Artist: Josh White
Author: Lou Singer/Hy Zaret
Label: Asch
Year: 1944

Bluesman with folk appeal on album Josh White Sings Easy. Sang for the US Office Of War Information. Also in film The Crimson Canary. Song based on a poem The Lone Fish Ball, written by George Martin Lane, Latin teacher at Harvard Univ. in 1855. Two of his Harvard fellows, poet James Russell Lowell and folk archivist Francis Child, transformed it into a burlesque Italian opera Il Pescebello. Hy Zaret (see also: Unchained Melody) and Lou Singer then heard a fragment of the fish ball song and were immediately inspired. They even kept some of the original lyrics.

Might as well illustrate the restaurant scene in Vittorio De Sica's Ladri Di Biciclette ('48). Wait a minute! That scene was of course inspired by this four year older song!