The song lyrics tell of a taxi dancer lamenting the hardships of her job. The song was originally written for Lee Morse who was acting in the musicalSimple Simon, but when Morse showed up intoxicated at the Boston opening of the musical, Florenz Ziegfeld fired her. She was replaced by Ruth Etting in the show, and Etting popularized the song as well in a Columbia recording made in 1930. This recording was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2012, it was added to the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry list of "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" American sound recordings.[2]
In the MGM biographical film about Etting, Love Me or Leave Me (1955), the song is performed by Doris Day. The Day recording was also released by Columbia.
The Ruth Etting version of the song is part of the official soundtrack of the videogame BioShock 2 (2010).
Parodies
In the cartoon show Cow & Chicken episode "Supermodel Cow", Cow becomes a celebrity. After she loses popularity, she is found by her brother in a milk bar singing "10 Cents a Glass."[5]
In the cartoon DuckTales, the story of how Scrooge McDuck met personal pilot Launchpad McQuack involves them dickering over McQuack's rate of pay, with McQuack confusingly suggesting "ten cents a dance" instead of "ten cents a mile."
