Sunday Song Lyric:

I finally saw the film “Thank You for Smoking.” I liked it, though not quite as muchas the book. The movie used Tex Williams‘ clever old ditty, “Smoke, Smoke, Smoke that Cigarette,” for the opening credits. The song opens this way:

Now I’m a fellow with a heart of gold
And the ways of a gentleman I’ve been told
Kind-of-a-guy that wouldn’t even harm a flea

But if me and a certain character met
The guy that invented that cigarette
I’d murder that son-of-a gun in the first degree

It ain’t cuz I don’t smoke ’em myself
and I don’t reckon that it’ll hinder your health
I smoked ’em all my life and I ain’t dead yet

But nicotine slaves are all the same
At a pettin’ party or a poker game
Everything gotta stop while they have a cigarette

Smoke, smoke, smoke that cigarette
Puff, puff, puff until you smoke yourself to death.

Tell St. Peter at the Golden Gate
That you hate to make him wait,
But you just gotta have another cigarette.

Interestingly enough, Tex Williams [and Merle Travis] wrote this song in 1947 — before the first Surgeon General’s report linking cigarette smoking to lung cancer, and before the condemnation of the health effects of smoking in Reader’s Digest.

UPDATE: As noted in the comments, the song should be credited to both Tex Williams and Merle Travis, the latter of whom wrote most of it, though Williams was the first to record it.