The Hut Sut Song

Please, let me first apologize for what I'm about to do to you. The Hut Sut Song was a novelty number made popular in the months before World War II in recordings by Freddy Martin, Horace Heidt and the King Sisters. Here's a video clip of the song illustrating what can happen to you if you hear it too often. Oh, did I mention that even 70 years later, the maddeningly awful tune is still hard to shake from your noggin?

 

In case you want to sing along...

In a town in Sweden by a stream so clear and cool
A boy would sit and fish and dream when he should have been in school.
Now, he couldn't read or write a word but happiness he found
In a little song he heard and here's how it would sound;


Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit,
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit.
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit,
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit.

Now the Rawlson is a Swedish town, the rillerah is a stream.
The brawla is the boy and girl,
The Hut-Sut is their dream.

Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla, brawla sooit.
Hut-Sut Rawlson on the rillerah and a brawla sooit.

Comments

[J. Carmo]

Apology accepted!

[David]

First of all, I don't believe that Marc is over 70 years old. However I appreciate the warning and, as a precaution, will avoid listening to the song. I wouldn't be able to sing along anyway as I can never follow the rhythm without a bouncing ball.

[Dick Cutler]

Thanks Marc. For 70 years I thought it was Hut-Sut Rawl SITTIN' ON the rillerah. Should've paid more attention to the translation.

[Ed Leimbacher]

Minus the ball, maybe instead a sped-up whole note, not even blue? Meanwhile there's blogosphere speculation that Marc's gone off to audition for the next big reality talent show (tentative title: Hilarity Jass), where--keepin' it real--he will compete either as Mitch the Mill or as Ray the Con.

[Andrew]

I was on the same page as Dick Cutler. Thank you for clarifying the lyric Marc, and for more or less assuring that this will be the tune going through my head as I go to sleep tonight, and possibly tomorrow, lol.

[will friedwald]

It's not an awful song - it's just a cute, catchy, old Swedish children's song / folk song. But you could argue that these Mickey Mouse band arrangements are awfully cloying. Mel Torme once did a really great, hard-swinging treatment, using Charlie Barnet's "Cherokee" arrangement as a counter-melody. Ever notice that someone singing. particularly in swingtime, in another language (ie, Swedish) sounds like scat syllables or pure nonsense?

[Ray]

I'll sing with my ukulele ,Thank you for the lyrics!