Songfacts®:

• In 1931, "Just A Gigolo" became Bing Crosby's first-ever hit song as a solo artist (#12 Pop.) It was originally adapted from an Austrian hit "Schoner Gigolo," written in 1928 and was first sung in America by the French star Irene Bordoni. It was re-styled by trumpeter-singer Louis Prima in 1956 with an uptempo arrangement combining "Just a Gigolo" with another song, "I Ain't Got Nobody." While still a member of Van Halen, David Lee Roth released a solo EP of standards, including his interpretation of Louis Prima's version of this track.
• After the Van Halen album 1984 was released, lead singer David Lee Roth made a solo EP, Crazy From The Heat. This was his first solo output, and wildly successful: the first single, his cover of "California Girls," went to #3 US and got rampant airplay on MTV. "Just A Gigolo/I Ain't Got Nobody" was the next single, and it was also a hit, keeping Roth in the spotlight in the summer of 1985 while his group was inactive. Flush with solo success and with tensions mounting, he left Van Halen at the end of the summer. The following year, Van Halen released 5150, their first with Roth's replacement, Sammy Hagar. Diamond Dave issue his first full-length solo album that year as well, Eat 'Em and Smile.
• David Lee Roth played up his party-boy image on this song, which also gave him an excuse to create a colorful video with lots of babes. It was a novelty, however, and sounded nothing like Van Halen, something Sammy Hagar pointed out in a 1986 interview with Creem. Said Hagar: "'Just A Gigolo' - you knew that that wasn't Van Halen, that that was just him singing. Even if his music is more geared towards old Van Halen-type stuff, it still ain't gonna sound like Van Halen. If it does, it's gonna sound like a thin version."
• Roth's love of quirky songs from a bygone era stems from his childhood, when he would listen to the underground radio station KPPC out of Pasadena, California. In their "anything goes" format, they played lots of fun, adventurous songs by the likes of Cab Calloway and Louis Prima.
• Early in his career, Bob Rivers did a parody of this song called "I'm Just A Big Ego," which poked fun at David Lee Roth's outsized opinion of himself:
  
  When the end comes they'll know
  I've got a big ego
  The world revolves around me
  
  At the time, Rivers was a disc jockey on the Worcester, Massachusetts radio station WAAF, where he did the morning show with Zip Zipfel. They did the parody for their show, but it proved so popular, Rhino Records put it out as a single in 1985. Two years later, Rivers released his Twisted Christmas album on Atlantic Records, which went Gold thanks to the popular Christmas parody "Twelve Pains Of Christmas."