In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

author’s note T his work was begun in the late 1960s, a time when neither the vocabulary of blues songs nor the subject of bygone black language appeared to claim anyone’s attention.It was initially fueled by simple curiosity, a love of language, and by what was then a startling discovery, for me at any rate: that the most striking expressions found in blues songs were not, as usually depicted, poetic or metaphorical turns of phrase, but rather were slang terms. Blues abounded in slang that seemed to belong to the ordinary vocabulary of the singers and their peers.Moreover,many unfamiliar terms occurring in blues songs were contained in dictionaries that did not classify these expressions as black or even American slang. On the premise that every enigmatic expression found on an old blues recording had been an aspect of actual speech, I compiled a list of such terms and attempted to track them down as best I could.In catch-can fashion,I questioned various aging blacks (particularly blues singers) regarding their meanings. Every discovery was fortuitous. The most unlikely one occurred at a Manhattan bus terminal eatery, where I was startled to hear a scruffy, middle-aged customer denounce the counterman as a “jambooger”—a vexing word on my want list I had never encountered outside of a 1930 recording titled Jambooger Blues. The belligerent customer (whom I anxiously followed outside) was willing to indulge my curiosity about the term, though he obviously regarded me as something of a lunatic. Unable to interest a publisher in the manuscript I had crafted, I became disheartened and abandoned it in 1976 in the fashion of a love affair gone bad. But for Ted Gioia, a fellow author with whom I began corresponding in 2005, the present work would have remained a stillborn enterprise. His curiosity about the dictionary led me to exhume the remains of the manuscript from a closet. Unexpectedly, most of my original papers were still intact after thirty years. It was on the basis of Ted’s enthusiasm that I returned to this project and updated it. In a palpable sense, this work is his as much as mine; apart from encouraging me,Ted took it upon himself to bring my manuscript to the attention of the University of Illinois Press. I am certain that no writer has ever received greater assistance from another writer than I have received from my unusual benefactor,a man I have never even met in person. In a field where competitive egos run riot, he is a rare, magnanimous soul. x author’s note In addition to Ted Gioia, I owe substantial debts to various people who assisted me in assorted ways,particularly Renatha Saunders (who provided firsthand information on entries surviving in black speech), Tim Aurthur, Christopher Calt, Owen D’Amato, David Hinckley, Denis Lisica, John Miller, Maggie de Miramon, Xiomara Vogel, and Steven Wexler. I further wish to convey my gratitude to Richard Nevins of Yazoo Records,who graciously supplied me with his entire catalogue of CDs for this project,and to Chris Smith of Blues & Rhythm magazine,who (with equal generosity) provided me with copies of his informative column,“Words Words Words,” devoted to the language of blues songs. I also wish to thank Suzanne Ryan of Oxford University Press for her kind comments and beneficial criticisms concerning a version of this manuscript, and (posthumously) B. F. Skinner, for steering the original version to his own publisher on my behalf. Finally, I would be considerably remiss if I failed to thank my editor,Joan Catapano,and Rebecca Crist of the UIP Production Department for their helpful and judicious stewardship, along with associate editor Tad Ringo, with whom I enjoyed a productive working relationship. ...

Share