get one's habits on/get beside oneself

[Jonathan Lighter]

Taft, Michael. Blues Lyric Poetry: A Concordance. (Garland, 1984). PS309.B55T33 1984.

I found this book to be uniquely valuable as well. Some of Taft's citations, however, are problematical because sometimes it seems impossible to determine precisely what a singer is saying on an ancient, crackly recording.


JL

Wilson Gray <wilson.gray at RCN.COM> wrote:
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Sender: American Dialect Society
Poster: Wilson Gray
Subject: Re: get one's habits on/get beside oneself
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On Jul 30, 2005, at 9:04 PM, Laurence Horn wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society
> Poster: Laurence Horn
> Subject: Re: get one's habits on/get beside oneself
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> --------
>
> At 12:22 AM -0400 7/25/05, Wilson Gray wrote:
>> Except for the line in song by Willie Mabon, I've never heard it used
>> except by other black Texans. It reminds me of the somewhat similar
>> situation with the hide-and-(go)-seek chant, "Last Night, Night
>> Before." It again seems to be the case that a particular expression is
>> known or used primarily by black Texans and black Tennesseans. As the
>> blues line goes,
>>
>> "T" for "Texas" and "T" for "Tennessee"
>
> Do you happen to know if the particular verse that starts this way
> and goes on to "T for Thelma, the gal who made a fool out of me"
> originally from Jimmie (The Singing Brakeman) Rodgers, or an older
> black traditional blues song?
>
> Larry
>

As far as I know, Jimmie was the first to use the line, according to
another member of this listserv whose name I've forgotten. In blues
songs, I've heard only the short version with no mention of Thelma.
Even then, it's used primarily as a filler, with no necessary
connection to the primary motif of the song. I've heard it used by
Blind Lemon in a version of "The Sunshine Special." This was a train
operated by the Missouri-Pacific Line and its subsidiary, the Texas &
Pacific Line. Its route extended "from Sa'nt Louis to San Antone,"
passing through Marshall, Texas - once the railhead of the T&P, until
robber-baron Jay Gould, who owned the MoPac, bought the T&P and shifted
its administrative offices to St. Louis - on the way. It was eventually
replaced by the MoPac's streamlined Texas Eagle, which also has a
folksong composed about it. Needless to say, I remember both trains
quite well.

BTW, do you know that there's a concordance to blues lines? I saw it in
Widener, but I imagine that any library that kicks ass - Ivy League,
NYPL, LC, NYU, Berkeley, Stanford, etc. - would have a copy of it. I've
used it, but that was about twenty years ago. So, unfortunately, I
don't remember anything about it except that it exists, has more that
one volume, is coffee-table sized, and is hardbound in pastel green.

Further trivia: Marshall was once the fourth-largest city in Texas, but
is now a local backwater. Saint Louis was once the fourth-largest city
in the United States, but is now a national backwater.

-Wilson


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