Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares

Mon Feb 4 13:11:59 UTC 2008

Ohh Memories!  My 3 button roll, grey flannel, Mr B shirt and a white
tie with a black lace overlay, didn't do the stingy brim though, pork
pie for me, plus my charcoal grey bennie and big black English brogues.
I thought there was no one sharper in the Zebra Lounge!  No Brooks Bros.
for me. Smokey Joe's near Maxwell Street.

Wilson Gray wrote:
> (snip)
>
> It's strange that Brooks Bros. would be the epitome of square in NYC.
> West of the Mississippi - among blacks, IAC - the ideal was to be
> dressed *up," not down. A stud who wanted to jump sharp and be - not
> get - laid dressed in an Arrow pin-collar shirt with a silk rep tie, a
> three-piece Hart, Schaffner & Marx suit, over-the-calf-length socks
> held up by garters, Stacy-Adams shoes ("States"), a Stutson or Dobbs
> stingy-brim lid, wore a mustache, if he could grow one, and carried
> the stereotypical knife. A kind of modified zoot suit called a
> "three-button roll" or its "one-button roll" variant worn with a shirt
> with a "Mr. B" (Billy Eckstein-style) rolled collar with a
> standard-brim fedora was also cool, though a bit déclassé. "Rogues"
> tended to prefer the latter style. However, wearing the former style
> didn't necessarily mean that a cat was not a bad motherfucker who
> could study kick ass when this was called for.
>
> And note that I'm describing middle-school and high-school kids as
> well as college students and young adults. In college, it used be a
> joke amongst the colored that, on rainy days, when classes ended,
> white cats in sweatsocks, penny-loafers, chinos, and open-collar dress
> shirts ran for their cars, whereas the colored cats unfurled their
> push-button London umbrellas and ran for the streetcar, not being able
> both to meet the dress code and to afford a short (pronounced "shout"
> in the hip, hyper-BE used for talking slang). It was definitely better
> to look good than to feel good.
>
> When I lived in Los Angeles, I shopped at the local Brooks Bros. shop,
> located in a loft downtown. It couldn't have been cooler. You merely
> told them to bill you and they did, without requiring that you show a
> single piece of ID, merely accepting whatever name and address that
> you gave them. (At this time, credit cards had not yet been invented
> and Brooks Bros. was above requiring the Charge-A-Plate.) That is,
> they showed blacks the same respect that they showed whites.
> Die-Know-MITE! You couldn't beat that with a sludge hammer! In
> addition, there were no tags or labels on Brooks Bros. clothing to
> indicate where it came from. If you couldn't recognize it simply by
> the material and the fit, well, that was just your lame, unhip ass.
> Like, how fine is that? I bought my shoes at Johnston & Murphy, the
> company that has supplied footwear and leather goods to every
> President since Lincoln, where the manager was my personal clerk. The
> more exclusive the store, the more respect it showed black people,
> making it worth every extra dollar. It was the kind of thing that once
> moved Ebony to publish an article entitled, "Is Los Angeles Heaven?"
> My stepfather commented about Los Angeles that he had had no idea that
> black people were allowed to live so well in the United States.
>
> Unfortunately, this aspect of L.A. never makes the news.
>
> But that was L.A. Boston is more like Saint Louis in the 'Forties.
> But, even in Saint Louis, clerks at the btter stores began to address
> me as "sir" from the time that I was eleven years old. If you don't
> want trouble, you'd best know where you are and what you're doing. The
> great basketball player for the Boston Celtics, Bill Russell (a native
> of Texas, BTW), once commented that he'd rather be in jail in
> Sacramento than sheriff in Boston. Things must be or have been
> something like that in NYC, if Brooks Bros. was the epitome of lame.
>
> -Wilson
>
> On 2/3/08, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
>> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
>> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at YAHOO.COM>
>> Subject:      Re: Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> Mark beat me to the punch here. I agree that whatever Horne had in mind, "Brooks Brothers" was the essence of sartorial squareness in the late '50s. ISTR _Mad_ alluding to that fact - and Brooks Bros. metonymical connection with hypersquare "Madison Avenue" more than once.
>>
>>   JL
>> Mark Mandel <thnidu at GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>>   ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
>> Sender: American Dialect Society
>> Poster: Mark Mandel
>> Subject: Re: Another dating for positive "uptight," if anyone cares
>> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>>
>> On Feb 2, 2008 6:19 PM, Benjamin Zimmer
>> wrote:
>> On Feb 2, 2008 5:39 PM, Wilson Gray 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)?
>>
>> ===============
>>
>> I don't think that's approbative. Brooks Brothers was the very emblem and
>> summit of straight (= unhip) / corporate / office style. Look at the song
>> "I'll Know" from Guys and Dolls [opened November 24, 1950 -- Wikipedia].
>> True, that was 1940s gamblers, per Damon Runyon and Frank Loesser, not 1960s
>> jazz, but that Horne cite can't be taken as approbative without further
>> evidence.
>>
>> http://members.fortunecity.com/ryanchunt/Broadway/guysdolls.html
>>
>> I'll Know
>> (Loesser)
>>
>> (Sarah)
>> I've imagined every bit of him
>> From his strong moral fibre
>> To the wisdom in his head
>> To the homely aroma of his pipe
>>
>> (Sky)
>> You have wished yourself a Scarsdale Galahad
>> The breakfast eating Brooks Brothers type
>>
>> (Sarah)
>> Yes, and I shall meet him when the time is ripe
>> I'll know when my love comes along
>> I won't take a chance
>> I'll know he'll be just what I need
>> Not some fly-by-night Broadway romance
>>
>> (Sky)
>> And you'll know at a glance
>> By the two pair of pants
>>
>> (Sarah)
>> I'll know by his calm steady voice
>> His feet on the ground
>> I'll know, as I run to his arms, that at last
>> I've come home, safe and sound
>> And 'til then, I shall wait
>> And 'til then, I'll be strong!
>> For I'll know, when my love comes along
>>
>> --
>> Mark Mandel
>>
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>
>
> --
> All say, "How hard it is that we have to die"---a strange complaint to
> come from the mouths of people who have had to live.
> -----
>                                               -Sam'l Clemens
>
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--
 665, the number of the wanna-beast

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