TULIP TIME IN SING SING
From the Broadway Show "Sitting Pretty" (1924)
(Jerome Kern / P. G. Wodehouse)

Merwin Goldsmith - 1989

Also recorded by: Arthur Siegel



Up the river there's a college
Which authorities acknowledge
Is a cosy sort of place to go and dwell
And with joy each student chortles
As he passes through its portals
And the faculty conducts him to his cell

How I wish that there I'd waited
Wish I'd never graduated
For the memory of those days still stirs me so
And the birdies every Spring sing
"Aren't you coming back to Sing Sing
Where you used to be so happy long ago"

When it's tulip time in Sing Sing
Oh, it's there that I would be
There are gentle hearts in Sing Sing
Watching and yearning for me
Oh, I wish that I was back
With a rock or two to crack
With my pals of the class of ninety-nine
And I miss the peace and quiet
And the simple, wholesome diet
Of that dear, old-fashioned prison of mine!

Oh, I'd give a lot to go there
Life was never dull or slow there
Every night there was a concert or a hop
Or I'd sit discussing Coué
With my old pal Bat-eared Louie,
Quite the nicest man who ever slugged a cop

We were just a band of brothers
Each as good as all the others
As the humblest sort of sneak thief you might rank,
But when you'd been there a week, well
You were treated as an equal
By the high and mighty swells who'd robbed a bank

When it's tulip time in Sing Sing
Oh, it's there that I would be
There are gentle hearts in Sing Sing
Watching and yearning for me
Oh, there's no place like home
And I'm tired of having to roam
Through the world with its women and its wine
So just bob my hair and shove me
Where I know the warders love me
In that dear old-fashioned prison of mine!