The Alley Cats - Puddin' N' Tain (1963 Doo Wop sound file, song lyrics, and rhyme examples)

PJDooWop, Sep 24, 2009

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Edited by Azizi Powell 

This  pancocojams series showcases a sound file of The Alley Cat's 1960s Do Wop record "Puddin Tane".

Information about The Alley Cats is included in this post along with the lyrics to that song. 

The Addendum to this post provides two excerpts from a 2014 pancocojams post entitled "Early Examples Of The Children's Rhyme "What's Your Name Puddin Tane" ". One of those excerpts provides examples of that rhyme. Another excerpt quotes a folklorist who differentiates the words "puddin tame" (or variant spellings of "tame") with the word "poontang" which has a sexual meaning.

The content of this post is presented for folkloric and cultural purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to The Alley Cats for their music, and thanks to the publisher of that sound file on YouTube. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post.

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INFORMATION ABOUT THE ALLEY CATS 
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Alley_Cats_(1960s_group)

"The Alley Cats were a musical group active in 1960s.

Brice Coefield and Sheridan Spencer belonged to a group named "The Untouchables" who had released unsuccessful singles for the Madison and Liberty labels.[1] At the end of 1962, these two joined with James Barker and Gary Pipkin, who had been with The Robins, and lead singer Bobby Sheen, who was coming off success with Bob B. Soxx & the Blue Jeans,[1] to form The Alley Cats.

[…]

Their first record was their most popular: "Puddin N' Tain", a song based upon a children's playground chant,[2] entered the charts January 1963 and achieved a chart position of 43 in the United States when released on Philles Records 45rpm #108.[5]"...
-snip-
There are a number of music groups with the name "The Alley Cats". The music group that is showcased in this post was an African American 1960s Doo Wop group.

Here's information about Doo Wop music from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doo-wop
"Doo-wop (also spelled doowop and doo wop) is a genre of rhythm and blues music that originated among African-American youth in the 1940s,[1] mainly in the large cities of the United States, including New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Baltimore, Newark, Detroit, and Washington, DC.[2][3] It features vocal group harmony that carries an engaging melodic line to a simple beat with little or no instrumentation. Lyrics are simple, usually about love, sung by a lead vocal over background vocals, and often featuring, in the bridge, a melodramatically heartfelt recitative addressed to the beloved. Harmonic singing of nonsense syllables (such as “doo-wop”) is a common characteristic of these songs.[4] Gaining popularity in the 1950s, doo-wop was "artistically and commercially viable" until the early 1960s, but continued to influence performers in other genres.[5]"....

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LYRIC: PUDDIN' N TAIN

(written by Brice Coefield, Alonzo Willis & Gary Pipkin; performed by The Alley Cats)

Puddin' n' tain, puddin' n' tain
Ask me again I'll tell you the same
Puddin' n' tain, puddin' n' tain
Ask me again I'll tell you the same
Puddin' n' tain, puddin' n' tain
Ask me again I'll tell you the same

You won't believe this story
While I was walking one bright and sunny day
I met a little sweet, sweet girl
Who chanced to walk my way
I asked her, her name
Here's what she said to me

Puddin' n' tain, puddin' n' tain
Ask me again I'll tell you the same

Oh, golly gee
If she would only belong to me
And I would tellw the world
The whole wide world
That I'm in love with

Puddin' n' tain, puddin' n' tain
Ask me again I'll tell you the same

Oh well now she's so pretty she's so fine
She's so sweet just my kind
All because she's pretty
All because she's fine
I want this girl to be mine

Now we're going steady
And I've found out her real name is Betty
I'll tell the world the whole wide world
That I'm in love with

Puddin' n' tain, puddin' n' tain
Ask me again I'll tell you the same

Now we're going steady
And I've found out her real name is Betty
And I'll tell the world the whole wide world
That I'm in love with

Puddin' n' tain, puddin' n' tain
Ask me again I'll tell you the same
(repeat)

Source: https://genius.com/The-alley-cats-puddin-n-tain-lyrics

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ADDENDUM: EXCERPTS FROM 2014 PANCOCOJAMS POST ABOUT THE HISTORY OF AND EARLY EXAMPLES OF THE RHYME "PUDDIN TANE"
From http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2014/11/early-examples-of-childrens-rhyme-whats.html for the pancocojams post entitled . Note: That pancocojams post also has a number of comments about and examples of the Puddin Tane rhyme.

