"The Yankee Doodle Boy", also well known as "(I'm a) Yankee Doodle Dandy" is a patriotic song from the Broadway musical Little Johnny Jones written by George M. Cohan. The play opened at the Liberty Theater on November 7, 1904.
The play concerns the trials and tribulations of a fictional American jockey, Johnny Jones (based on the real life jockey Tod Sloan), who rides a horse named Yankee Doodle in the English Derby. Cohan incorporates snippets of several popular traditional American songs into his lyrics of this song, as he often did with his songs.
The song was performed by James Cagney in the 1942 film Yankee Doodle Dandy, in which he played Cohan.
An early hit version of the song was recorded by Cohan's contemporary and fellow Irish-American Billy Murray, who sang it as indicated in the lyrics.
Also a shortened lyric Disco version of "Yankee Doodle Dandy" sung by Paul Jabara from the 1977 "Shut Out" Album & 1983 "Greatest Hits & Misses" Album on Casablanca Records.
On July 4, 2009, Bob Dylan opened a concert at Coveleski Stadium (South Bend, IN) with his own version of this song.
Read more about The Yankee Doodle Boy: Lyrics
Famous quotes containing the words yankee doodle boy, doodle boy, yankee, doodle and/or boy:
“Yankee Doodle came to London, just to ride the ponies,
I am a Yankee Doodle boy.”
—George M. Cohan (1878–1942)
“Yankee Doodle came to London, just to ride the ponies,
I am a Yankee Doodle boy.”
—George M. Cohan (1878–1942)
“The other 1000 are principally the ‘old Yankee stock,’ who have lost the town, politically, to the Portuguese; who deplore the influx of the ‘off-Cape furriners’; and to whom a volume of genealogy is a piece of escape literature.”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I’m a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
A Yankee Doodle do or die;
A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam’s,
Born on the fourth of July.”
—George M. Cohan (1878–1942)
“Certainly the effort to remain unchanged, young, when the body gives so impressive a signal of change as the menopause, is gallant; but it is a stupid, self-sacrificial gallantry, better befitting a boy of twenty than a woman of forty-five or fifty. Let the athletes die young and laurel-crowned. Let the soldiers earn the Purple Hearts. Let women die old, white-crowned, with human hearts.”
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b. 1929)