Hold Barred

Hold tight, hold tight,

Hold-tight-hold-tight

Foo-ra-de-ack-a-sa-ki

Want some Sea food, Mama

Steamers and sauce

And then of course

I like oysters, lobsters, too,

And I like my tasty butterfish.

When I come home from work at night

I get my favorite dish, Fish!

Hold tight, hold tight,

Hold-tight-hold-tight

Foo-ra-de-ack-a-sa-ki

Want some Sea food, Mama

Shrimpers and rice, they're very nice!

Eye-rolling Harlemites have long chuckled over the way the usually prissy white folks' radio has been going to town for a month on Hold Tight. In Harlem Hold Tight's fishy lyrics are considered no ordinary clambake stuff, but a reasonable duplication of the queer lingo some Harlem bucks use in one form of sex perversion. Harlemites chuckled even more last week when, taking a hint from Broadway columnists, radiomen hastily demanded that Hold Tight's, lyrics be bowdlerized.

Hold Tight was originally conjured up in Harlem's "Congo" district where a black and elemental breed of cats drink cheap King Kong liquor, puff reefers and shout a frank and sexy jive talk all their own. Jewish Swingsters Larry Kent and Jerry Brandow joined with Negro Swingsters Willie Spotswood, Ed Robinson and Leonard Ware in publishing it last January through Exclusive Publications, Inc. under the group names Kent Brandow and Robinson Ware Spotswood. Soon it was being innocently squalled all over the land.

In sheet music Hold Tight sold 100,000 copies, in orchestrations 10,000. The Andrews Sisters' recording sold 150,000, 20,000 more than their Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen for same period. It reached fourth place in the Hit Parade. This week, just as the radio got wise, the Fishery Council New York and Middle-Atlantic Area Inc. decided to adopt Hold Tight as its theme song.

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