Another dating for & pork pies and Church shoes
Paul
paulzjoh at MTNHOME.COM
Wed Feb 6 01:48:22 UTC 2008
I've still got a pair of Church's shoes,(must be 40 years old) went to
wear them to a funeral and couldn't believe how heavy they were. How
did I wear those every day? Did you bone your shoes for that super shine?
Pork Pies, not only the Prez but Mike Hammer, and Dick Powell.
Wilson Gray wrote:
> 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
>>>>
>>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> ---------------------------------
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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
>>>
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>> --
>> 665, the number of the wanna-beast
>>
>> ------------------------------------------------------------
>> 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
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>
>
>
--
665, the number of the wanna-beast
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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
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