Song of the Day 7/6: Ella Fitzgerald, “Too Darn Hot”

Just walking to the mailbox the past couple of days brought to mind this little rhyme I think I first heard in junior high school:

When the weather’s hot and sticky
That’s no time for dunkin’ dickie
When the frost is on the pumpkin
That’s the time for dickie dunkin’

I always liked that bit of bawdy verse, not so much for its ribaldry but because both Duncan Dickey and Dickie Duncan sound like guys who might have played football for Texas A&M back in the ’60s. Air conditioning was uncommon then, so the folk wisdom embodied in the doggerel was widespread. Even Cole Porter addressed it in this song from his 1948 musical “Kiss Me, Kate.”

In the stage play, the song opens Act II and is sung by male actors, but its not integral to the plot, so in the 1953 film it was inserted earlier and sung by Ann Miller. The producers also bowdlerized the lyrics – she sings “according to the latest report” instead of the original “Kinsey report,” the first of which came out the year Porter wrote the song.

The tune got its definitive recording in 1956, when Ella Fitzgerald sang it backed by Buddy Bregman’s orchestra on her LP “Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook.”