Further Antedating of "Real McCoy"

[Jonathan Lighter]

Speaking of the California Digital NC, it retrieves a cite from 1899 of "the
Real McCoy" as the title of a song, presumably the one we've been
discussing.  Still no lyrics, however.

The title's twenty-odd-year run, well into the period when the phrase became
idiomatic, is further evidence that the idiom alluded originally to the
song.  The lyrics might make it a moral certainty that the reverse was not
the case.

JL
On Fri, Jan 1, 2010 at 3:47 PM, George Thompson <george.thompson at nyu.edu>wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       George Thompson <george.thompson at NYU.EDU>
> Subject:      Re: Further Antedating of "Real McCoy"
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I've just seen a notice of the California Digital Newspaper Collection, and
> so, of course, I searched it for the word "jazz", and variants.  Among a few
> matches, it pulled up an item from the Sacramento Daily Union, Volume 53,
> Number 5, 27 February 1885.  Upon examination, it appears that the OCR found
> "jass" in a twirl of hair in an illustration to a wig-maker's ad.
>
> The technology is not yet perfected, it seems.
>
> http://cdnc.ucr.edu/newsucr
>
> GAT
>
> George A. Thompson
> Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
> Univ. Pr., 1998, but nothing much lately.
>
>  ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



--
"If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."

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