"Nagasaki" is a jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 song from 1928 by Harry Warren

Harry Warren

Harry Warren was an American composer and lyricist. Warren was the first major American songwriter to write primarily for film. He was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song eleven times and won three Oscars for composing "Lullaby of Broadway", "You'll Never Know" and "On the Atchison,...

 and Mort Dixon

Mort Dixon

-Biography:Born in New York, Dixon began writing songs in the early 1920s, and was active into the 1930s. He achieved success with his first published effort, 1923's "That Old Gang of Mine". His chief composer collaborators were Ray Henderson, Harry Warren, Harry M...

 that became a popular Tin Pan Alley

Tin Pan Alley

Tin Pan Alley is the name given to the collection of New York City music publishers and songwriters who dominated the popular music of the United States in the late 19th century and early 20th century...

 hit. The silly, bawdy lyrics have only the vaguest relation to the Japanese port city of Nagasaki. It was one of a series of US novelty song

Novelty song

A novelty song is a comical or nonsensical song, performed principally for its comical effect. Humorous songs, or those containing humorous elements, are not necessarily novelty songs. The term arose in Tin Pan Alley to describe one of the major divisions of popular music. The other two divisions...

s set in "exotic" locations popular in the era starting with Albert Von Tilzer

Albert Von Tilzer

Albert Von Tilzer was an American songwriter, the younger brother of fellow songwriter Harry Von Tilzer. He wrote the music to many hit songs, including, most notably, "Take Me Out To The Ball Game"....

's 1919 hit "Oh By Jingo!

Oh By Jingo!

"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....

"; "Nagasaki" even makes reference to the genre's prototype in the lyrics.

"Nagasaki" was covered by many big band jazz groups of the late 1920s through the 1940s, and the music remains to this day a popular base for jazz improvisations. The song was most famously covered by the Benny Goodman Quartet

Benny Goodman

Benjamin David “Benny” Goodman was an American jazz and swing musician, clarinetist and bandleader; widely known as the "King of Swing".In the mid-1930s, Benny Goodman led one of the most popular musical groups in America...

. Others who performed the song include Fats Waller

Fats Waller

Fats Waller , born Thomas Wright Waller, was a jazz pianist, organist, composer, singer, and comedic entertainer...

, Fletcher Henderson

Fletcher Henderson

James Fletcher Hamilton Henderson, Jr. was an American pianist, bandleader, arranger and composer, important in the development of big band jazz and swing music. His was one of the most prolific black orchestras and his influence was vast...

, Cab Calloway

Cab Calloway

Cabell "Cab" Calloway III was an American jazz singer and bandleader. He was strongly associated with the Cotton Club in Harlem, New York City where he was a regular performer....

, Don Redman

Don Redman

Donald Matthew Redman was an American jazz musician, arranger, bandleader and composer.Redman was announced as a member of the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame on May 6, 2009....

, Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer who invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture...

, Adolph Robinson, Stéphane Grappelli

Stéphane Grappelli

Stéphane Grappelli was a French jazz violinist who founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France with guitarist Django Reinhardt in 1934. It was one of the first all-string jazz bands....

, and Chet Atkins

Chet Atkins

Chester Burton Atkins , known as Chet Atkins, was an American guitarist and record producer who, along with Owen Bradley, created the smoother country music style known as the Nashville sound, which expanded country's appeal to adult pop music fans as well.Atkins's picking style, inspired by Merle...

.

Writing for Time

Time (magazine)

Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...

magazine, Richard Corliss

Richard Corliss

Richard Nelson Corliss is a writer for Time magazine who focuses on movies, with the occasional article on music or sports. Corliss is the former editor-in-chief of Film Comment...

 described "Nagasaki" as "something like the definitive gotta-get-up-and-do-the-Charleston song, with Warren's effervescent syncopation dragging the folks onto the dance floor and Mort Dixon's lyric goading them into a singalong: 'Hot ginger and dynamite / There's nothing but that at night / Back in Nagasaki where the fellas chew tobaccy / And the women wicky-wacky-woo'."

The song appears in numerous film soundtracks. It was a feature in Major Bowes' "Harmony Broadcast". A few of the numerous usages in animated cartoon

Animated cartoon

An animated cartoon is a short, hand-drawn film for the cinema, television or computer screen, featuring some kind of story or plot...

s include in Friz Freleng

Friz Freleng

Isadore "Friz" Freleng was an animator, cartoonist, director, and producer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies series of cartoons from Warner Bros....

's 1937 Merrie Melodies

Merrie Melodies

Merrie Melodies is the name of a series of animated cartoons distributed by Warner Bros. Pictures between 1931 and 1969.Originally produced by Harman-Ising Pictures, Merrie Melodies were produced by Leon Schlesinger Productions from 1933 to 1944. Schlesinger sold his studio to Warner Bros. in 1944,...

 Clean Pastures

Clean Pastures

Clean Pastures is a Merrie Melodies animated cartoon directed by I. Freleng, produced by Leon Schlesinger, and released to theatres on May 22, 1937 by Warner Bros. and Vitaphone. The cartoon is a parody of Warner Bros.' 1936 film, The Green Pastures...

animated cartoon and in his "products come to life" short, September in the Rain. The clip was reused in Bob Clampett

Bob Clampett

Robert Emerson "Bob" Clampett was an American animator, producer, director, and puppeteer best known for his work on the Looney Tunes animated series from Warner Bros., and the television shows Time for Beany and Beany and Cecil...

's 1943 Warner Brothers cartoon, Tin Pan Alley Cats

Tin Pan Alley Cats

Tin Pan Alley Cats is a 1943 animated short subject, directed by Bob Clampett for Leon Schlesinger Productions as part of Warner Bros.' Merrie Melodies series...

. The song was featured in the Warner Brothers movie My Dream Is Yours

My Dream Is Yours

My Dream Is Yours is a 1949 musical romantic comedy film starring Doris Day, Jack Carson and Lee Bowman.The film is perhaps best remembered today for an extended dream sequence combining animation and live action which featured a cameo appearance by Bugs Bunny, dancing with Jack Carson and Doris...

(1949) sung by Doris Day

Doris Day

Doris Day is an American actress, singer and, since her retirement from show business, an animal rights activist. With an entertainment career that spanned through almost 50 years, Day started her career as a big band singer in 1939, but only began to be noticed after her first hit recording,...

. The song was also played by Hugh Laurie

Hugh Laurie

James Hugh Calum Laurie, OBE , better known as Hugh Laurie , is an English actor, voice artist, comedian, writer, musician, recording artist, and director...

 in the British comedy series Jeeves and Wooster

Jeeves and Wooster

-External links:*—An episode guide to the series, including information about which episodes were adapted from which Wodehouse stories.*—Episode guides, screenshots and quotes from the four series....

and was recorded by Laurie for the accompanying soundtrack CD. It was the finale for the independent feature film Man of the Century

Man of the Century

Man of the Century is a 1999 comedy film directed by Adam Abraham and written by Abraham and Gibson Frazier. The film stars Frazier, Cara Buono, Susan Egan, Dwight Ewell and Anthony Rapp. It is a farce about the attitudes, values, and slang displayed in the popular culture of the 1920s . Man of...

.