Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary

K

keyhole 141 K Kate Adams Well the big Kate Adams, she got ways like a man She’ll steal a woman baby, anywhere she lands. —Mooch Richardson,“Big Kate Adams,” 1928 The name of a well-known Mississippi steamboat, existing in three ill-fated models. The first, a luxury liner, operated between Memphis and Arkansas City from 1882 to 1888, when it caught fire near Commerce, Mississippi. The second Kate became a dance hall for blacks after running afoul of a sandbar near Helena, Arkansas, around 1919 (Willie Moore); its successor burned on the Memphis wharf in 1926. keep it up Now twenty-five cents a saucer, seventy-five cents a cup But it’s extra dollar papa if you mean to keep it up. —Hattie Hart,“Won’t You Be Kind,” 1928 To prolong a debauch; an archaic slang phrase recorded by Grose (1796). The above couplet refers to a commercial sex transaction. keyhole I feel like jumpin’ through the keyhole in your door “If you jump this time baby, you won’t jump no more.” —Blind Lemon Jefferson,“Broke And Hungry Blues,” 1926 A term for vagina dating to the 19th century (F&H, 1896). Jefferson’s protégé Tom Shaw gave the above verse a literal interpretation, casting it in terms of a dialogue between a quarreling couple:“She stole his money and he tracks her down.. . .She’s at home,won’t open the door for him.. . .He done told her, he feel like jumpin’through the keyhole of her door; she told him, if he jump this time,he won’t jump no more,’cause she’s standin’there with a yokie-yoke [pistol]. Boom boom! . . . Happens every day.” Other blues performers evince a figurative sexual understanding of keyhole: Mama I feel like jumpin’ through the keyhole of your door I can jump so easy your man will never know. —Furry Lewis,“Falling Down Blues,” 1927 142 key to the highway, to kave the key to the highway, to have the I got the key to the highway, and I’m billed out and bound to go I’m gonna leave here runnin’ ’cause walkin’ is most too slow. —Big Bill,“Key To The Highway,” 1941 Evidently, to be homeless; to have the key of the street stood for the same condition in 19th-century speech (F&H, 1896). A variant expression, key to the bushes, appears in the following: I got the key to the bushes, and I’m rarin’ to go I ought to leave here runnin’, ’cause footpath’s most too slow. —Bessie Tucker,“Key To The Bushes Blues,” 1929 kick it When I have it I can hardly talk When I kick it I can hardly walk —Kansas City Kitty,“Gym’s Too Much For Me,” 1930 To engage in sexual intercourse;in current black slang,the expression means to socialize. kick one’s heels up I got me two or three bottles of homebrew, three or four quarts of rye Stuck my head out in the alley and kicked my heels up high. —Lillie Mae,“Wise Like That,” 1930 A black slang term meaning to carouse:“. . . he didn’t do all this ramblin’and drinkin’ corn whiskey and ‘kickin’ up heels’ and things” (Son House, quoted in Calt and Wardlow, 1989). kid, kid gal, kid man Now you tell me mama, do you think that’s right? With your kid all day an’ run to me at night. —Ishman Bracey,“Saturday Blues,” 1928 A once-common black expression for a surreptitious sex partner taken in addition to one’s customary companion.As explained by Gary Davis,a kid gal is “a person . . . she’s not your regular gal; she’s fine if you want her sometimes. . . . You don’t care who else got her, you understand you’ll always have her. . . . Maybe in a late hour you might catch her sometime: ‘Gal, I’d like to have you tonight, what about it?’ Boom.” The term probably originated with the popular vaudeville song of 1909,“I Love My Wife, But Oh, You Kid!” kill one dead If I catch you in my bed Mama I’m gonna kill you dead. —Kansas City Kitty,“Leave My Man Alone,” 1934 A redundant expression found in several blues and in the speech of an exslave (“The news killed her dead,” cf. Botkin, 1945). kind-hearted woman 143 killing floor Come on in sweet mama, I can...