The Ink Spots = "Java Jive" (with lyrics & information about the meanings of some words in that song)

Tim Gracyk, Sept. 10, 2017

[Song Lyrics]

Boston bean (soy beans)
Green bean (cabbage and greens)
I'm not keen about a bean
Unless it is a chili chili bean (boy!)

I love coffee, I love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the java and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup (boy!)

I love java, sweet and hot
Whoops mr. moto, I'm a coffee pot
Shoot the pot and I'll pour me a shot
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup

Oh slip me a slug from the wonderful mug
And I'll cut a rug just snug in a jug
A sliced up onion and a raw one
Draw one -
Waiter, waiter, percolator

I love coffee, I love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the java and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup

Music in this video

Song: Java Jive (Single Version)

Artist: The Ink Spots

Writers: Milton Drake, Ben Oakland

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Edited by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases a sound file of The Ink Spot's 1940 recording of the song "Java Jive".

This post also provides information about The Ink Spots along with some speculative comments about the meanings of certain words in the song "Java Jive".

The content of this post is presented for cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to The Ink Spots (the original group) for their musical legacy. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this sound file on YouTube.

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INFORMATION ABOUT "THE INK SPOTS" (Jazz group) 
From https://www.blackpast.org/african-american-history/ink-spots-1932-1953/#:~:text=The%20Ink%20Spots%2C%20a%20musical,and%20the%
"The Ink Spots, a musical quartet, originally included members Orville “Hoppy” Jones, Ivory “Deek” Watson, Jerry Daniels, and Charlie Fuqua. Some accounts claim Slim Greene also was a founding member. Influenced by the Mills Brothers, all four members sang together under the name “King, Jack, and the Jesters” in 1932.  In late 1933, the group renamed itself the Ink Spots.

The Ink Spots toured Britain in 1934 and their overseas success earned them a recording contract with Victor Records. In 1935, they recorded their first four songs, including “Swinging on the Strings.”

In 1936, Daniels left the group and Bill Kenny replaced him. Around this time, the Ink Spots signed with Decca and began developing its distinct sound. The group’s vocal arrangements and use of guitar riff song introductions would influence future generations of doo-wop, rhythm and blues, and rock and roll musicians, including Elvis Presley and the Beatles. With the release of “If I Didn’t Care” (1939), the Ink Spots became one of the most popular quartets in the United States.  The group’s success continued throughout the 1940s with hits such as “We Three” (1940), “I Don’t Want to Set the World on Fire” (1941), “I’m Making Believe” (1944), “The Gypsy” (1946), and “To Each His Own” (1946).  The group also appeared in the films The Great American Radio Broadcast (1941) and Pardon My Sarong (1942).  Throughout World War II, the Ink Spots performed for the troops.  In 1944, they had another hit with “Cow-Cow Boogie,” which they recorded with Ella Fitzgerald.

By 1950, the Ink Spots’ popularity began to decline, but they remained in demand on the college circuit. As original members left the quartet, various singers performed with the group, including Bernie Mackey, Cliff Givens, Billy Bowen, Huey Long, Herb Kenny, Adriel McDonald, Teddy Williams, Ernie Brown, and Jimmy Kenny.

Starting in the 1940s, the quartet sued imitation groups using the Ink Spots name, but its legal problems increased when Fuqua and Kenny each formed groups called the Ink Spots in 1952.  The Decca Ink Spots officially played their last concert in 1953.

Since the original Ink Spots disbanded, dozens of Ink Spots imitators have formed and recorded.  Most of these groups have no connection to the Decca Ink Spots.  “If I Didn’t Care” was inducted into the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences in 1987.  The Ink Spots also were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (1989) and Apollo Theatre Hall of Fame (1993)."

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WHAT CERTAIN WORDS IN THE SONG "JAVA JIVE" MEAN
"Java" is a slang reference for "coffee". Here's one website that explains how this slang term originated:

From https://coffeechronicler.com/why-is-coffee-called-java/
"Coffee has plenty of nicknames, but ‘Java’ is one of the most common ones. How did this come to be?

The reason for this name is obvious when we take a close look at the history of the plant.

You see, back in the days coffee only grew wild in Ethiopia. Finding out about the plant’s potency, Arabians took it with them to Yemen. Here it was grown commercially with great success. In fact, the business around coffee was so profitable that it was punished by death to take the plant outside the country.

