"Thaaat's what I'm talking about!"

[George Thompson]

I believe that in the rcord "Pinetop's Boogie Woogie", recorded 1928 or so,
Pinetop Smith asks the girl with the red dress to come stand by the piano
where Mr. Pinetop is, and to shake that thing.  When she does so to his
satisfaction, he says "That's what I'm talking bout!"

Have heard this recently, but haven't verified my recollection for this
post.

GAT

On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 4:02 PM, Ben Zimmer
<bgzimmer at babel.ling.upenn.edu>wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 3:26 PM, will salmon wrote:
> >
> > On Oct 27, 2011, at 2:19 PM, Jonathan Lighter wrote:
> > >
> > > There's a current TV commercial in which B.B. King says this.
> > >
> > > Contextually it can only mean, "Yes, indeed, I think that's really
> great!"
> > >
> > > AAVE?
> >
> > I've said this for years, and I am a native speaker of Texican.
>
> Seems unremarkable to me, too -- I feel like I've heard it in a
> hundred movies. Earliest relevant example I can find from a quick
> search of IMDb's quote repository is from Will Smith in "Men in Black"
> (1997):
>
> Zed: Kay, give the kid a weapon.
> [Kay opens a chest filled with intergalactic guns. He picks up a large
> rifle]
> Kay: A Series Four De-atomizer.
> Jay: That's what I'm talkin' about.
>
> Eddie Murphy said it in his standup movie "Raw" but not in the
> intended idiomatic fashion -- though he did use it in relevant way in
> "Mulan" (1998) and "I Spy" (2002). More recent examples come from Sam
> Worthington in "Avatar" (2009) and Steve Carrell in "Despicable Me"
> (2010).
>
> --bgz
>
> --
> Ben Zimmer
> http://benzimmer.com/
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



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

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