Made In America - Bill Bryson [102]
Even Teddy Roosevelt’s speak softly and carry a big stick appears to have its roots in a West African proverb. Likewise, Yankee Doodle Dandy’ shows a striking similarity to a slave song from Surinam, which goes:
Mama Nanni go to town
Buy a little pony.
Stick a feather in a rink
Calling Masra Ranni.60
Other terms that have been credited with African roots include bogus, banana, gorilla, funky, phoney and jazz, though in each instance the evidence is largely conjectural. Jazz is one of the most hotly disputed terms in American etymology. Among the suggested possibilities are that it comes from Chaz, the nickname of an early ragtime drummer named Charles Washington, or from chasse, a kind of dance step. Others have linked it to various African or Creole sources. In any case, its first use, among both southern blacks and whites, was to describe sexual intercourse. It wasn’t until after World War I that it entered the wider world conveying the idea of a type of music. Quite a number of Afro-American terms contain some forgotten sexual association. Boogie-woogie appears originally to have signified syphilis. Juke, from the West African dzugu, ’wicked’, originally carried that sense in English. Eventually it came to signify a brothel and then, by about 1930, a cheap tavern where lively music was played – a juke joint. Jukebox dates from 1937. Blues, a term popularized if not invented by one its greatest exponents, the cornet player W C. Handy (his ‘Memphis Blues’ was written in 1910; ‘St Louis Blues’ followed in 1914), also originally had ‘a strong sexual significance’, according to Mencken, though he doesn’t elaborate.61 So, too, did rock ‘n’ roll.
A distinctive and long-standing feature of black speech was a tendency to apply food terms in a sexually euphemistic sense. Thus, angel-food cake, custard pie and other dishes often had a distinctly sexual connotation, especially in songs. When you realize that shortening bread was commonly used to describe sexual intercourse, the words of the well-loved song take on a whole new meaning:
One turned over to the other an’ said,
‘My baby loves short’nin’,
short’nin’, ‘My baby loves short’nin’ bread.’
The same applies to jelly roll, as in the lyrics
Jelly roll, jelly roll ain’t so hard to find,
There’s a baker shop in town makes it brown like mine.
I got a sweet jelly, a lovin’ sweet jelly roll.
If you taste my jelly it’ll satisfy your worried soul.
Among the many hundreds of neologisms created in America by blacks we find to blow one’s top, gimme five for a handshake and high five for a congratulatory hand slap, honky (of unknown significance), ragtime (also obscure, but possibly arising from its ragged syncopation; it was first recorded in 1896), right on, uptight, jive, be cool, bad mouth, bad in the sense of good, get down in the sense of to attend to pleasures, and cool in the sense of being admirable.
Finally, a word needs to be said about descriptive terms for black people. Negro is Spanish and Portuguese for ’black’, and first noted in English in 1555. Nigger appeared in 1587 and was not at first a pejorative term but simply a variant pronunciation of Negro. Sambo, a Nigerian word meaning ‘second son’, was not originally pejorative either. Blacks were generally called blacks (or, more politely, coloureds) until the 1880s when negro became the preferred term. It wasn’t usually capitalized until the 1930s. Uncle Tom comes of course from Harriet Beecher Stowe’s popular novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, though its use in the general sense of a servile black hasn’t been found earlier than 1922.
10
When the Going was Good: Travel in America
I
On 8 January 1815 General Andrew Jackson led American troops in a stormy rout of the British at the Battle of New Orleans. It was a decisive triumph – or would have been had there been anything to be decisive about. Unknown to the combatants on both sides, the War of 1812 had