Whistle While You Work, Jenny Made a Shirt

DESCRIPTION: Jump-rope rhyme. "Whistle while you work, Jenny made a shirt, Jessie wore it, Benny tore it, Mary made it worse!"
AUTHOR: unknown (original "Whistle While You Work" tune by Frank Churchill with lyrics by Larry Morey, 1937, "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs")
EARLIEST DATE: 1965 (Ritchie, according to Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes)
KEYWORDS: work clothes jumprope
FOUND IN: Britain(Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Abrahams-JumpRopeRhymes, #605, "Whistle while you work" (1 text)
Roud #19993
CROSS-REFERENCES:
cf. "Whistle While You Work (World War II version)" (tune)
NOTES [110 words]: This very likely is not derived directly from the pop song but from the World War II version, one version of which opens "Whistle while you work, Mussolini made a shirt...." Roud lumps them. But this has become something different, I think.
Edward Foote Gardner, Popular Songs of the Twentieth Century: Volume I -- Chart Detail & Encyclopedia 1900-1949, Paragon House, 2000, p. 439, estimates that the original "Whistle While You Work," from the movie "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," was the eleventh most popular song in America in 1938, peaking at #2 in March 1938 (#1 for the year being Larry Clinton's "My Reverie," based on a theme by Debussy). - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: AJRR605

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