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