(Jimmy Kennedy - Nat Simon)
Australia
#6 Sydney #31 Melbourne #8 Brisbane #8 Adelaide
B-side on Festival, an instrumental by Col Joye’s backing band. The song is usually known as Istanbul (Not Constantinople), its original title.
The Joy Boys are often credited with Col Joye on his records but they also released their own instrumentals including Smoky Mokes, their biggest hit (1961, #1 Sydney #10 Melbourne #2 Brisbane #1 Adelaide #26 Perth), and Southern ‘Rora, an original in honour of the Southern Aurora, a new Sydney-Melbourne express train (1962, #5 Sydney #5 Melbourne #5 Brisbane #2 Adelaide).
There are numerous versions of Istanbul (Not Constantinople), too many to go into here. Second Hand Songs lists 100 versions, but see The Originals for a list of 14 essentials.
(Jimmy Kennedy - Nat Simon)
UK
#11 UK
Single on His Master’s Voice December 1954 by Liverpool-born singer and actor, also something of a song-and-dance man, real name Frank Abelson (1928-1999). His signature tune was Give Me The Moonlight, Give Me The Girl [YouTube].
Frankie Vaughan had over 30 songs on the UK Top 40, 1954-1968. Many of them were covers of current American hits, including Jim Lowe’s US #1 The Green Door (#2 UK for Vaughan, 1956), Joe Valino’s #12 Garden Of Eden (#1, 1957), and Gene McDaniels’ #5 Tower Of Strength (#1, 1961).
See also Frankie Vaughan – The Key (1960).
The classic original of Tower of Strength by Gene McDaniels managed only #49 UK in the same month that Vaughan’s #1 cover version charted. To appreciate why, you probably had to be there in pre-Merseybeat Britain, but Frankie was a star, a likeable and popular entertainer. See, for example, his good-humoured appearances on Morecombe and Wise’s TV show [YouTube].
(Jimmy Kennedy - Nat Simon)
USA
Original version
#10 USA #3 Australia
10″ 78 rpm disc on Columbia by Toronto vocal harmony group who moved to New York and found success on US TV and in backing other artists, notably on the #1 hit Cry by Johnny Ray And The Four Lads (1952).
Istanbul was The Four Lads’ first Top 10 hit in their own right. Their biggest hits were Moments To Remember (1955, #2), No, Not Much (1956, #2) and Standing On The Corner (1956, #3, from The Most Happy Fella), and they continued to chart Top 40 until 1958.
The title refers to the 1930 renaming of Constantinople (from the emperor Constantine I) to Istanbul (Turkish adaptation from Greek). Lyrics: Istanbul was Constantinople / Now it’s Istanbul, not Constantinople …
The writers
• Jimmy Kennedy (1902-1984), born in Omagh, Northern Ireland, was a prolific and successful songwriter best
known for his lyrics to well-known songs including Teddy Bears’ Picnic, South Of The
Border, We’re Gonna Hang Out The Washing on the Siegfried Line, and
Red Sails In The Sunset. He wrote the British iteration of Cokey Cokey:
see here at
this site for its complicated history.
• New Yorker Nat Simon (1900-1979) was a composer-pianist-bandleader who wrote numerous songs heard in feature
films and on the stage. One of his best-known compositions is Poinciana (from a Cuban source, lyrics by Buddy
Bernier), a standard introduced by Bing Crosby in 1943 and recorded by numerous artists across various
musical genres.
(Jimmy Kennedy - Nat Simon)
New
Zealand
Later version
On album Jabberwocky Goes To Town by busking band with a penchant for ukuleles (their words) from Hamilton NZ, formed in 1983 by Jim Fulton, Graeme Cairns and lan “Cutty” Coldham-Fussell.
On Jabberwocky Goes To Town they are Graeme Cairns (as Laird McGillicuddy) Big Jim (Fulton) Jnr, Peter Caldwell (as P. Bagg), and The Naughty See-Monkey.
They were still active late 2024, going by their Facebook posts.
(Jimmy Kennedy - Nat Simon)
USA
Later version
#61 UK | Album #75 USA, #14 UK
On Elektra LP Flood by unconventional, hard-to-categorise band formed 1982, in fact duo John Linnell and John Flansburgh with various backing musicians from 1992 (see lists at discogs/com).
They Might Be Giants’ most successful single was Birdhouse in Your Soul (1990, #3 USA #6 UK), another track from Flood. Among their notable achievements are a long-running Dial-a-Song service, and educational albums for children including Here Comes Science (2009).
Pop Archives
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Website by Lyn Nuttall. © Lyn Nuttall 2004-2025. Chart positions courtesy of Gavin Ryan’s Australian Chart Books and Dean Scapolo’s Complete NZ Music Charts. Special thanks to Terry Stacey for information, corrections and suggestions. Thanks also to Tony Watson, Philippe Edouard, Dave Overett.., More…