A 1924 popular song.
Words and music by Roy Turk and Abner Silver.
The sheet music:
Accompaniment by James Pitt-Payne:
Lyrics
- My granddad and Mammy
Loved to hear a cello’s plaintive moan
Father was an organist
How he ate up Chopin and Liszt
I guess I am just the music black sheep of my family
Classics don’t mean a thing at all
Give me a hot band in a hall
Chorus
A wicked saxophone could make me roam
From home to hear it blow
The blues have got me
The blues have got me
I don’t know what it has
But what it has it has me on the go
The blues have got me
The blues have got me
Classics are great
For the highbrows who crave for it
It’s not in my line
“Jazz up to date”
Now I’ll state I’m a slave to it
The kind that would make a horse
Throw away his hay, hey
A baby grand is grand
But grander is a low down instrument
A trombone chills me
A banjo kills me
And when a cornet goes “Oowah”
I’m in for the night! good night
I like my music hot
I ain’t pretendin’ maybe
I’m what you call a syncopatriotic Baby
I’m off my nut about the strut
The blues have got me now
- I’ll admit there’s music
In an old time master’s symphony
But we’ve all got sep’rate taste
And to me it’s simply a waste
If they’d only syncopate a little
It would do for me
But in ev’rything they wrote
There ain’t a syncopated note
Sung here by Vancha March: