Flat Foot Floogie (with a Floy Floy) is a 1938 jazz novelty tune written by Slim Gaillard, Slam Stewart, and Bud Green, performed by Slim & Slam. It was released as a February 1938 single on Vocalion, with Chinatown, My Chinatown as the B-side, and it became the duo’s biggest hit, peaking at number two in the US. The song blends swing with hokum humor and is built around the catchy repetition of the title words and the nonsense refrain “floy floy.” The original lyric used the word floozie, but Vocalion objected, so the recording circulated as “Flat Foot Floogie” with the revised lyric; the phrase floy floy was slang for a venereal disease but was treated as harmless by many listeners. It was widely covered in 1938 by artists such as Benny Goodman, Louis Armstrong with the Mills Brothers, Wingy Manone, and Woody Herman, helping popularize Gaillard and Stewart’s playful style. Initially released as a single and not tied to a specific album, the tune has since appeared on numerous jazz anthologies and compilations.
