The origins of Jive Talk
The musical tradition of Afro-americans was first developed on the plantations, like almost everything else in the story of Black English. Despite all the repression, the slaves were free to hold religious gatherings, through which the music was also used as codes among them. Therefore, the tradition of double meanings in songs had been established and was to flourish later in black music.
As well as the subversion of religion songs, the speakers also had a subversion attitude toward the language of their masters, for instance: ugly means beautiful in Black English. In the mid 1870s some elements such as double meaning, cover sexuality, black libertation and rhythms were combined into the most vital center of Black american culture: Jazz Music.
Jazz and Jive
The jazz men brought with them their own Black English vocabulary. The words and expressions started to be used and sometimes over exploited. This explains the need to create new words and expressions in order to maintain the spontaneity of jazz performances.
Due to legendary jazz men, a great number of words and expressions started to become known and used and they were knwon as Jive Talk. Among the jazz men who contributed to Jive Talk is Jelly Roll Morton, who introduced food related words like “cake”, which were hidden expressions for sex.
Jive talk was recognized especially during Cab Calloway time. He atracted downtowners, known as flappers and sheiks, to uptown and were facinated with Black music. As language is alive and in transformation, Jive Talk soon caught on generally. The downtowners would slip new words and phrases into their conversation to show they were smart and uptodate, and some journalists also used some Jive Talk when reporting the jazz scene in their collumns.
Louis Armstrong with his breadth audience, also contributed with his influence on Jive Talk. But it was two white comedians Gosdan and Correll, who introduced the talk to clubs and national audience through their radio show Amos and Andy, as jazz men had a relatively small circle of admires.
After the war, Little Richard began to make a name for himself in the 1950s with the song Tutti-frutti, which was covered by Elvis Presly and brought Jive Talk up again. The talk of the jazz men also became the cult slang of the white hippies. Nevertheless, a curious and ironical fact in the history of Jive Talk is that it was british imitators of Black musical slang who reintegrated elements of Black English into American talk. Pop groups like The Beatles and The Rolling Stones borrowed from the music and the language of the Blacks and helped reintroducing to White Americans some Black English slangs.
Jazz men and Jive Talk
Cab Calloway
Cab Calloway (December 25, 1907–November 18, 1994)Much of the popularity and the subsequent consolidation of jive talk in the jazz scene of New York in the 1930s and 40s may be ascribed to the figure of Cab Calloway, a famous jazz singer and bandleader of the time. Born into a middle-class family, he took up music and voice lessons at the age of fifteen, and, despite his parents' pleas that he should follow in his father's footsteps and become a lawyer, he went on to establish a successful career as a jazz singer first in Chicago and later on in New York. Around 1938 he set out to translate jive talk in a list that would later be published under the title of The New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary: Language of Jive (dated 1944). It was the first glossary ever compiled of the colorful words, phrases and expressions employed by jazz musicians and performers in their own exclusive language. The many coded sex and drug references in jive talk can be found, for instance, in one of his most famous songs - Minnie the Moocher:
Folk's here's the story 'bout Minnie the MoocherShe was a red hot hoochie coocher
She was the roughest, toughest frail
But Minnie had a heart a big as a whale
She messed around with a bloke named Smokey
She loved him, though he was cokey (a user of cocaine)
He took her down to Chinatown
And he showed her how to kick the gong around (smoking opium)
She had a dream about the King of Sweden
He gave her things that she was needin'
Gave her a home built of gold and steel
A diamond car, with the platinum wheels
He gave her a townhouse and his racing horses
Each meal she ate was a dozen courses
She had a million dollars worth of nickels and dimes
She sat around and counted them a million times
A complete version of Cab Calloway's Dictionary can be found at:
An example of the dictionary is given bellow:
K (v: verb/ n: noun/ adj: adjective)
kill me (v)
show me a good time, send me.
killer-diller (n)
a great thrill.
knock (v)
to obtain (see collar). Ex. "I'm gonna knock me some food".
kopasetic (adj)
absolutely okay, the tops.
Freeman Gosden and Charles Correll
Freeman Fisher "Gozzie" Gosden (May 5, 1899 – December 10, 1982) and Charles James Correll (February 2, 1890 – September 26, 1972) first met in 1921, soon after teamed up and went on to create, around 1928, one of the most successful radio shows in the 1930s - Amos and Andy, a situation comedy which drew widely from minstrel traditions. Revolving around the lives and experiences of central characters Amos and Andy, farm hands from Georgia dreaming of going North and making it big, the show introduced the jive wordplay and "vocab" to a national audience. When the show was later adapted to television, African American actors were chosen to play the main roles, including those of Amos and Andy, which helped establish the talk in American society.
In the video below Gosden and Correll themselves are introducing the characters of the television show adaptation:
Louis Armstrong
Louis Armstrong (4 August 1901 – July 6, 1971) is one of the most famous jazz musicians of the 20th century. An accomplished cornet and trumpet player, he also became very well known as a jazz singer, and influenced many generations of vocalists that followed. His unique and innovative vocal style developed and helped establish "scat singing" - highly improvised singing which employs nonsensical words or syllables - as one of the most characteristic singing styles in jazz. Despite his being many times critised for his controversial attitudes towards African-American political agenda, he made frequent use of jive talk in his songs; Muggles (1928), for instance, is a jive reference to marijuana, and in Mack the Knife, "mack" is the jive term for "thief" or "flirt" - this double meaning is explored widely in the song:
Oh, the shark, has, pretty teeth, dear....and he shows them, pearly white
Just a jackknife, has macheath, yeah.....and he keeps it, out of sight
When the shark bites, with his teeth, dear....scarlet billows start to spread
Fancy gloves, though, wears macheath, yeah..so theres not a trace, hmmmm of red
On the sidewalk...sunday morning, ...lies a body oozin life
Someones sneakin round the corner...is the someone, mack the knife?
From a tugboat.... by the river..... a cement bags, droopin down
Yeah, the cements just for the weight, dear...bet you mack, hes back in town
Looky here louie miller, disappeared dear...after drawing, out his cash
And macheath spends, like a sailor...did our boy do, somethin rash?
Sukey tawdry, jenny diver..lotte lenya, sweet lucy brown
Oh, the line forms on the right, dears.....now that mackys back in town
Take it satch
