(I've Got a Gal In) Kalamazoo
1942
( I've Got a Gal in ) Kalamazoo is a song written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren from the year 1942.
Background
Mack Gordon and Harry Warren wrote the song for the film Orchestra Wives ( 1942). Gordon later claimed to have been once in Kalamazoo many years ago. The first version was recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the background vocals took over Tex Beneke, Marion Hutton and The Fashion Aires and released as a single with the B-side At Last. In the film, even Glenn Miller and his Orchestra plays Gene Morrison is introduced as "Gene Morrison's Orchestra". For this, the Nicholas Brothers are seen as a dancer.
The lyrics of the song is about how the narrator a girl in the city of Kalamazoo, Michigan revered that he knows from his school days. He longs continue after her and decides to get on a plane to fly to Kalamazoo. The song struck a chord with his time and picked up the mood of many soldiers at the front of the Second World War who longed for their loved ones at home.
Success
The film was released on September 4, 1942 in the American cinema. Only eight days later, the single reached # 1 on the former U.S. Billboard sales charts and stayed there for seven weeks. Overall, the song was represented 20 weeks in the charts. The song received a 1943 Oscar nomination for Best Song, but lost to White Christmas by Bing Crosby, the only song that sold more copies in 1942. The song makes the city Kalamazoo popular. In the same year, for students of the local college her " Gal in Kalamazoo ," the Sara Wooley, which was subsequently appointed mouthpiece of the city 19 -year-old.
In Kalamazoo, the song serves as the anthem of the local basketball and football teams.
Accusations of plagiarism
2002 claimed Christine Allman Fetter, daughter of Charles Allman, a soldier in the United States Navy, which her father had written the song at Pearl Harbor. The text would deal with his old high - school sweetheart, mother of Christine, whom he later married and with whom he had five more daughters beside Christine. This story was published in the daily newspaper Kalamazoo Gazette.