"Oh By Jingo!" is a 1919

1919 in music

-Events:*July 22 - The Ballets Russes gives the world premiere of Manuel de Falla's ballet El sombrero de tres picos in London.*August - Josef Matthias Hauer devises his own twelve-tone technique of composition....

 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...

 by 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"....

 with lyrics by Lew Brown

Lew Brown

Lew Brown was a lyricist for popular songs in the United States.Brown was born as Louis Brownstein in Odessa, Russian Empire...

.
The song was featured in the Broadway

Broadway theatre

Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...

 show "Linger Longer Letty", and became one of the biggest 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...

 hits of the post-World War I era.

While the song lyrics say it is set in "the land of San Domingo", no geographic nor anthropological accuracy is found nor intended in the silly lyrics, set in a generic "exotic" and "primitive" location. The song was much imitated over the next decade.

In the era of its initial popularity, phonograph records

Gramophone record

A gramophone record, commonly known as a phonograph record , vinyl record , or colloquially, a record, is an analog sound storage medium consisting of a flat disc with an inscribed, modulated spiral groove...

 of the number were recorded by such popular artists of the era as The All Star Trio, The American Quartet

American Quartet (ensemble)

The American Quartet was a quartet of singers that recorded for various companies from 1899 to 1925. The lineup varied over the years, but the most famous lineup recorded for the Victor Talking Machine Company from 1909 to 1913.*John Bieling - first tenor...

, Nora Bayes

Nora Bayes

Nora Bayes was a popular American singer, comedienne and actress of the early 20th century.-Early life and career:...

, Frank Crumit

Frank Crumit

Frank Crumit was an American singer, composer. radio entertainer and vaudeville star. He shared his radio programs with his wife, Julia Sanderson, and the two were sometimes called "the ideal couple of the air."...

, Billy Murray

Billy Murray (singer)

William Thomas "Billy" Murray was one of the most popular singers in the United States in the early decades of the 20th century...

, The Premier Quartette, Esther Walker

Esther Walker

Esther Walker was an American musical comedy performer. She was born Esther Thomas in Pewee Valley, Kentucky. Adopting the stage name of Esther Walker, she appeared on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theatre in a 1919 production of Monte Cristo, Jr., and later that year performed at the 44th Street...

, and Margaret Young

Margaret Young

Margaret Young was a popular singer and comedienne in the United States in the 1920s.-Recording career:...

.

Later recorded revivals of the number include those by 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...

, Bo Grumpus, Eddie Condon

Eddie Condon

Albert Edwin Condon , better known as Eddie Condon, was a jazz banjoist, guitarist, and bandleader. A leading figure in the so-called "Chicago school" of early Dixieland, he also played piano and sang on occasion....

, 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....

, Clancy Hayes

Clancy Hayes

Clarence Leonard Hayes was a jazz vocalist, banjoist and guitarist born November 14, 1908 in Caney, Kansas. He lived in Parsons, Kansas for a short time, and the town is the subject of his song "The Parsons, Kansas Blues": . He worked always as a professional musician, turning up in San Francisco...

, Keith Ingham

Keith Ingham

Keith Ingham is an English jazz pianist, mainly active in swing and Dixieland revival.Ingham's first professional gigs occurred in 1964. He played with Sandy Brown, Bruce Turner, and Wally Fawkes that decade. He played with Bob Wilber and Bud Freeman in 1974, and moved to New York City in 1978...

, Spike Jones

Spike Jones

Mel Blanc, the voice of Bugs Bunny and other Warner Brothers cartoon characters, performed a drunken, hiccuping verse for 1942's "Clink! Clink! Another Drink"...

, Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye

Danny Kaye was a celebrated American actor, singer, dancer, and comedian...

, Jeannie Carson

Jeannie Carson

Jeannie Carson is a retired English-born United States-based comedienne and musical theatre actress...

, Lu Watters

Lu Watters

Lucius "Lu" Watters was a trumpeter and bandleader of the Yerba Buena Jazz Band in the "West Coast revival" of Dixieland music...

, and The Reverend Horton Heat

The Reverend Horton Heat

The Reverend Horton Heat is the stage name of American musician Jim Heath as well as the name of his Dallas, Texas-based psychobilly trio. Heath is a singer, songwriter and guitarist....

.

It is performed by Betty Hutton

Betty Hutton

Betty Hutton was an American stage, film, and television actress, comedienne and singer.-Early life:Hutton was born Elizabeth June Thornburg, daughter of a railroad foreman, Percy E. Thornburg and his wife, the former Mabel Lum . While she was very young, her father abandoned the family for...

 in the film Incendiary Blonde

Incendiary Blonde

Incendiary Blonde is a 1945 American musical drama film of 1920s nightclub star Texas Guinan. Filmed in Technicolor by director George Marshall, it starred actress Betty Hutton in the title role. The music was written by Robert Emmett Dolan...

. It is sung in the I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy

I Love Lucy is an American television sitcom starring Lucille Ball, Desi Arnaz, Vivian Vance, and William Frawley. The black-and-white series originally ran from October 15, 1951, to May 6, 1957, on the Columbia Broadcasting System...

TV show episode #102, "Mertz and Kurtz", and by Hugh Laurie in P.G. Wodehouse's 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....

.

Verse

In the land of San Domingo

Lived a girl called Oh By Jingo

From the fields and from the marshes

Came the young and oh by goshes

They all spoke with a different lingo

But they all loved Oh By Jingo

and every night, they sang in the pale moonlight

Chorus

Oh by gee by gosh by gum by jove

Oh By Jingo won't you hear our love

We will build for you a hut

You will be our favourite nut

We will have a lot of little Oh By Gollies

And we'll put them in the follies

By Jingo said "By gosh by gee

By Jiminy, please don't bother me"

So they all went away singing

Oh by gee by gosh by gum by jove By Jingo

By gee, you're the only girl for me.

Reference

• Who Wrote that Song? Dick Jacobs
  Dick Jacobs
  Dick Jacobs was an American musician, conductor, arranger, orchestrator, music director and an artists-and-repertoire director for several record labels who helped Jackie Wilson, Buddy Holly, Bobby Darin and others form their careers in the late 1950s and early 1960s.-Life and career:He was born...
  
  & Harriet Jacobs, published by Writer's Digest Books, 1993