A quickie wiki (so to speak) reveals the song dates back to 1953. Huh, I’d’ve thought the original would’ve dated a few decades earlier. I wonder what prompted those guys to write it …
The tune is based on Irving Berlin’s Puttin’ On the Ritz (1929).
Or perhaps Puttin’ on the Ritz is based on this song, and that’s why they waited so long to publish it: wading through a morass of Byzantine intellectual property laws…
Oh… and um… here’s a link about the history of the name. A lot of the information seems to have become muddied in the sands of time, but this fellow appears to have gone the whole nine yards. Anyway, what appears certain is that in 1930 the name was officially changed to Istanbul by the new Turkish emporer. Atatürk.
If you’ve got a girl in Constantinople-- she ain’t there.
Give it back, you Cyprus-splitting bastards!