Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares

Wed Feb 6 01:30:45 UTC 2008

Church's English Shoes wingtips, perhaps? in Saint Louis, the most
expensive men's shoes available on the open market. Only a very few
had the drive to buy them, since they weren't cooler than a pair of
biscuit-toe or knob-toe States, just more expensive. Of course, their
very price gave them a sort of inherent cool. The pork pie was never
popular in StL. I know the style only from only from reading an
article in Ebony about Lester Young, the President of the Tenor
Saxophone and the King of the Pork-Pie Hat. The article included a
sidebar on how to pork-pie your own lid. But, in StL, the style was to
wear the lid exactly as it came from the hat shop, with no
modification. The Homburg was the exception.

-Wilson

On 2/4/08, Paul <paulzjoh at mtnhome.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Paul <paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM>
> Subject:      Re: Another dating for positive "uptight"
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Ohh Memories!  My 3 button roll, grey flannel, Mr B shirt and a white
> tie with a black lace overlay, didn't do the stingy brim though, pork
> pie for me, plus my charcoal grey bennie and big black English brogues.
> I thought there was no one sharper in the Zebra Lounge!  No Brooks Bros.
> for me. Smokey Joe's near Maxwell Street.
>
> Wilson Gray wrote:
> > (snip)
> >
> > It's strange that Brooks Bros. would be the epitome of square in NYC.
> > West of the Mississippi - among blacks, IAC - the ideal was to be
> > dressed *up," not down. A stud who wanted to jump sharp and be - not
> > get - laid dressed in an Arrow pin-collar shirt with a silk rep tie, a
> > three-piece Hart, Schaffner & Marx suit, over-the-calf-length socks
> > held up by garters, Stacy-Adams shoes ("States"), a Stutson or Dobbs
> > stingy-brim lid, wore a mustache, if he could grow one, and carried
> > the stereotypical knife. A kind of modified zoot suit called a
> > "three-button roll" or its "one-button roll" variant worn with a shirt
> > with a "Mr. B" (Billy Eckstein-style) rolled collar with a
> > standard-brim fedora was also cool, though a bit déclassé. "Rogues"
> > tended to prefer the latter style. However, wearing the former style
> > didn't necessarily mean that a cat was not a bad motherfucker who
> > could study kick ass when this was called for.
> >
> > And note that I'm describing middle-school and high-school kids as
> > well as college students and young adults. In college, it used be a
> > joke amongst the colored that, on rainy days, when classes ended,
> > white cats in sweatsocks, penny-loafers, chinos, and open-collar dress
> > shirts ran for their cars, whereas the colored cats unfurled their
> > push-button London umbrellas and ran for the streetcar, not being able
> > both to meet the dress code and to afford a short (pronounced "shout"
> > in the hip, hyper-BE used for talking slang). It was definitely better
> > to look good than to feel good.
> >
> > When I lived in Los Angeles, I shopped at the local Brooks Bros. shop,
> > located in a loft downtown. It couldn't have been cooler. You merely
> > told them to bill you and they did, without requiring that you show a
> > single piece of ID, merely accepting whatever name and address that
> > you gave them. (At this time, credit cards had not yet been invented
> > and Brooks Bros. was above requiring the Charge-A-Plate.) That is,
> > they showed blacks the same respect that they showed whites.
> > Die-Know-MITE! You couldn't beat that with a sludge hammer! In
> > addition, there were no tags or labels on Brooks Bros. clothing to
> > indicate where it came from. If you couldn't recognize it simply by
> > the material and the fit, well, that was just your lame, unhip ass.
> > Like, how fine is that? I bought my shoes at Johnston & Murphy, the
> > company that has supplied footwear and leather goods to every
> > President since Lincoln, where the manager was my personal clerk. The
> > more exclusive the store, the more respect it showed black people,
> > making it worth every extra dollar. It was the kind of thing that once
> > moved Ebony to publish an article entitled, "Is Los Angeles Heaven?"
> > My stepfather commented about Los Angeles that he had had no idea that
> > black people were allowed to live so well in the United States.
> >
> > Unfortunately, this aspect of L.A. never makes the news.
> >
> > But that was L.A. Boston is more like Saint Louis in the 'Forties.
