"Too black bad"

[Wilson Gray]

This is the title of a recording, ca.1928-1929, by Hudson "Tampa Red"
Whittaker, on slide guitar, with Madlyn Davis on vocal. The song has
the first verse:

I'd rather be in the
Mississippt River
Floating like a log
Than to stay around here
Being treated like a dog
Now that's my brag
Now that's my brag
And it's too black bad

"Too black bad!" is also one of my mother's favorite - therefore, most
annoying - expostulations. Until I ran across this recording, I'd been
under the impression that the expression was Mom's own invention,
since I'd never heard it used by anyone else. However, a trivial
amount of Googling reveals that this phrase was much used in the black
community around the time that my mother would have been a teenager.

-Wilson Gray

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org