How to dig jive talk

Pay heed: the cat who wrote this is really in there. (Via Working Stiff 925)

Mark Frauenfelder is the founder of Boing Boing and the editor-in-chief of MAKE and Cool Tools. Twitter: @frauenfelder. Come and hear Mark speak at the ALA conference in Chicago on July 1.

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Anonymous

I can’t decide if ‘your stickin’” should be “you’re stickin’”. “You’re stickin’” makes more sense but “your stickin’” is deliciously oblique.
Anonymous

See also “Really The Blues” Milton “The Mezz” Mezzrow, http://www.amazon.com/Really-Blues-Mezz-Mezzrow/dp/0806512059
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mezzrow
funkendub

Cornfed, as in “from the Midwest” and therefore from Squaresville.
Anonymous

It’s interesting that the term “Like a motherless child” is in there, meaning sedate, since in the 40′s there was a famous gospel singer, Mahalia Jackson, who had a some called “Sometimes I feel like a motherless child”. Could it be a reference to that?

If you’re interested, Mahalia can be found singing it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CPBVaRpNEgE

at 2:29 in the vid (which is a medley of Summertime and Motherless Child). Well worth a few minutes of your time, if just ‘cos of the amazing set of pipes that woman had.
Anonymous

This is from the back side of Harry “The Hipster” Gibson’s compilation called “Boogie Woogie in Blue.” The man could play an amazing boogie and was a hilarious song writer despite his schooling at Juilliard. He grew up in Harlem which probably explains a lot of his musical leanings. Unfortunately, his career was torpedoed when the industry took offense to his song “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy’s Ovaltine.” Check it out and get you some education:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZ5_SyvxDXE
Anonymous

A hep cat’s sitting on a bench in Washington Square park (Greenwich Village, for the cornfed)

And a little old lady walks up to him and says, “Do the cross town buses run this way?”

And the cat says, “DOO-dah DOO-dah”

Heard it on a Dave Van Ronk record.

Yes, record. They were big and round, and we loved poring over the covers.
- irksome
  
  Anon@20-> Solid.
Freddie Freelance

The last one should be “You’re” instead of “Your.”

I was Hep when it was Hip to be Hep. Or vice versa.
- irksome
  
  “My motto, as I live and learn, is: Dig and Be Dug, In Return.”
  
  Langston Hughes
grikdog

That dog won’t hunt. The best sendup of slummin’ argot in Merkah today is the (deliberately) fake dealer jive in Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars. Unless you count the notorious “I speak jive” routine in Airplane.
- grikdog
  
  Not to menshun the murderously funny bits of Cheech & Chong. Can you say pentaco?
malex

“Golly!”
Mister44

I believe this is vintage, thus some of the slang that survived had a different meaning back then.
Anonymous

Where I’m from “cornfed” means fat, like a cow who is corn fed.
buddy66

The stuff is 1940′s and late 30′s. Pretty square stuff being passed off as hip. See Lord Buckley for the real thing. Hipster=hot jazz? NFW

Cool is the operative word, not hot. Hot was for jitterbugs, not hipsters.
CyborgAbeLincoln

Wow, this is really informative. I’ve been hearing a lot about “hipsters” lately and wondering what they were.
- irksome
  
  Were? WERE? Dig and be dug.
  
  A hep cat goes into a diner, orders a slice of pie. The waitress says, “The pie is gone.” Cat responds, “Crazy. I’ll take two.”
Anonymous

It’s hilarious how many of these are wrong.
Incarnadine

Huh. The term “hipster” has changed a bit.
Fang Xianfu

I assume that’s a troll Abe, as the meaning has changed significantly since then :P

I like the fact that half of them are translated into almost equally incomprehensible slang. One of the translations is “go crazy” when it means “become angry”, or “putting you wise”, which I guess means “correcting your incorrect beliefs”. Another is “cornfed”, which I don’t understand at all.
Anonymous

Far out man. I can really dig this.
imnothere

What a great addition the flapper dictionary! Paired with the post on Quantum Mechanics. Dig what i’m puttin’ down; I’m ready to fall on down through time. But you better believe, i’m gonna take it slow.
coaxial

“Drifter” means “floater”? Isn’t a “floater” ad dead body in the water?

Yo cat! I’m laying it on you straight man. You better take it slow and get straight or cut out. ‘Less you end up a drifter like Howlin’ Jack.
Boba Fett Diop

Oh, Stewardess! I speak Jive.
- kmoser
  
  Am I the only one who would swear her voice was dubbed? I want to know who really spoke those lines.
- Jake0748
  
  I was gonna say… I bet Barbara Billingsly studied this for her classic role.
  - Anonymous
    
    I heard that scene was all improv.
- peterbruells
  
  Great scene. In the German dub they had them speak Bavarian.
  
  So, do you speel leet?
  - g0d5m15t4k3
    
    Hah, I LoL’d for real. That was good.
jjasper

Excuse me, stewardess…
Anonymous

while the meaning of hipster has changed, the look really hasn’t, relative to the times of course.
Marchlewski

Hey you sass that hoopy, Ford Prefect, there’s a frood who really knows where his towel is!
bklynchris

I thought hipster meant a gainfully unemployed caucasian man child with facial hair and an assortment of hats ranging from snappy short brimmed panama to edgy used to be gangsta Kangols.

and the def for “square” being “cornfed”, what is that slang for? I guess that might be more apropos for “hipster”.
- JohnnyOC
  
  I thought the “hipster” term and description was just too literal and there can’t possible be people like that..
  
  until this morning…
  
  I was walking out of my apartment to work and met one of the area’s apt. neighbors. He has a young guy with a unkempt beard with wild hair, copper-rim glasses, wearing a panama hat with some crazy t-shirt and shoes, drinking some coffee.
  
  Never met one in real life before, so I stand corrected. :)
  - bklynchris
    
    dude….that was me! ; )
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Square = Cornfed = mainstream conformist, likely caucasian in ethnic origin, possibly raised in a rural environment. The subject is uneducated about and inexperienced with cultures other than the one s/he was raised within.
  - bklynchris
    
    yes, i know….but cornfed is slang as well….my point being.
Anonymous

LIKE WAY-OUTSVILLE , IN ORBIT !
juepucta

Solid!

-G.
Spookyland

Don’t be a Clyde – ‘cornfed’ is coolspeak for a bumpkin, a rube, a farm boy who just fell off the turnip truck.

Unless they knew about Duckman’s buddy.
JhmL

The right hand column will need explanations soon as well…
GrymRpr

Or…
Read Cab Calloway’s hepsters dictionary:
http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/hepsters.html
dculberson

Uhhhh.. I’m almost certain that their definition for “ball all night” is not quite right.
- warreno
  
  Precisely what I was thinking.
  - TEKNA2007
    
    An all-night … “party”
    - Cook!EMonstA
      
      A small ‘intimate affair’..?
- grimc
  
  Depends on your skills…
- teapot
  
  I can’t find any evidence to the contrary, but I actually doubt it. I think its origins have more to do with ball, as in ballroom dancing.
  
  The modern day slang usage of ball as in ‘baller’ has different meanings which I think may be colouring our perception of this old phrase. I had the same thought as you when I first read it.
Space Junk

How To Speak Hip – Del Close And John Brent
http://audio.skeyelab.com/howtospeakhip/