[Ads-l] Is this blues sound _off the wall_? 😜

[Wilson Gray]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnjJMLJC5Os

Cited and dated in HDAS, which notes that "current meanings are not
attested before 1953." This is in line with my personal experience,
differing only to the extent that, before the blues instrumental cited was
released, ca. January, 1953, I was unaware that the phrase had any meaning
other than its literal one. After the record’s release, the phrase acquired
pejorative meanings like "lame, square, unhip," though the recording itself
was as well-liked in StL as it was anywhere else. As to whether there is
other than coincidence involved here, deponent sayeth not.

Cited, but undated, in Green’s; cited as recently as ’06 in the UD.

-- 
-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

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