Oh By Jingo!

See also: By Jingo.

sheet music cover with picture of Charlotte Greenwood (1919)

"Oh By Jingo!" is a 1919 novelty song by Albert Von Tilzer with lyrics by Lew Brown. The song was featured in the Broadway show "Linger Longer Letty", and became one of the biggest Tin Pan Alley hits of the post-World War I era.

While the song lyrics say it is set in "the land of San Domingo", no geographic nor anthropological accuracy is found nor intended in the silly lyrics, set in a generic "exotic" and "primitive" location. The song was much imitated over the next decade.

In the era of its initial popularity, phonograph records of the number were recorded by such popular artists of the era as The All Star Trio, The American Quartet, Nora Bayes, Frank Crumit, Billy Murray, The Premier Quartette, Esther Walker, and Margaret Young.

Later recorded revivals of the number include those by Chet Atkins, Bo Grumpus, Eddie Condon, Stéphane Grappelli, Clancy Hayes, Keith Ingham, Spike Jones, Danny Kaye, Jeannie Carson, Lu Watters, and The Reverend Horton Heat.

It is performed by Betty Hutton in the film Incendiary Blonde. It is sung in the I Love Lucy TV show episode #102, "Mertz and Kurtz", and by Hugh Laurie in P.G. Wodehouse's Jeeves and Wooster.

Lyrics

Verse

In the land of San Domingo

Lived a girl called Oh By Jingo

(Ta da, ya da da da da da, um-pa, umpa um-pa um-pa)

From the fields and from the marshes

Came the young and oh by goshes

(Ta da, ya da da da da da, um-pa, umpa um-pa um-pa)

They all spoke with a different lingo

But they all loved Oh By Jingo

and every night, they sang in the pale moonlight

Chorus

Oh by gee by gosh by gum by jove

Oh By Jingo won't you hear our love

We will build for you a hut

You will be our favourite nut

We will have a lot of little Oh By Gollies

And we'll put them in the follies

By Jingo said "By gosh by gee

By Jiminy, please don't bother me"

So they all went away singing

Oh by gee by gosh by gum by jove By Jingo

By gee, you're the only girl for me.

Reference

• Who Wrote that Song? Dick Jacobs & Harriet Jacobs, published by Writer's Digest Books, 1993