I'm a Little Teapot

"The Teapot Song"
sheet music cover
Song by George Harry Sanders and Clarence Kelley
Released	1939
Format	Sheet music
Genre	Children's music
Label	Kelman Music Corporation

"The Teapot Song", commonly known as "I'm a Little Teapot", is an American song describing the heating and pouring of a teapot or a whistling tea kettle, which also has a spout but would be used to pour hot water onto tea bags or a tea ball filled with loose tea leaves. The song was originally written by George Harold Sanders and Clarence Z. Kelley and published in 1939.^[1]

Creation

Clarence Kelley and his wife ran a dance school for children, which taught the "Waltz Clog", a popular and easy-to-learn tap dance routine. This routine, however, proved too difficult for the younger students to master. To solve this problem, George Sanders wrote The Teapot Song, which required minimal skill and encouraged natural pantomime. Both the song and its accompanying dance, the "Teapot Tip", became enormously popular in America and overseas.^[2]

See also

• American tea culture
• Tea for Two (song), an earlier US-American song referring to tea, from 1925

References

1. Sanders, Ronald (January 1972). Reflections on a Teapot, the Personal History of a Time. Harper & Row, New York. ISBN 978-0-06-013754-0.
2. Clark, Garth (October 2001). The Artful Teapot. Watson-Guptill. ISBN 0-8230-0319-1.