"Scrub Me Mama with a Boogie Beat" is a 1940 hit boogie-woogie song written by Don Raye. A bawdy, jazzy tune, the song describes a laundry woman from Harlem, New York whose technique is so unusual that people come from all around just to watch her scrub. The Andrews Sisters and Will Bradley & His Orchestra recorded the most successful pop versions of the song, but it is today best recognized as the centerpiece of an eponymous Walter Lantz Studio cartoon from 1941.
The short, released on March 28, 1941 by Universal Pictures features no director credit (Walter Lantz claims to have directed the cartoon himself), with a story by Ben Hardaway, animation by Alex Lovy and Frank Tipper, and voice work by Mel Blanc. The short is awash with blackface stereotypes of African American people and culture, and of life in the rural Southern United States.
The Scrub Me Mama short is today in the public domain.
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