Which Lady Is The Tramp?

The other morning on the commute I was listening to the Pure Jazz Moods 2-CD (it's the commute, you're allowed to listen to anything that puts you in the right mood) and on came Ella Fitzgerald singing The Lady Is A Tramp. And with the last lines “I'm alone when I lower my lamp / That's why the lady is a tramp” I realised what a neat bit of ambiguity Rogers and Hart had pulled off. You're supposed to think, well, I always had thought, that it's the singer who is the tramp, because she likes the beach at Coney Island, can't eat late, doesn't play craps with barons and earls and is a “hobohemian”. Except she turns up on time for the opera, stays awake all the way through, actually “reads every line” of Walter Winchell, doesn't do bitchy gossip (“won't dish the dirt / with the rest of the girls”), is quite happy with boating on Central Park (as opposed to a yacht off Newport) and when she goes to bed there isn't a lover there. None of which is true about “ladies” - so it's the Lady who is the tramp, because her manners are fake, rude and expensive. In fact, the Lady is a moral tramp, while the singer is only a social tramp.

It's end of the Bank Holiday - deep thoughts are suspended for a day.