Arnold Zwicky's Blog

Today’s Zippy, with another burlesque:

This time on “Frankie and Johnny”, with the story much compressed.

Here’s a mid-length version of the song’s lyrics (in one of its many variants; the song has been recorded at least 256 times since the early 20th century):

Frankie and Johnny were lovers
Oh lordy, how they could love
Swore to be true to each other
Just as true as the stars above
He was her man, but he done her wrong

… Then Frankie went home in a hurry
She didn’t go there for fun
Frankie went home to get a-hold
Of Johnny’s shooting gun
He was her man, but he done her wrong

Frankie peeked over the transom
And there to her surprise
She saw her lovin-man Johnny
With that high-browed Nellie Bly
He was her man, and he was doing her wrong

Then Frankie pulled back her kimono
And she pulled out a small .44
And root-e-toot-toot three times she shot
Right through that hardwood door
He was her man, but he done her wrong

The pairings Koko / Bimbo and Maggie / Barney are (of course) not random. They’re from the comics — Koko and Bimbo from the Betty Boop Talkartoons, Maggie Simpson and Barney Gumble from the tv series The Simpsons (or, possibly, Maggie, Jiggs’s wife in Bringing Up Father, together with Barney Google from Barney Google and Snuffy Smith).

This entry was posted on March 27, 2012 at 8:52 am and is filed under Language play, Linguistics in the comics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.