Not in HDAS?

[George Thompson]

Jelly Roll Morton has a line in Winin' Boy Blues, recorded in 1938 and 1939
-- not sure which version I've heard:
Pick it up and shake it like sweet stavin chain.

I have read somewhere (liner notes, perhaps?) that "stavin chain" was the
chain that shackled prisoners in the penitentiary.  I don't know whether
this was a well-founded explanation.

GAT

George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 3:04 PM, Wilson Gray <hwgray at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Thu, Jun 2, 2011 at 8:32 AM, Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
> > My innocent interpretation of "Deadbone" was that it was just an
> arbitrary
> > name for a cartoon strip. Â That's the only association I have with it.
> >
> > And I know "Stavin' Chain" only as the title of a bawdy African-American
> > folksong - sung, e.g., in a tame by "Tricky Sam" of the Texas State
> > Penitentiary at Huntsville for John and Alan Lomax in 1934.
> >
> > It starts out, "Stavin' Chain was a man like this...."
> >
> > What's a real stavin' chain anyway? What's the connection with what you
> > said?
>
> In a (fictional?) article in NatLamp detailing the slings and arrows
> of outrageous fortune - uh, I'm essentially running on empty, here,
> memory-wise - to which we men - or, possibly, only the author - are
> subject, even after we succeed in conning some poor, naive chick into
> allowing us to "tap that ass," as they say on TV, the author notes
> that, in addition to the possibility of having one's glans penis
> rendered like unto a sieve by the strings of her IUD, but there's also
> a reasonable possibility that, IIRC, "an attack of deadbone" will lame
> out the whole scene.
>
> No definition of _deadbone_ is provided, but none is necessary, in context.
>
> _Stavin Chain_  is an AA folkloric personage like unto Stackalee (and
> random other written renditions of the name). As Scott Joplin is
> sometimes said to be, in Marshall, a native of Marshall, TX, so also
> is Stavin Chain  often said to be - in Saint Louis - the Saint Louis
> equivalent of Stackalee, though Stave is not held to be the same
> danger to life and limb that Stack is reputed to have been.
>
> The assumption that "Stavin" is the AAVE pronunciation of _staving_,
> hence, the proper spelling of the name - some kind of nickname based
> on some participle whose meaning has been lost - is _Stavin'_... Well,
> I'll just say that my opinion of that neologism is the same as my
> opinion of _booty_ and leave it at that.
>
> A blues song published in 1938 has the words,
>
> Well, I wonder what's the matter
> Wth my Stavin Chain
> It have gone down on me
> My baby is the blame
>
> My Stavin Chain been all right
> Till my baby wanted it every night
> Man, she been wanting it every night
> And my Stavin Chain won't act right
>
> I'm going away
> Babe, about / Baby, 'bout 45 nights
> When I get back,
> My Stavin Chain
> Be all right
>
> My baby see my Stavin Chain
> Was all right
> She didn't have to do nothing
> But get in the bed and hold me tight
>
> Since I went away
> Stayed 'bout 45 nights
> Since I been back
> My Stavin Chain
> Been all right
>
>
> Of course, "Stavin Chain" may here mean something more abstract, such
> as "sexual prowess," etc., but, WTF?
>
> --
> -Wilson
> -----
> 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.
> -Mark Twain
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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