HISTORY OF A SONG: LET'S DO IT

Songwriter Cole Porter has recorded many controversial songs in his long career, but the lyrics to "Let's Do It" are probably his most controversial. The first of Porter's "list songs", it features a string of suggestive and droll comparisons and examples, preposterous pairings and double entendres, dropping famous names and events, drawing from highbrow and popular culture. Porter was a strong admirer of the Savoy operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, many of whose stage works featured similar comic list songs.

The first refrain covers human ethnic groups, the second refrain birds, the third refrain marine life, the fourth refrain insects and centipedes, and the fifth refrain non-human mammals.

With "Let's do 'it'" a euphemism for sexual intercourse in English, author Sheldon Patinkin wrote that it was "the first hit song to proclaim openly that sex is fun."  The author of Staging Desire: Queer Readings of American Theater History drew a line from Porter's use of barely veiled double entendres such as "Moths in your rugs do it, What's the use of moth-balls?" to his "pleasure" in barely masking his homosexuality from the public.

The song has regularly lent itself over the years to the addition of contemporary or topical stanzas. For example, in 1955 the lines "Even Liberace, we assume, does it," "Ernest Hemingway could just do it" and many more were added by Noël Coward in his Las Vegas cabaret performance of the song, in which he replaced most of Porter's lyrics with his own.

In Porter's publication from 1928, the opening lines for the chorus carried three derogatory racial references: Chinks, Japs, and Laps.

The original was:

Chinks do it, Japs do it,
up in Lapland little Laps do it...

The original line can be heard in several early recordings of the song, such as a recording made by the Dorsey Brothers & their Orchestra (featuring a vocal by a young Bing Crosby), Rudy Vallée, Paul Whiteman And His Orchestra, all in 1928, and a version of the song by the singer and well-known Broadway star Mary Martin (with Ray Sinatra's orchestra), recorded in 1944. Another example is Billie Holiday, in 1941.  Peggy Lee with the Benny Goodman orchestra recorded a version in 1941 with these lyrics.

CBS came up with less offensive lyrics, which NBC adopted, and changed the opening to the refrain: "Birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it." when they recognized that the line was offensive...