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Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour
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"Does Your Chewing Gum Lose It's Flavor (On The Bedpost Over Night)" (the grammatically-incorrect "it's" for "its" is included in the title of both the UK and US releases) is a song which was the greatest chart success for Lonnie Donegan in the United States, reaching #5 on the Pop Singles chart in 1961[2], and which was also a major hit for him in his native United Kingdom. [3] It is a cover version of "Does The Spearmint Lose its Flavor On The Bedpost Overnight?", a song first released in 1924 by The Happiness Boys, Ernie Hare & Billy Jones, [4] and later a hit for Lulu Belle and Scotty. The song is humorous in content, the verses each describing a dramatic or urgent scenario leading up to the asking of the titular question.
The title and lyrics of the Donegan version were changed in the UK because "Spearmint" is a registered trade mark[1] there and the BBC does not play songs which mention trade marks. Donegan's version of the song was recorded live at the New Theatre Oxford in December 1958[4] and was released both as a single as a track on the album King of Skiffle. An extended version with more banter was released on the live album The Last Tour.[5]
Since Donegan's version was released, it has appeared as a Smarties jingle, a performance on the Muppet Show, and re-worked into Czech by Jiří Grossmann. Additional versions of the song were recorded by The Irish Rovers and Homer & Jethro. In Ken Kesey's novel One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, the character Randle Patrick McMurphy also sings a few lines of this song.
"Does Your Chewing Gum..." has been a popular song on the Doctor Demento Show, appearing 54 times between the show's premiere and 2006[6] and selected for the Doctor Demento 20th Anniversary Collection double CD.[7]
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