In Sixty-Four Bars

I live in Washington, DC where, for many years, the local public radio station WAMU has dedicated a few hours every Sunday night to a program called The Big Broadcast which features "old time" radio shows.  While the first few hours feature old radio dramas like Johnny Dollar, Dragnet, and Gunsmoke, the later hours usually include some excruciatingly unfunny old comedy programs like Jack Benny, Fibber McGee & Our Miss Brooks (which is particularly painful as Eve Arden was such an amazing actress).

Anyway, on a recent broadcast they featured an old episode of the Jack Benny Show.  It was recorded at an Army base in Arizona and there were jokes about tans and desert heat.  Then the band and the show's resident singer (whose name I didn't catch) began to sing a tune I later learned was called "Conchita Marquita Lolita Pepita Rosita Juanita Lopez." 

I've never heard this one but it certainly makes for an interesting piece of  Pop Latino history.  I'm not sure how popular the song was at the time but it certainly was successful enough to be recorded by a number of very well known performers (more on that later).

This novelty song was written by the iconic songwriter Jule Styne and the lyricist Herbert Magidsen (who won the first Oscar for Best Original Song in 1934 for the "The Continental").  

"Conchita Marquita Lolita Pepita Rosita Juanita Lopez"'s gimmick is right there in the title:  Conchita's rather long Spanish name.  (One imagines that Conchita at some point, like many Latinas -- my mother included-- had to shorten her name to the American three-name practice). But what's striking is that this song tells a pretty straight-forward story of a cross-cultural love affair: the tale of an "Irish lad" serving in the Army along the Mexican border who falls in love with the "Rose of Juarez."   Mutual love ensues and they soon find themselves living in Hoboken, New Jersey with an ever expanding brood of children with Spanish and Irish names.

The versions I've heard online seem to all trade equally in both Mexican and Irish linguistic and musical stereotypes (and New Jersey stereotypes in the Bing Crosby version above).  But aside from Conchita's long name and the "ethnic" names of their children, the song is very matter-of-fact.  This was certainly born out in the Jack Benny live broadcast where I first discovered the song.  After the band and crooner finished, the crowd erupted in cheers.  And that was it. There were no comments or patter about the song's themes (and the Jack Benny show was nothing if filled with groan-worthy patter).

The Glenn Miller  version features vocals by Tex Beineke and the Modernaires in a pretty swingin' and broguing version of the song.  I was also able to find a version by Dinah Shore that's worth a listen.