"Is you is or is you ain't?" (1921)

[Wilson Gray]

On Jun 15, 2005, at 1:29 PM, Mullins, Bill wrote:

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> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Mullins, Bill" <Bill.Mullins at US.ARMY.MIL>
> Subject:      Re: "Is you is or is you ain't?" (1921)
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> I vaguely recall from the news a few (ten??) years back a story about a
> small rural town which was lobbying for a new prison to be built,
> because of the jobs it would bring.  Someone (a local deejay?), as part
> of the lobbying effort, recorded a song and possibly a music video (you
> remember those, MTV used to run them) that included the lines:
> "Is we is
> or is we isn't
> gonna get ourselves
> a prison?"
>

Moicih Jedus!

-Wilson Gray

>
>
>>
>>>
>>>> On 6/11/05, Benjamin Zimmer <bgzimmer at rci.rutgers.edu> wrote:
>>>>> Like many of my generation, I was first introduced to Louis
> Jordan's
>>>>> 1944 hit "Is You Is Or Is You Ain't My Baby?" via the Tom & Jerry
>>>>> cartoon "Solid Serenade" (1946). (Jordan cowrote the song, his
> first
>>>>> million seller, with Bill Austin.) I came across a much earlier
>>>>> example of "Is you is or is you ain't" in a 1921 story by Octavus
>>>>> Roy Cohen, a
>>>>> Jewish writer from South Carolina who wrote humorous black-dialect
>>>>> fiction:
>>>>>
>>>>> -----
>>>>> "Less Miserable" by Octavus Roy Cohen _Chicago Tribune_, Sep. 25,
>>>>> 1921, (Magazine) p. 1/3 "What I asks you straight an'
>> plain: Is you
>>>>> gwine loant me them two dollars, or ain't you?"
>>>>> "I ain't said I ain't."
>>>>> "You ain't said you is."
>>>>> "I ain't said nothin'."
>>>>> "Well, I asks: Is you is or is you ain't?"
>>>>> -----
>>>>>
>