Songfacts®:

• Pete Wylie has always been characteristically vague about who or what inspired this love song. However, the roots of the enigmatic title can be traced to the illegal lottery known as "Policy" in 19th century America. A three-number entry was known as a "Gig" and the ever-popular 4, 11, 44 bet became known as the "Washerwoman's Gig" after it was featured on the cover of Aunt Sally's Policy Players Dream Book in the 1890s. Probably the earliest written reference to the gig is in The Secrets Of The Great City by Edward Winslow Martin. The book is about the New York slums and it was published in 1868.
• In 1889, sheet music publisher H.J. Wehman of New York advertised a song called "Four 'eleven forty-four," possibly taken from the unsuccessful musical show 4-11-44 by Williams & Walker, of the same year. The phrase also appeared in a now-considered racist minstrel song by William A. Heelan & J. Fred Helf in 1900. In 1925 the phrase "Four-Eleven-Forty-Four" appeared in "The Penitentiary Bound Blues" by Rosa Henderson and the Choo Choo Jazzers, and Papa Charlie Jackson recorded a Blues number of the same name in 1926. The blues theme continued when Pinetop & Lindberg (aka The Sparks Brothers) released another song called "4-11-44" in the 1930s and a Jazz number of the same name was released by Poindexter & Erwin on Prestige records in 1963. An LA band called The Blasters made "4-11-44" the title track of their 2004 album, while Jawbone released yet another track called "4-11-44" in 2005. Like most of the earlier songs, but unlike Wylie's, these tracks had an anti-gambling theme. More recently, this lucky number and sign of good fortune has appeared in online dictionaries as slang for a large male appendage. >>

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