving Cohn, who set them to the tune surely now running through your head. A toast to them!)

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
"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."
Business got so good for him that he wrote home today,
"Send me Pete and Nick and Jim; I need help right away."
When he got them in the store, there was fun, you bet.
Someone asked for "sparrow grass" and then the whole quartet
All answered
"Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a…


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