If You're a Viper

[2] Howard slowed the song's tempo considerably, and rewrote significant portions of the vocal melody (for example, the line "bust your conk on peppermint candy").

Waller's track is also a small footnote in the story of Harry J. Anslinger's efforts to prosecute jazz musicians for smoking marijuana during World War II.

Waller had a stride-piano piece of his own called "Viper's Drag" (earlier recorded in 1930 by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra).

"Mighty Mezz" refers to Milton Mezzrow, a Jewish saxophone and clarinet player who became enamored with black American culture while playing in the speakeasies of prohibition-era Chicago.

But in 1943 Armed Forces Radio frequently invited jazz musicians to play for the troops overseas and made "V-Discs" ("Victory Discs") for distribution as a morale booster.

Lt. George Robert Vincent, a sound engineer then working for the Armed Forces Radio Service, conceived the V-Disc program and convinced the army to put up $1 million for the effort.

They had created a self-contained culture, and squares like Anslinger were no match," Larry Sloman writes in Reefer madness: the history of marijuana in America.

"[8] In response to Anslinger's calls for "swing band" arrests Waller decided to record "If You're a Viper," and included an intro that threw only the thinnest of veils over the song's subject.

"The gumshoes at the Bureau and the Army brass let that one slip right by them, but the guys in the barracks caught the drift, especially those stationed in the Philippines, where the weed was said to be excellent," Sloman writes.

[8] Strong evidence, however, suggests Sloman is wrong that the tune slipped past the censors and it seems likely the recording did not become public until after the war.

Censors thought the other thirteen "too risque for young GI's ears,' wrote Gregory Spears in a December 23, 1990, article for the Houston Chronicle.

"[13] The song has been covered by Dave Van Ronk, the Jim Kweskin Jug Band, Bobby Short, Wayne Kramer, Kermit Ruffins, Widespread Panic, Ekoostik Hookah, country musician Wayne Hancock, Alex Chilton, The Manhattan Transfer, Erin McKeown, and others.