Disappointed to discover that Fats Waller’s taties in All that meat and no potatoes are not as grubby as Seamus Heaney’s (“Are your praties dry/And are they fit for digging?”/“Put in your spade and try,”/Says Dirty-Faced McGuigan.)
(The previous post contained a link to Alan & Jenny’s site for the St Louis Zipper Washboard Band, which also contains this excellent page on the Nazis and jazz. Writes Josef Skvorecky (who is a goodie):
The hours we spent racking our brains over song titles we couldn’t understand … “Struttin’ with Some Barbecue” – the definition of the word ‘barbecue” in our pocket Webster didn’t help at all. What on earth could it mean: “walking pompously with a piece of animal carcass roasted whole”?
I hope someone told him that most native English speakers don’t know what the hell they’re about either.)
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