This song was a favorite of Chief Tam-Tam, from West Africa — leader, in 1935, of the “Ubangi” troupe in Greenbaugh’s Majestic Circus, in my short novel Circus.  Tam was homesick and often drunk, dreaming of going back to the old country, but he had a “special friend” at the colored whorehouse in Wichita, Kansas and every time the circus played that town, she took all his money, leaving him no choice but to stay with the show.