These are exact quotes from that 2014 post.

The first excerpt provides some examples of that rhyme and the second excerpt quotes a quote a folklorist differentiates between the words "puddin tame" and its variant spellings and the word "poontang" which has a sexual meaning. 

Excerpt #1
From Mudcat: Puddin Tane, posted by Azizi, September 1, 2007
https://mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=104417 Folklore: Puddin Tane & Other Rhyming Sayings
..."The following examples are from this resource: Western Folklore, Vol. 13, No. 2/3 (1954), pp. 190-198 - "Children's Taunts, Teases, and Disrespectful Sayings from Southern California," by Ray B. Browne.

[Note: the numbers ascribed to these examples by the article's author]
27a.
What's your name?
Pudd'n Tame.
Ask me again
And I'll tell you the same.

27b.
What's your name?
Pudd'n Tame.
Where do you live?
Down the lane.
Ask me again
And I'll tell you the same.

[footnotes: from California, also from Alabama, ca. 1935; cf. Musick, 432; for one version same, and one: "What's your name / John Brown / ask me again / and I'll knock you down."]

27c
What's your name?
President Monroe
Ask me again
And you still won't know."

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Excerpt #2
"From: http://listserv.linguistlist.org/cgi-bin/wa?A2=ind0110A&L=ads-l&P=R5702 [link no longer working]
Subject: Pudding tame
From: "Douglas G. Wilson"
Reply-To: American Dialect Society
Date: October 4, 2001
"Of course in researching the history of "poontang" I came upon remarks to the effect that this word seems to be reflected in a children's rhyme (still current, I think) along the lines of
What's your name?
Pudding tame.
[Ask me again and I'll tell you the same.]

In fact "pudding tame" and variants (pudding/puddin' [and] tame/tane/tang) are used today with the sense "I won't tell you my name" (e.g., often as a 'handle' or pen-name on the Internet, = "Anonymous"). The expression was used in the "X-files" TV program in 1999.

The rhyme appeared in the US by 1895, when it was cited in "Dialect Notes". Already we're out of the "poontang" milieu, I think; but in case there's any doubt, I find quoted from 1861 a version supposedly from ca. 1825 (apparently from Sussex?):
What's yer naüm?
Pudding and taüm.

Back a little further (ca. 1590), I find reason to believe there was approximately:
[What is your name?]
Pudding of Thame.

Now at least the expression has some surface sense, maybe. Thame is a place-name -- in particular a town in Oxfordshire, I believe. So "pudding of Thame" might have been the name of a food, perhaps similar (or at least analogous) to Oxford sausage, say. Still the expression is meaningless in the context, and I wonder whether

(1) it might even earlier have been something else ("pudding at home"? "Pudding Tom"? "pudding time"?) which maintained the rhyme in some early or regional pronunciation, and whether
(2) there is some recognizable double-entendre or other joke here in16th-century (or earlier) English.

Any ideas?
-- Doug Wilson
-snip-
This is the complete post from that site. It was referenced in a discussion of the word "poontang" by the "take my word for it" website http://www.takeourword.com/pt.html "The Etymology of Slang Sexual Terms." That take my word for it page included a hyperlink [that is now broken] to the comment that's given above along with this statement: "He [linguist Doug Wilson ] concludes that the two [poontang and Puddin Tane] are not related, and he gives some good evidence."
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I've re-formatted this post to make it easier to read."

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