She Wears Red Feathers

DESCRIPTION: Chorus: "She wears red feathers and a hula-hula skirt ... lives on fresh coconuts and fish ... love in her heart for me." The singer says, "I work in a London bank, respectable position." But when the "native girl" smiles at him, he can't resist
AUTHOR: Bob Merrill (source: Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame; see also Wikipedia entry "She Wears Red Feathers")
EARLIEST DATE: 1952 (copyright)
KEYWORDS: clothes derivative playparty food love wedding
FOUND IN: Britain(England(North,West),Scotland(Bord))
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame 124, "She Wears Red Feathers" (1 text, 1 tune)
Roud #18994
RECORDINGS:
Dana Borusky, "She Wears Red Feathers and a Hula Hula Skirt" (Piotr-Archive #576, recorded 05/05/2023)
Dale Borusky, "She Wore Red Feathers and a Hula Hula Skirt" (Fragment: Piotr-Archive #563, recorded 04/18/2023)

NOTES [217 words]: Opie/Opie-TheSingingGame: "The origin of even the most modern-sounding singing game can rarely be discovered to enable one to see the changes wrought by oral tradition. 'She Wears Red Feathers' was written and composed by Bob Merrill in 1952 (copyright Oxford Music Corporation, New York), but as the chorus possesses all the qualifications for a successful children's dance-song, and as the song has been heard frequently on the radio and published in song albums, changes over the past thirty years have been few." (you can find the lyrics to the Guy Mitchell March 1953 hit at -- for example -- "Gary and Mary's U.K. No 1 Lyrics Site"). - BS
Personally, I find the level of colonial ignorance in the text to be appalling. The girl is from Mandalay, which is in Myanmar (Burma), but not on the ocean, so she can hardly live on fish from the sea (and even coconut palms are listed as introduced). Yet she wears a "huly-huly" skirt, which is Polynesian. Oy.
The very fact that two of the Borusky siblings sang this, and learned it from their grandmother, is interesting, because it shows that Pearl Jacobs Borusky, although a great source for old songs, also sang current pop songs.
Bob Merrill also wrote "How Much Is that Doggie in the Window?"; he is reported to have committed suicide in 1988. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.7
File: OpGa124

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