I’ve only heard the Sinatra version two or three times in my life. Never was a Frankie fan.
The preferred recording in my house was by Lena Horne. And nobody calls that classy lady a tramp.
“I like the free fresh wind in my hair. Life without care.”
Yeah, the lady is a tramp because she lives her life on her own terms and doesn’t conform to social norms. He’s being ironic in calling her a tramp.
In the context of the times (things are looser now) she’s a high-class dame who doesn’t conform to her ‘high-class’ friends, she does her own thing, and they see her as living below their expectations, doing things the common hoi polloi do. They have dinner at Le Cirque at 9 p.m. - she would rather hit up the diner at 5 p.m., being too hungry to wait till 9 p.m., just to be seen by society in a high-falutin’ restaurant. (I was acquainted with a ridiculously rich woman who actually flew to Paris for a couture gown every year, and she bought all her everyday clothes at Sears.) Low-class = tramp! Inverse snobbery.
In the '37 “Babes In Arms”, the singer in question is, in fact, a hobo–she’s hitchhiking/hopping on trains/etc to get to California.
(mostly copied from earlier posts of mine)
In BABES IN ARMS the song refers to some specific stuff stuff from the show–it wasn’t really intended as a stand-alone song, and it was written to be sung by a woman about herself in first person (“I hate California/It’s cold and it’s damp…”). Also, it was written in ~1934.
The female character who sings the song about herself (“Billie”) is a wanna-be actress who’s hitchhiked across the country to go to Hollywood where she’s sure she’ll be a big star who’s…well, a plot synopsis will make it (a bit) clearer.
She meets up with Val, a philosophy student who’s parents are vaudevillians and they’ve decided to send Val to a “work farm” while they (the parents) go on the road (all the other unemployed kids are being sent there too) but the kids say that they can survive on their own by putting on a show to raise money so they won’t have to go/ Billie meanders into town and gets all caught up in the over-complicated plot.
Because Val has punched out a racist and the shows’ not gonna go on they’re all gonna be sent to the work farm after all and she’s gonna be sent to the work farm too but …oh hell, the plot gets convoluted as only a '30s era screwball comedy musical can get with all sorts of stuff about a French aviator, etc.
Just before the song, Val has punched out a racist (during the show), causing it to fail. A party’s being thrown for the main characters before they get sent off to the “work farm” (apparently a charming combination of summer camp and chain gang) and as Val goes off to get some punch ‘n’ cookies, Billie wonders if she’ll ever fit in with the other kids (who may have been snotty to her) and considers going back on the road: She thinks it’s better than being sent to a “work farm” (I agree, btw), and sings the song “The Lady Is A Tramp” to justify her leaving and finishing her journey to Hollywood
Anyway, in the (rarely sung) intro to the song, Billie sings:*
I’ve wined and dined on Mulligan Stew, and never wished for turkey
As I hitched and hiked and grifted too, from Maine to Albuquerque
Alas, I missed the Beaux Arts Ball, and what is twice as sad
I was never at a party where they honored Noel Cad (Coward)
But social circles spin too fast for me
My “hobo-hemia” is the place to be.
I get too tired for dinner at eight*…etc
Val hears her singing/talking about this and says (something like ) “What, you’re gonna run out on us at a time like this?”
Billie, stung by this, replies (again, from memory) “Run out? What kinda girl do you think I am? I’ll stick it out! We’ll think of somethin’.”
Val replies (more or less) “You’re one of the good ones. The tramp is a lady”
Billie says something like “No, you’ve got that backwards…” and bursts into a reprise of “The Lady Is A Tramp”
…folks went to London and left me behind
I missed the crowning, Queen Mary didn’t mind
Won’t play Scarlett in Gone with the “Wynde”
That’s why the lady is a tramp
I like to hang my hat where I please
Sail with the breeze
No dough! Hey-ho!
I still like Roosevelt, and think he’s a champ
That’s why the lady is a tramp
It’s clear that it means both "I’m proud to be ‘uncultured’–since 'culture means dishing the dirt with the rest of the girls and "I actually go to the theater to watch the plays and I never come late just so I can be seen. AND there’s a play on the word, since she’s hitchhiking across the country, so she’s a tramp/hobo.
Fenris
From what I remember…the song was originally written as a spoof of high society during the thirties. The high brow ‘rules’ they went by (ie: won’t eat dinner until eight, etc.)
The tramp was a lady, that was a regular girl, she didn’t care about the upper crust’s views. She lived by her own rules.
I wish I had sad that six years ago.
Now that this dumb repetitive thread is back, let me pose a question.
One line goes “Hates California…it’s cold, and it’s damp.
That’s why the lady is a tramp.”
99% of New Yorkers who headed out to California in the 1920s and 1930s were on their way to Los Angeles/Hollywood, where there was big money to be made. The lyric makes sense if she’s talking about San Francisco, say, or Mendocino, but hardly SoCal.
What do you think the lyricist meant?
Which is why the Ella Fitzgerald rendition is the definitive version; for Sinatra (and Tony Bennett, who bowdlerized it) it was just a catchy tune; Lady Ella gave it depth and sardonic humor.
The film industry was in Los Angeles, but West Coast jazz was firmly rooted in San Francisco until post-WWII, and particularly bebop with which Fitzgerald was one of the prominent vocalists and something of a “tramp” (in the traveler sense) herself. But perhaps more appropriately, the song is talking about the way that “The Lady” is a non-conformist who doesn’t conform to popular opinion. That everyone thinks of California in terms of the Mediterranean climate of Los Angeles and the interior desert of Palm Springs is exactly the point; The Lady has tramped around the state and knows that what people see on screen is a fictionalized and narrow view of the expansive geography and climate of California, and anyone who has driven up the coast knows that it can be cold and damp in Ventura, much less San Francisco and NoCal.
Stranger
Very sensible and well-reasoned response, but I have to call NUH UH on your jazz history.
Los Angeles was always the jazz central of the west coast, especially in the bebop days, when Diz and Bird visited L.A. (NOT SF) in 1945 and found guys like Howard McGee (trumpet), Sonny Criss (alto sax), Teddy Edwards (tenor sax), Dexter Gordon (later the most famous, also tenor), Hampton Hawes (piano), already playing their new style, which they had picked up from records and radio.
And those were just the black dudes. Soon you had ofays like Shorty Rogers, Conte Candoli, Jimmy Giuffre, Bud Shank, Bob Cooper, and Shelley Manne blowing like crazy, and forming the music into what became the “West Coast Sound.”
Up in Frisco the intelligentsia — critics like Rudi Blesh — were denouncing the (already outdated) swing style and calling for a return to New Orleans roots. They sent to NOLA and brought out old guys like Bunk Johnson, bought ‘em false teeth so they could play again, and set them up in clubs. There was a lot of jazz in late 1940s Frisco, but it was dominated by the Moldy Figs.
Cite: Ted Gioia; WEST COAST JAZZ; U of California Press, 1998.
That is post-WWII (or nearly so) thought. “The Lady is a Tramp” precedes that, although it was not written for Ella Fitzgerald and so I’m making a post hoc justification for the fit.
In any case, it is not an insult, per se, but rather a recognition of “the tramp” as being a non-conformist who does not buy into popular opinion.
Stranger
Well, okay, but PRE-WWII the well-known jazz bands, when they made that California trip, were going to Los Angeles. Where the money was. Just like the writers and Broadway actors.