On a Slow Boat to China is a 1948 popular song by Frank Loesser, who wrote both the music and the lyrics; it is not a traditional tune. The phrase had been a poker-player's term for a steady, handsome loser, and according to Loesser's daughter Susan Loesser, in her 1993 biography, he turned it into a romantic song. The phrase suggested the longest imaginable trip and later came to mean anything that takes an extremely long time.
The first hit recordings appeared in 1948, by Kay Kyser and His Orchestra with vocals by Harry Babbitt and Gloria Wood, which reached number two on Billboard and was a number one in Australia in 1949. Other 1948 versions came from Freddy Martin, Benny Goodman (vocal by Al Hendrickson, recorded in October 1947), Art Lund and Larry Clinton. Later recordings include those by Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby (1958), Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., Joni James, Jimmy Buffett, Fats Domino and Liza Minnelli. In the UK, Emile Ford and the Checkmates reached No. 3 in 1959. The song was used in the film The Master (2012), where Lancaster Dodd sings the phrase.
