History & versions of Misirlou

An Egyptian girl with a Turkish name

Misirlou (Μισιρλού) is Greek Μισιρλού — the feminine form of a borrowing from Turkish Mısırlı, “Egyptian.” The Turkish word itself comes from Arabic Miṣr, Egypt. So the song is about an Egyptian woman, named in the language of the Ottoman street rather than in Greek Αιγύπτια.^[1]

No one owns the composer credit in the folk sense. Arabic, Greek, and Jewish musicians were already playing the tune by the 1920s; the original author is unknown.^[1] A later claim that it derives from Sayed Darwish’s “Bint Misr” is treated as doubtful.^[1] Same neighborhood of modes is not the same kinship: the melody walks a Hijaz / double-harmonic pattern — the interval shape klezmer calls freygish (פֿרייגיש) — and that scale is a street, not a family tree.

The first record we can point at

The earliest known recording is Tetos Demetriades’s “Misirlou”, cut for Columbia in New York in July 1927 and issued for the Greek market as Columbia 56073-F.^[2][4] Demetriades was an Ottoman Greek, born in Istanbul around the turn of the century, who left for the United States in 1921. He almost certainly knew the song as a folk tune before he named it on a disc.^[1][3]

A few years later Michalis Patrinos recorded it in Athens as “Misirlou” — slower, a rebetiko / tsifteteli, sometimes titled Mousourlou. A New York side followed in 1931.^[1][5]

Copyright is a later American story. Nick Roubanis, a Greek-American music instructor, registered a jazz-exotica arrangement and is still often printed as the composer — unchallenged in most of the world, contested in Greece, where Patrinos is sometimes named instead.^[1] English words were added by Chaim Tauber, Fred Wise, and Milton Leeds. Harry James put an instrumental on the U.S. chart in 1941. None of that invents an author for the folk contour.

Yiddish words, a Jewish ambit

The tune entered the ambit of klezmer only in the late 1940s, Seth Rogovoy writes — a wedding-band and dance-repertoire life, not a Second Avenue premiere.^[8] That is a cited contemporary account, not a 78 we can play here. What we can point at is a Yiddish lyric.

Miriam Kressyn wrote Yiddish words in the 1940s; her husband Seymour Rexite sang them.^[7] The copy we can hear is Banner’s “Misirlou”, ca. 1948, Rexite with Abe Ellstein at the piano — held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, not on YouTube.^[6] We do not have a citable full Yiddish text to print; the recording is the instance.

Ethnomusicologist Harry Smith recorded the Orthodox rabbi Naftali Zvi Margolies Abulafia singing the tune on Manhattan’s Lower East Side in the 1950s. A later write-up treats that performance as Hebrew. Either way it is another Jewish room, not a second composition — and we do not have a verified upload to catalog.^[8][7]

One string, much faster

Dick Dale recast the melody as “Misirlou” in 1962 — a surf-guitar instrumental on Deltone, later the sound most of the English-speaking world thinks is Misirlou.^[1] His father and uncles were Lebanese-American musicians. Dale said he had seen an uncle play the tune on one string of the oud, and he won a bet by doing the same on guitar, at rock-and-roll speed.^[10][9]

Quentin Tarantino put Dale’s record over the opening of Pulp Fiction in 1994. That is a quotation, not a new cousin — the same rearrangement, a new room.^[1] Later rock and pop quotes (the Beach Boys, “Pump It”) sit in the same file: they point back at Dale, not at Demetriades.

The family, as a list

Four catalog lives we can name and, where a legal player exists, hear. The Jewish wedding-band life Rogovoy describes is real and cited; it is not a fifth row until we have a specific recording.

1. MisirlouTetos Demetriades, 1927Folk source

   1927 · New York · Greek — Earliest known recording — Columbia, New York.

2. MisirlouMichalis Patrinos, ca. 1930Rearrangement

   1930 · Athens · Greek — Slower rebetiko / tsifteteli, circulated as Mousourlou.

3. MisirlouSeymour Rexite, ca. 1948Translation

   1948 · New York · Yiddish — Miriam Kressyn’s Yiddish words; Banner, with Abe Ellstein.

   • Yiddish theater
4. MisirlouDick Dale & His Del-Tones, 1962Rearrangement

   1962 · California · instrumental — Surf guitar — the life Pulp Fiction later quoted.

   • Rock

To sit with the mode this contour lives in, see What is freygish?. To follow klezmer’s own American crossings, see Where did klezmer come from?.

Quotations are reproduced briefly for commentary and criticism, with attribution and links to the originals. Where a source is public domain it is marked as such; other works are quoted under fair use. Click a song title to play a recording in place, or to open the catalog page when we only have an archive link.