“I love coffee, I love tea” (“Java Jive”)

“I love coffee, I love tea” (also “I like coffee, I like tea”) is best known today as the first line of the song “Java Jive” (1940, with words by Milton Drake, music by Ben Oakland), as performed by the Ink Spots. The Manhattan Transfer also performed “Java Jive.”
 
The line was originally part of a counting-out rhyme, often sung by girls as they jumped rope. The most popular version (recorded since at least 1888) is: “I love coffee, I love tea, I love the boys and the boys love me.”
 
“I love coffee, I love tea, I love you if you love me” is cited in print from 1869.
 
   
Wikipedia: The Ink Spots
The Ink Spots were a popular African American vocal group that helped define the musical genre that led to rhythm & blues and rock and roll, and the subgenre doo-wop. They and the Mills Brothers, another black vocal group of the 1930s and 1940s, gained much acceptance in the white community.
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They released such other Decca singles as “Address Unknown” (1939), “My Prayer” (1939), “When The Swallows Come Back To Capistrano” (1940), “Whispering Grass” (1940), “Do I Worry” (1940), “Java Jive” (1940), “Shout, Brother, Shout” (1942), “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore” (1942), “I Can’t Stand Losing You” (1943), “Cow-Cow Boogie” (1944 - with Ella Fitzgerald), “Into Each Life Some Rain Must Fall”/“I’m Making Believe” (1944 - both with Ella Fitzgerald), and “The Gypsy” (1946).
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“The Java Jive” inspired Bob’s Java Jive (built 1927, named in 1955), a jungle-themed tea-pot shaped lounge in Tacoma, Washington.
 
YouTube
I love coffee, I love tea
xashfordx
August 14, 2006
Basically it is showing my obsession with coffee and tea…. plus, i was bored
 
YouTube
JAVA JIVE/MANHATTAN TRANSFER WITH LAUREL MASSÉ.
sergios345
January 12, 2007
 
“Java Jive” lyrics
I love coffee, I love tea
I love the java jive and it loves me
Coffee and tea and the java and me
A cup, a cup, a cup, a cup, a cup (boy!) ...
   
29 June 1869, Port Jervis (NY) Evening Gazette, pg. 2, col. 3:
The following amatory epistle from a little eight-year-old girl to her “bow” was picked up in one of the schools of Oswego, a few days ago. (...) I love coffee I love tea I love you if you love me.
   
Google Books
July 1888, The American Anthropologist, “Games of Washington Children” by W. H. Babcock (also in Lippincott’s Magazine, March and September 1886), pg. 251:
I LIKE COFFEE AND I LIKE TEA
 
contains a naive confession of feminine strategy:
 
I like coffee and I like tea;
I like boys and the boys like me.
I’ll tell my mother when I get home
The boys wont let the girls alone.
O sweet beans and barley grows,
O sweet beans and barley grows,
Nor you nor I nor nobody knows
How O sweet beans and barley grows.
 
Google Books
The Counting-Out Rhymes of Children
By Henry Carrington Bolton
New York, NY: D. Appleton & Co.
1888
Pg. 117:
Miss Mary Mack, dressed in black,
Silver buttons on her back.
I love coffee, I love tea,
I love the boys, and the boys love me.
I’ll tell ma when she comes home,
The boys won’t leave the girls alone.
N. S. B., West Chester, Pa.
   
Google Books
The Games & Diversions of Argyleshire
Compiled by Robert Craig MacLagan, M.D.
London: Published for the Folk-Lore Society by Daviid Nutt
1901
Pg. 254:
March, march, two by two, my little sister lost her shoe,
I love coffee, I love tea, I love the boys, and the boys love me.
 
15 September 1909, Anaconda (MT) Standard, pg. 5, col. 1 ad:
“I Like Coffee,
I Like Tea”
—Old Song
You’ll be singing it when you drink exclusively our brands of each.
MULLER’S
205 East Park Avenue
 
9 February 1919, Philadelphia (PA) Inquirer, “You Haven’t Changed a Bit” by Wallace Irwin, magazine section, pg. 3, col. 1:
And even today, in Old Elihu, to him is attributed the authorship of the following anachreontic:
 
Some love coffee,
Some love tea
Some love the girls
And the girls love me;
The girls love me. But isn’t it queer?
The only thing that I love
(The only thing that he loves)
Is BEER!
 
15 April 1925, Decatur (IL) Daily Review, pg. 6, col. 3:
THOSE “Flaming Youth” tendencies being manifest in the present generation will be nothing compared to the generation that follows, if early indications bear any weight. Three small girls at Gastman school were jumping rope—a long rope, and the girl at one end was chanting cadence for the one in the middle who was doing the skipping. Her verse was:
 
“I love coffee, I love tea,
I love the boys, and the boys love me
How many boys are stuck on me?
One, two, three, four, five, six—”
 
The little miss whose “turn” it was proved to have sixteen ardent suitors.
 
OCLC WorldCat record
Java jive
by Ben Oakland; Milton Drake
Type:  Musical score : Popular music; English
Publisher: New York : Advanced Music Corp., ©1940.
Document Type: Musical Score
Notes: For voice and piano. Caption title. Includes chord symbols and guitar chord diagrams. First line of text: I love coffee, I love tea.
Description: 1 score (5 p.) ; 32 cm.
Responsibility: words by Milton Drake ; music by Ben Oakland.