with inset photo showing “Jaffe’s Collegian’s (U. of P.).”
This year marks the 100th anniversary of a bouncy earworm of a song called “Collegiate,” written by Penn alumni Moe Jaffe W1923 L1926 and Nat Bonx L1925 while they were still students. The lyrics are rife with period references and comic wordplay (“Tap-pa Haf-fa Keg,” “Del-ta Hand-a Po-ker”), but the spirit of the song is best expressed by the energetically nonsensical refrain: “Collegiate, Collegiate. Yes! we are Collegiate. … We’re collegiate, Rah! Rah! Rah!”
After becoming a campus favorite as performed by “Jaffe’s Collegians”—as pictured on the sheet music—the song became a hit when it was recorded in 1925 by Fred Waring’s band, the Pennsylvanians. That version used the lyrics sparingly, and the tune without words would be employed in two Marx Brothers movies: as background music for Harpo’s character “The Professor” in Animal Crackers and played on camera by Chico in the college-set Horsefeathers.
A 1955 profile in the Daily Pennsylvanian (“Moe Jaffe, Wig Writer of ’20s Currently Producing Hit Songs”) recapped his experience, “[r]iding on the luxury of his first success,” of taking the band on a European tour in 1926 and described his continuing to write for Mask and Wig as an alumnus. It singled out “Gypsy in My Soul,” written with Clay Boland D1926 for the 1937 show Fifty-Fifty, as a highlight. Later Jaffe compositions included “Bell Bottom Trousers” in 1945 and “I’m My Own Grandpa,” written in 1947 to meet a demand for what the article called “the gimmick tune.”
Less is immediately findable online about Bonx, who sources credit for the music in “Collegiate.” According to a brief obit in the New York Times after his death in 1950, he got a scholarship to Penn and graduated from the law school. “An accomplished pianist” who “had played with several orchestras,” he continued to collaborate on songs with Jaffe but, unlike his partner, he also went on to practice law, working as an attorney for the Securities and Exchange Commission at the time he died.
A number of versions of the song can be found on YouTube. But be warned before you hit play: a century on, the song retains its power to get in your head and stay there. “Collegiate, Collegiate …” —JP
