Illinois Press Book Blog

black cat bone
I believe my good gal have found my black cat bone
I can leave Sunday mornin’ Monday mornin’ I’m tippin’ ’round home.
—Blind Lemon Jefferson, “Broke And Hungry,” 1926

A hoodoo charm held to confer magical powers upon its possessor, including invisibility and the ability to triumph over sexual rivals. In the above song, the performer is suggesting that his girlfriend has been able to prevent abandonment by virtue of using his own black cat bone. As dispensed by some conjurers, the charm was represented as a bone boiled from a live black cat that made no reflection in a mirror (Puckett, 1925). An ex-slave noted: “First, the cat is killed and boiled, after which the meat is scraped from the bones. The bones are then taken to the creek and thrown in. The bone that goes up stream is the lucky one and should be kept” (Minnie R. Ross, as quoted in Born in Slavery). At the same time, the phrase was loosely applied to mean “just a bone they put in that hoodoo bag . . . [with] a piece of lodestone, some kind of red cloth; they got it mixed up together” (Willie Moore).

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.

bird liver
I wanna give you folks a warnin’,
I mean this mornin’,
An’ I want you all to strictly understand:
Now you can call me what you choose, but I’m a bird liver-cravin’ man.
—Sylvester Kimbrough, “Bird Liver Blues,” 1929

An elderly woman; black slang synonymous with hogmeat (Hill). The statement “you can call me what you choose” is put forth with the assumption that the singer will be regarded as a gigolo.

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.

break one’s neck
Way down South you oughta see the women Shimmy and shake
Got a new way a-wiggle, make a weak man break his neck.
—Blind Lemon Jefferson, “Southern Woman Blues,” 1928

To marry, in Southern slang (Hendrickson, Whistlin’ Dixie)

On November 2, 2009, we will publish Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt. Periodically, between now and the book’s official release, I’ll post an entry from Barrelhouse Words.

jellybean
Down on Franklin Avenue, jellybeans standin’ to an’ fro
Well you hear one jellybean ask the other one:
“Which a-way did my good girl go?”
—“Hi” Henry Brown, “Nut Factory Blues,” 1932

A moron or simpleton. As an ex-employee of the St. Louis factory that was the subject of the above song put it: “‘Jellybean’ means you half-cracked. . . . If I call you a ‘jellybean’ that mean you a simple-crack guy. . . . If a guy call me a ‘jellybean’ direct to my face, he callin’ me somethin’ ignorant . . .” (Sylvester Grant, 1970 interview with author). As a general pejorative, the term dates to about 1915 (DAS); it appears in Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury (1929).

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.

in one’s whiskey

When I’m in my whiskey, I don’t care what I say
’Cause me and my whiskey, we going to have our way.
—Barbecue Bob, “Me And My Whiskey,” 1929

Intoxicated; perhaps suggested by the genteel equivalent, in one’s cups. The above is one of the few instances of blues-era black slang for drunkenness.

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.

butter and egg man
Why don’t you take me pretty mama, make something out of poor me?
I’m just a butter and egg man, just as soft as I can be.
—Papa Charlie Jackson, “Butter And Egg Man Blues,” 1926
A disparaging Jazz Age term for a small-time businessman playing the role of a free-spending playboy, particularly on jaunts to cabarets. This meaning is not evident in the above song; nor is it evident that the singer actually understood the phrase, one of the few fashionable slang terms to trickle down into blues recording.

From Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt.

On November 2, 2009, we will publish Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary by Stephen Calt, which has been in the works since the late 1960s.  Periodically, between now and the book’s official release, I’ll post an entry from Barrelhouse Words. First up, a familiar phrase:

makin’ whoopee
Undertaker been here an’ gone, I give him your heights an’ size
You’ll be makin’ whoopee with the devil, in hell tomorrow night.
—King Solomon Hill, “Whoopee Blues,” 1932
A 1920s vogue term for carousing, particularly at parties and with the opposite sex, popularized among white youth by the Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson Tin Pan Alley hit, “Makin’ Whoopee” (1928). It was afterward associated with gossip columnist Walter Winchell, who claimed to have coined it.