Ragged but Right, pt. 3 (jig)

[George Thompson]

     We have some blues; we have "The Memphis Blues," "The Jo-Go Blues,"
also the "Baby Seal Blues," and we gave the gigs [sic, i. e., African
Americans (note by Abbott & Seroff)] all the blues they want and you can
just see them walking dogie [sic] when our band is playing.

     "Notes from J. C. O'Brien's Famous Georgia Minstrels", *Indianapolis
Freeman*, October 24, 1914

     "Walking Dogie" appears to have been a grass-roots African American
dance step specifically identified with emerging blues and jazz.  **  This
was two years prior to the publication of Shelton Brooks' monumental "dance
craze" hit, "Walking the Dog."  *Ragged but Right, *p. 212;  & fn. 17, p.
407

Lynn Abbott & Doug Seroff. * Ragged but Right: Black Traveling Shows, "Coon
Songs," and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz*.  University Press of
Mississippi, 2007


(This belies my statement in pt. 1 that these reports give no detail as to
what sort of music was played; but it doesn't give very much detail, other
than the title of the songs; "The Memphis Blues" was one of W. C. Handy's.)


"jig", OED: U.S. slang (depreciative and offensive).  A black person, an
African American.

1924    F. J. Wilstach Slang Dict. Stage (Typescript in N.Y. Public
Libr.),   Jiggs, Negro actor.

1927    K. Nicholson Barker iii. i. 128   You go along and give 'em a hand,
too. Nat Brody's there and a crew of jigs.


HDAS has a quotation from 1922.


GAT


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

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