Hey Mister! You’re losing your pants!

       By Steve Cichon
       steve@buffalostories.com
       @stevebuffalo

Since finding a pair of suspenders in the attic the other day, I’ve been walking around singing the parts of a song that Grandpa Coyle used to sing all the time– only I couldn’t remember all the words.

Here’s Gramps drinking Red Dog wearing suspenders, c.2008

la la la la la la suspenders…
la la la la la la la dance…
.la la la la la la la la la…..
Hey Mister, you’re losing your pants!

After spending an hour or so with Google and a couple of online archive sites, I finally came up with the song.

Here are the lyrics from as printed as “an oldie” in a 1940 newspaper.

"One night I forgot my suspenders,
and took my girl out to a dance.
While dancing I heard someone holler,
Hey Mister! you're losing your pants!"

Published by

Steve Cichon

Steve Cichon writes about Buffalo’s pop culture history. His stories of Buffalo's past have appeared more than 1600 times in The Buffalo News. He's a proud Buffalonian helping the world experience the city he loves. Since the earliest days of the internet, Cichon's been creating content celebrating the people, places, and ideas that make Buffalo unique and special. The 25-year veteran of Buffalo radio and television has written five books and curates The Buffalo Stories Archives-- hundreds of thousands of books, images, and audio/visual media which tell the stories of who we are in Western New York.