black cat bone

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.