Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Feb 2, 2008 5:39 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> 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)?


--Ben Zimmer

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