"Just a Gigolo" is a popular song, adapted by Irving Caesar in 1929 from the Austrian song "Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo", written in 1928 by Leonello Casucci (music) and Julius Brammer (lyrics).
The original version is a poetic vision of the social collapse experienced in Austria after World War I, represented by the figure of a former hussar who remembers himself parading in his uniform, while now he has to get by as a lonely hired dancer.
The music features a simple melodic sequence, but nonetheless has a clever harmonic construction that highlights the mixed emotions in the lyrics, adding a nostalgic, bittersweet effect.
"Just a Gigolo" is best known in a form recorded by Louis Prima in 1956, where it was paired in a medley with another old standard, "I Ain't Got Nobody" (words by Roger Graham and music by Spencer Williams, 1915).
Although these two songs have nothing else in common, the popularity of Prima's combination, and of the Village People's 1978 and David Lee Roth's 1985 cover versions of the medley, has led to the mistaken perception by some that the songs are two parts of a single original composition.
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