Here are the lyrics I learned (spelled phonetically and chanted in a sing-song style): I could find nothing else about this song online! I hope someone else can fill in more information here. I learned slightly different lyrics than you and others who have posted here, though there are clearly similarities. To this day, I wonder about the potential African language origin of this song. White children could only learn it by converting the lyrics into something that emulated "English." The song thereafter became memorable, but nonsensical. Black women would teach this "patty cake" game song (sometimes chanted to jumping rope) to the white children in their care however, it was originally sung in an African language (I do not recall which one). At the time, we had a black teacher and folk musician who told us that these lyrics dated back to the pre-Civil War South. Hello! It is now 17 August 2022 however, I just found your old blog post after searching on clearly related lyrics for a "nonsense" song I was also taught in, I think, 2nd grade? I am now 67, so clearly this odd sing-song has stuck with me for decades. I'm almost certain that I remember correctly the chorus as we were taught it (spelling excepted), and that in some dark school district warehouse there remain stacks of moldy school song books containing "my" Kemo Kimo.Īh, would but that I could get my hands on one! With a hi, and a ho, and a in come Sally, singing Its chorus was somewhat closer to the one that I recall than was Nat King Cole's. The "2nd South Carolina String Band" had a mildly racist ("white folks" and "darkies") version, with totally different verse lyrics. Ma-hi, ma-ho, ma-rump-sticka-pumpernickle But his recording had totally different lyrics for the verses, and largely different lyrics for the chorus. Nat King Cole recorded a version of Kemo Kimo, called "The Magic Song," in 1947. I've tried to find the verse that I've provided you, but have been unsuccessful. It took an adult mind to appreciate that sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, and that sometimes living up the river simply means living up the river. A "jump" must be a thug term for a robbery or a burglary.īut that was my hypothesis, not my firm conclusion. I knew from my careful and obsessive reading of Batman comics that "up the river" meant only one thing - "in prison." (Only later did I learn that this was New York slang for Sing Sing, a prison that was literally up the Hudson River.) But if the singer's true love was in prison, why would a "few more jumps" reunite the star-crossed lovers? Well, my 12-year-old brain concluded, the only way you get to prison is to commit a crime. What puzzled me, as a kid, about the song was not the nonsense chorus (reproduced here strictly phonetically I have no idea how it was spelled in our song book) but that one verse. Mi-hee, mi-hai, mi-hum drum penny winkle, Do I remember the lyrics correctly? I found myself singing it in the shower this morning, and this is how I remember one of the verses and the chorus: In sixth grade chorus, we sang a nonsense song - which I now discover is classified as bluegrass - which both entertained me and puzzled me. That "botherment" applies to songs, as well. Did it really happen? And if so, did it happen as I remember? But it bothers me to half-remember events from my childhood, with no assurance that I've pierced the fog of time correctly.
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