April 11, 2004

cab calloway's hepster's dictionary up to now, all my other posts have been frisking my whiskers, i''ve been busting my conk to the early bright to bring you something you can beat up the chops about. and that's the bible
posted by chubby gristle 20 years ago
  • Wonderful link! chubby gristle, thank you! Cab Calloway was one of the highest-energy, most exciting performers I've ever seen, and a marvelously inventive vocalist, an original skat singer from way back and a chiller, a killer-diller himself.
  • It's amazing how long some of his slang has lasted. "Cool", "cat" and "dig" had a resurgence in the '50s. "Groovy", "have a ball", "pad" and "the man" came back in the '60s and 70s, mostly, I think due to Louis Armstrong becoming a movie star. "Hincty" and "ofay" have been used in my adulthood to describe perskickety white folks. "Hep" seems to have evolved into "hip", and "signify" into "represent", but the word play is still there. What fun! And Cab Calloway's performances were out of this world. If I didn't watch "Blues Brothers" for any other reason, I'd still want to see his "Minnie the Moocher" as many times as I could replay it. On preview, what beeswachy said.
  • And, chubby g, can I use "there goes a bus..." from your website, while pretending that I came up with it? (Unless you think my karma ran over your dogma.)
  • Another nutty hipsteraroonie. Vout! /sound of bongos
  • "The steam is on the beam... the point is that the joint is jumpin'!"
  • I've heard tell that "ofay" is pig latin for "foe" - a bit nerdier in origin than one might think. It's one of my two favorite terms for honkeys, the other being cracker.
  • Ah, the flat-foot floozie with a floy, floy! Thanks, Wolof.
  • hey path course you can't use it and claim it as yr own work. gustholf toilsch would track you down and put you in his deathmatch 2000 tv pilot.