In 1928, when the Harold Lloyd movie "Speedy" came out, it had this song written especially for the picture - as there was a stream of College-oriented songs flowing from the Brill Building during this period, it was very timely. It was written
by Raymond Klagas and Jesse Greer (the same pair that would later write "Just You Just Me"). The lyrics, by the way, could be seen as a double-entendre for drug abuse along the lines of Cab Calloway's "Reefer Man" - we may never know for sure -
though it did not prevent the song from being a hit. It was sung by Annette Hanshaw as well as performed by Ben Bernie's band but the most spirited version was this one by Ben Selvin's aggregation. Columbia recorded it on March 17th of 1928.
They have fun with this song - the "hand-trumpet" part in the last 40 seconds is especially entertaining. The vocal, credited to "Frank Harris", is actually the golden tones of Irving Kaufman. The record itself had been played quite a lot, and so
there's wear on the louder passages as well as some crackle near the end, though some thoughtfully-applied noise reduction has made this less of a problem. (A biography of
Ben Selvin, as well as a discography with more samples, can be found at the "Red Hot Jazz Archive". Lyrics for this particular song can be found at the
Harold Lloyd Web Site.)
