Yes, We Have No Bananas! The Most Popular Catchphrase of the 1920s

This is a tribute to the best song ever written, itself, a tribute to humorously bad English. It’s called Yes, We Have No Bananas. Perhaps I exaggerate, but there was a time in the 1920s when people thought this phrase, and the song it came from, was the best thing since Eskimo Pies. In fact, according to H. L. Mencken, “yes, we have no bananas” was the most popular catchphrase of the 1920s. Even the British were saying it. One 1923 publication wrote, “this paean of polite negation has spread like wildfire over an entire continent in the short space of a few summer weeks.” There was something about this phrase that just tickled people. It was absurd and at the same time so courteous and genteel.

The song was first written and published by Frank Silver and Irving Cohen in 1923 and recorded by a plethora of musicians and jazz outfits. The most popular version was done by Billy Jones, who was normally part of a duo called Happiness Boys with Ernest Hare, who both had their own radio show sponsored by Happiness Candy. There are competing stories as to how the songwriters came up with the idea.

A lot of controversy arose as to who originally coined the phrase. Did it come from the song, or was it already around. According to one story, Siler and Cohen borrowed the phrase from Tad Dorgan, a comic-strip author responsible for the comics Indoor Sports and Judge Rummy. Dorgan, who only one hand, certainly had a gift for coining humorous phrases. He’s often given credit for coining many common idioms such as for crying out loud, get your goat, and the cat’s pajamas. ¹,²

However, this notion, like his comics, is quite silly. He may have popularized certain idioms, but he certainly did not coin them.

On the False Hindu Origin of “Butter Someone Up”

The other story is more colorful, claiming that Silver got the idea for the song from hearing a Greek fruit peddler yell up to a woman standing in a New York City tenement window, “Yes, we have no bananas!” Indeed, the song is about a Greek fruit peddler who never says NO to a question, even when the answer is no. He just hates to disappoint his customers. ¹

There’s a fruit store on our street
It’s run by a Greek
And he keeps good things to eat
But you should hear him speak!
When you ask him anything, he never answers “no”
He just “yes”es you to death, and as he takes your dough
He tells you
“Yes, we have no bananas
We have-a no bananas today
We’ve string beans, and onions
Cabbageses, and scallions
And all sorts of fruit and say
We have an old fashioned to-mah-to
A Long Island po-tah-to
But yes, we have no bananas
We have no bananas today.”

That Time Kellogg’s Bought the Rights to Yes, We Have No Bananas

In the early 1960s, the cereal industry was very excited about freeze-dried stuff. Post added freeze-dried strawberries to cornflakes, claiming that the strawberries would become like fresh strawberries again once you added milk. Not really, but the product sold like hotcakes so Post added cornflakes with dried blueberries and cornflakes with peaches to its line. Kellogg’s, not to be outdone, thought to itself, what’s better than strawberries, blueberries, or peaches? Why, bananas, of course. They launched Corn Flakes with Instant Bananas. To sell it, they bought the rights to Yes, We Have No Bananas and had Jimmy Durante sing “Yes, We Now Have Bananas,” completely missing the allure of the song.

The freeze-dried bananas didn’t work out. Instant bananas were just…dried and “cardboard discs” in a box, as one Kellogg’s salesman described them. If you’ve ever eaten cereal with dried fruit, usually strawberries, you’ll know that the fruit gets weirdly soft on the outside and remains dry and hard and crunchy on the inside. If you wait long enough for the fruit to get soft, your cereal will be soggy.