Jack the Bear; nicknames

[GEORGE THOMPSON]

The "Sports Sunday" of the New York Times had a long article on
Junior Johnson, the stock car driver, evidently largely based on a
just-published autobiography or biography.  One of his associates is
quoted as saying "I knew that while our Chevrolet wouldn't run all
that fast by itself on the track, it would draft like Jack the Bear."
 (New York Times, October 10, 1999, Section 8, p. 15, col. 2)

This phrase catches my eye, because Duke Ellington recorded a tune on
March 6, 1940 called "Jack the Bear".  The RCA CD collection "Duke
Ellington: The Blanton-Webster Years" credits the tune to Scholl-
Jerome, neither of whom am I familiar with.  The booklet accompanying
the CDs states "The real Jack the Bear was a Harlem bass player, who,
as reed-player Garvin Bushell recently recalled, had a tailor shop at
the corner of St. Nicholas and Edgecombe Avenue."  Garvin Bushell was
a talented and very well-trained musician capable of playing double-
reed and well as the more usual single-reed instruments.  He
published his memoirs, I believe in the late 1980s.

Is anyone familiar with the phrase "like Jack the Bear"?  In
particular, does anyone recall hearing it from old grandad, or can
anyone offer any other indication that the expression is old enough
to have given rise to the bass-player's nickname?  Unless there is
some strong indication that the phrase is recent, I have to suppose
that there is a connection.

This calls to mind the thought that students of slang and dialect
ought to look at nicknames for evidence of folk speech.  Jay McShann,
the bandleader, piano-player and singer from Kansas City -- Charlie
Parker's first recordings were with McShann's band -- was nicknamed
"Hootie".  "Hootie" means drunk, and refers to McShann's penchant for
getting hootie on ignorant oil.  (It can't have been a very
pronounced penchant, since McShann was alive, well and playing in his
mid-80s, and may be still.  I heard him 4 or 5 years ago.)  I do not
find "hootie" in RHHDAS, DARE or the Dictionary of Americanisms.
Dennis "Oil Can" Boyd was a pitcher in the American League in the
1970s or early 1980s.  "Oil cans" are cans of beer, and the nickname
refers to a penchant he showed while still in high school in
Louisiana.  RHHDAS has one citation for "oil can", from 1929, meaning
"liquor bottle".

I do not remember whether I learned the meaning of McShann's nickname
through a radio interview with him, or a statement by a disk jockey,
or from a printed source.  Probably the former.  I learned the
meaning of Boyd's nickname from a baseball broadcast wile we was
still an active player.

It occurs to me that I did not give the exact source for the phrase
"Big Dance" in the message I sent 15 minutes ago.  The [New York]
Daily News, October 10, 1999, p. 107, col. 3.

GAT