> > But, even in Saint Louis, clerks at the btter stores began to address
> > me as "sir" from the time that I was eleven years old. If you don't
> > want trouble, you'd best know where you are and what you're doing. The
> > great basketball player for the Boston Celtics, Bill Russell (a native
> > of Texas, BTW), once commented that he'd rather be in jail in
> > Sacramento than sheriff in Boston. Things must be or have been
> > something like that in NYC, if Brooks Bros. was the epitome of lame.
> >
> > -Wilson
> >
> > On 2/3/08, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> >
> >> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> >> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> >> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
> >> Subject:      Re: Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> Mark beat me to the punch here. I agree that whatever Horne had in mind, "Brooks Brothers" was the essence of sartorial squareness in the late '50s. ISTR _Mad_ alluding to that fact - and Brooks Bros. metonymical connection with hypersquare "Madison Avenue" more than once.
> >>
> >>   JL
> >> Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
> >>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> >> Sender: American Dialect Society
> >> Poster: Mark Mandel
> >> Subject: Re: Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares
> >> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> >>
> >> On Feb 2, 2008 6:19 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
> >> wrote:
> >> On Feb 2, 2008 5:39 PM, Wilson Gray wrote:
> >>
> >>> "Up Tight!"[sic]
> >>>
> >>> The title of an LP by the jazz saxophonist, Gene Ammons, son of the
> >>> boogie-woogie pianist, Albert Ammons, published by Fantasy Records in
> >>> 1961.
> >>>
> >> That's the first cite given by OED2 for approbative "uptight" (though
> >> they use a 1962 mention of the album title in _Down Beat_).
> >>
> >> What do you suppose "up( )tight" meant to Ammons et al. in 1961? In a
> >> jazz lexicon published in the June 25, 1961 New York Times Sunday
> >> Magazine ("The Words for the Music", p. 39), Elliot Horne defined "up
> >> tight" as "the Brooks Brothers manner of dressing." So did the
> >> approbation originally apply to clothing before being extended to
> >> other excellent things (as in Stevie Wonder's 1966 usage)?
> >>
> >> ===============
> >>
> >> I don't think that's approbative. Brooks Brothers was the very emblem and
> >> summit of straight (= unhip) / corporate / office style. Look at the song
> >> "I'll Know" from Guys and Dolls [opened November 24, 1950 -- Wikipedia].
> >> True, that was 1940s gamblers, per Damon Runyon and Frank Loesser, not 1960s
> >> jazz, but that Horne cite can't be taken as approbative without further
> >> evidence.
> >>
> >> http://members.fortunecity.com/ryanchunt/Broadway/guysdolls.html
> >>
> >> I'll Know
> >> (Loesser)
> >>
> >> (Sarah)
> >> I've imagined every bit of him
> >> From his strong moral fibre
> >> To the wisdom in his head
> >> To the homely aroma of his pipe
> >>
> >> (Sky)
> >> You have wished yourself a Scarsdale Galahad
> >> The breakfast eating Brooks Brothers type
> >>
> >> (Sarah)
> >> Yes, and I shall meet him when the time is ripe
> >> I'll know when my love comes along
> >> I won't take a chance
> >> I'll know he'll be just what I need
> >> Not some fly-by-night Broadway romance
> >>
> >> (Sky)
> >> And you'll know at a glance
> >> By the two pair of pants
> >>
> >> (Sarah)
> >> I'll know by his calm steady voice
> >> His feet on the ground
> >> I'll know, as I run to his arms, that at last
> >> I've come home, safe and sound
> >> And 'til then, I shall wait
> >> And 'til then, I'll be strong!
> >> For I'll know, when my love comes along
> >>
> >> --
> >> Mark Mandel
> >>
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> >>
> >>
> >>
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> >
> >
> > --
> > All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> > come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> > -----
> >                                               -Sam'l Clemens
> >
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> >
> >
> >
>
> --
>  665, the number of the wanna-beast
>
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> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>

--
All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
-----
                                              -Sam'l Clemens

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