| Well now Billy Voltaire was a piano player up from Miami way
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| He used to play in the bars, he could sound like the stars
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| Ladies would pay and pay
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| One night he did wind up playin' in Havana town
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| Nobody knew, least Billy Voltaire that these were his final sounds
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| He met up with Meritta, a dancer in from the Coast
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| Half woman, half child, she drove him half wild
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| He loved that lady the most
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| One night he did find her in the arms of Shrimper Dan
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| So he pulled a knife, took poor Danny’s life
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| And then he turned his own cold hand
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| And it’s just a Cuban crime of passion
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| Messy and old fashioned
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| Yeah, that’s what the papers did say
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| It’s just a Cuban crime of passion
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| Añejo and knives a slashin'
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| Yeah but that’s what the people like to read about
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| Up in America, up in America
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| Well now they never found Meritta, some people say she got ill
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| Billy Voltaire had no one to claim him, he was buried on pauper’s hill
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| And no one talks about 'em no more, it happened just a week ago
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| But people get by and people get high
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| In the tropics they come and they go
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| And it’s just a Cuban crime of passion
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| Messy and old fashioned
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| Yeah, that’s what the papers did say
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| It’s just a Cuban crime of passion
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| Añejo and knives a slashin'
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| But that’s what the people like to read about
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| Up in America, up in America |