Las Vegas song

Circa 1952. This is a fun little thing that I dug up in UNLV Special Collections…well, I saw it lying on a desk. It’s sheet music to the 1952 chart-topper, “I Lost my Love When I Lost My Loot in Las Vegas.”

It’s not every singer who can appear on a sheet music cover shirtless and in a captain’s hat, a generation before the Village People, no less.

With lyrics by Adele Frazier and music by Gordon Vanderburg, the tune is meant to be sung in a bright moderato. Here are the words:

I Lost my Love When I LOST MY LOOT IN LAS VEGAS,
And that’s why I ain’t happy any more!
I Lost my Love When I LOST MY LOOT IN LAS VEGAS,
I got cleaned out and she got awful sore!

She said it wasn’t nice,
the way I rolled them dice,
I made a haul then lost it all,
When I threw those snake eyes twice!

I Lost my Love When I LOST MY LOOT IN LAS VEGAS,
And that’s why I ain’t happy any more!
I Lost my Love When I LOST MY LOOT IN LAS VEGAS,
I got cleaned out and she got awful sore!

Our love went on the blink,
When I made her pawn her mink,
Then she said, “We are washed up, boy,
It’s later than you think!”

I Lost my Love When I LOST MY LOOT IN LAS VEGAS,
but she’ll come back when I’ve got “jack.”

If I forget about about roulette, and bingo beans,
And slot machines, and horses slow that place and show,
Oh! how can I be happy any more?

This is so funny that I can’t even begin to explain why. It seems a travesty that “Viva Las Vegas” gets so much play and this perfectly good song in the key of F major is forgotten.