"Rebecca Came Back from Mecca" is a popular song with words and music by the prolific songwriting team of Bert Kalmar and Harry Ruby. The song was published in January 1921 by Waterson, Berlin & Snyder co., New York.[1]

"Rebecca Came Back from Mecca" had considerable popularity in its day. The song falls into the category "Oriental Fox-Trot," and is about the Middle East, which was still somewhat mysterious to the average American. It is sung by a Jewish/Yiddish dialect narrator (allowing such rhymes as Rebecca/Mecca/Turkish Terbecca - Tobacco) about a New York Jewish girl who has gone to the Middle East after starring in an "oriental show" and has now returned to New York with mysterious Eastern Ways.[2]

The song reflects changing American culture and mores at the time it was written, and even contains a reference to then-popular silent film star Theda Bara:

"She's as bold as Theda Bara
Theda's bare but Becky's barer."

The song has been recorded by Burl Ives, Monroe Silver,[3] The New Leviathan Oriental Foxtrot Orchestra, and more recently by Janet Klein And Her Parlor Boys.

Notes

  1. ↑ Catalog of Copyright Entries pt. III, n. s., v. 16, no. 1, 1921, p. 473 (no. 490), retrieved 2014-01-04
  2. ↑ Friedlander, Jonathan, Middle Eastern Americana Archive Unveiled, UCLA International Institute, archived from the original on 2013-04-19, retrieved 2014-01-04
  3. ↑ Matrix B-25111. Rebecca (come back from Mecca) / Monroe Silver, The Encyclopedic Discography of Victor Recordings, retrieved 2014-01-04
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