Music: Those Bell Bottoms

And if it be a daughter, just bounce her on your knee,

And if it be a son, send the blighter out to sea,

With bell-bottom trousers and a coat of navy blue,

And let him fool the Navy the way that I fooled you.

This salty chantey of a too-trusting maid and her love-’em-& -leave-’em sailor was a favorite barroom ballad of World War I. Wherever servicemen gathered, it was sung with gusto—provided no ladies were present.

Last week Bell Bottom Trousers, revived as a song hit of World War II, placed first in U.S. sheet-music sales and fourth in radio performances. But the lyrics had been thoroughly scrubbed up. Veteran fathers, momentarily alarmed by the melody the bobby-soxers were singing, were quickly reassured. Songwriter Moe Jaffe’s modernized maid, as coolly respectable as a Junior League Nurses’ Aide, has the situation well in hand; her sailor is as wholesome as an Eagle Scout.