Coffee flourished on islands such as Sumatra, Sulawesi, and – you guessed it – Java.

[Information about the island of Java is inserted here.] 

Since Java was the main island where the capital Batavia (today called Jakarta) was located, the majority of coffee was exported from here. Rapidly, Indonesia became the world’s largest exporter of coffee. So most of the bags arriving in Europe said ‘Java,’ and this is how the nickname came to be."

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Here's my speculation about the word "jive" in the song title "Java Jive":
"Jive" refers to the usually rhyming hip talk (slang talk) that is found throughout that song. That definition of "jive" comes from the hip talk that jazz musicians used (in the 1930s and 1940s and perhaps even earlier).

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Here's an excerpt from an article about the etymology of the word "jive": https://www.thoughtco.com/gibe-jibe-and-jive-1689398
"Jive first appears in written form in the 1920s, but that doesn't mean it wasn't in use much earlier. The Online Etymology Dictionary suggests that it might have an African origin, coming from a West African Wolof word "jev" or "jeu" that means to talk about someone absent in a disparaging manner."...

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Here are some responses from https://boards.straightdope.com/t/explain-the-lyrics-java-jive-by-oakland-and-drake/585849

[Numbers added for referencing purposes only. These numbers don’t respond to the responses that are found on that website.]

1. Guest, Jun '11
"Mr Moto was a fictional Japanese secret agent.

 “I cut a rug” means “I dance”.

 “Snug as a bug in a rug” means to be wrapped up ready for sleep. The substitution of “jug” has no meaning to me.

No more ideas though - suspect the lyrics are just nonsense in order to scan and rhyme."

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2. CookingWithGas, Jun '11
"To “draw one” in this context probably means to fill a coffee cup from an urn. You normally don’t hear people using this for coffee, but rather for beer filled from a tap.

A lot of these words are just thrown in there to fill space and rhyme. Lots of songs in that era had nonsense lyrics,…."

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3. ericinwisconsin, Jul '11
"Yep, slice of onion on a buger, cooked rare.

 More interesting to me is the line:

 whoops, Mr. Moto, I’m a coffee pot

 Who is Mr. Moto? If it’s the character played in movies by Peter Lorre, why? What does Mr. Moto have to do with coffee? This has bugged me for years and no one has been about to provide me with a satisfactory explanation."

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4. filling_pages, Jul '11
"Google led me to a Wordwizard message board post from 2004, which suggests this connection:

"Peter Lorre, who starred in the role of Mr. Moto also played a evil henchmen in Arsenic & Old Lace(1944). Cary Grant plays the main character of Mortimer, who pays a visit to his two sweet aunts who raised him. Uncle Ted, who also resides at the residence suffers under the delusion that he is Teddy Roosevelt. He had the habit of blowing a bugle and running up the stairs(San Juan Hill) with the cry of “Charge!” He discovers that his dear old aunts have taken up the charitable mission of euthanizing lonely old men by taking them in as boarders, and offering them elderberry wine laced with poison; so that their last moments on earth would be pleasant ones. 12 souls are interred in the basement with the help of Uncle Ted who assumes that they are Panama Canal workers who died from malaria. To make the situation worse, Mortimer’s sadistic step-brother returns home with sidekick Dr. Einstein(Peter Lorre), and the corpse of his latest victim for the purpose of using the place for a temporary hideout and disposal. Mortimer arrives at the conclusion that he may have inheirited his family’s insanity. The cab driver arrives on the scene and witnesses the spectacle. Mortimer’s aunts reveal to him, to his relief, that he is not related and that his dying mother requested that they raise him. They also tell him that his father was a sea cook. Mortimer in the final scene triumphantly shouts out “I am not a Brewster. I am the son of a sea cook!! Charge!!!” The taxi driver sarcastically quips “I am not a taxi driver. I am a coffee pot.””….
-snip-
I added italics to highlight this line.

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5. TomTheBari, Nov '11
“Egg Coffee” is coffee made with an egg (shell and all). You put the ground coffee in a filter and break a raw egg over it (a “raw one”). Egg shell is crushed. It is said to reduce the acidity of the coffee.

Apparently, this custom was imported from Scandinavia, and is reportedly still practiced by some Lutheran congregations in the American Midwest (e.g. Minnesota).”…"

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