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Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music—a song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make humorous,^[1] sexual innuendos. This trope goes back to early dirty blues recordings, enjoyed a huge commercial success in 1920s and 1930s,^[1] and is used from time to time in modern American blues and blues rock.

An example of hokum lyrics is this sample from "Meat Balls", by Lil Johnson, recorded in 1937:^[2]

Got out late last night, in the rain and sleet
Tryin' to find a butcher that grind my meat
Yes I'm lookin' for a butcher
He must be long and tall
If he want to grind my meat
'Cause I'm wild about my meat balls.

Terminology

"Hokum", originally a vaudeville term used for a simple performance bordering on vulgarity,^[3][4] "old and sure-fire comedy",^[5] but hinting at a smart wordplay, was first used to describe the genre of black music in a billing of a race record for Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band (Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, 1929).^[6] After producing a big hit, "It's Tight Like That", with Vocalion Records (and its sequel) in 1928, the musicians went on to Paramount Records where they were called The Hokum Boys. Other recording studios joined the fray using similarly named ensembles.^[7] The application of "hokum" to describe the musical approach of these bands was fostered by Papa Charlie Jackson with his "Shake That Thing" (1925).^[3]

The meaning of the stage slang word "hokum" was a subject of an extensive debate in the 1920s ("most discussed word in the entire vernacular", right next to the "jazz").^[5] The term "hokum blues" did not become a formal designation of a style until 1960s.^[8] "Hokum" is also used to describe the low comedy acts that were used at the turn of the 20th century to lure audiences to musical performances. In the words of W. C. Handy, a veteran of a minstrel troupe, "Our hokum hooked 'em"^[9] outside the opera house, so that "ticket sellers would go to work".^[10] King applies the term to the early short slapstick films.^[11]

Etymology

The sources do not agree on the origins of "hokum": the word is thought to exist since either the late 19th, or early 20th century. It can be derived either by analogy withgap-sealing material oakum (the reliable gags of hokum were supposed to fill the deficiencies of the stage act), or a blend of "hocus-pocus" and "bunkum" (nonsense).^[5]

Similar genres

Some of the hokum songs are also classified as belonging to the "dirty blues" subgenre of blues. Some sources treat hokum and dirty (also "bawdy") blues as interchangeable terms.^[12][13] However, music researchers point to differences: dirty blues were played before the appearance of hokum,^[14] the innuendo in the dirty blues is earnest and mature, while the hokum was full of sass and humor.^[15] The dirty blues are good for dancing the slow drag,^[15] while hokum, with its bouncy, ragtime-influenced^[16] songs is intended for more lively dance style typical for the "mischievous branch" of music (similar to lundu, maxixe, xote, or samba).^[15]

Daniel Beaumont points to minstrel shows, vaudeville, and medicine shows as the origins of humor in blues. These genres influenced the classic and country blues, which in turn fed hokum in the 1930s. Hokum after its heyday influenced rhythm and blues in 1940s and Chicago blues in 1950s and 1960s.^[16]

Hokum and early blues

Hokum subgenre evolved from early blues, when in the late 1920s a new generation of bluesmen created a "more urbane product" that in addition to hokum included topical ballads, vaudeville blues, country blues, proto-jive.^[17] Some commentators have argued that hokum "city style" was a degradation of the folk blues.^[18]

Blues and hokum were inseparable until the very end of hokum era in the mid-1930s.^[19] Hokum is considered to be an immediate predecessor of urban blues (Muddy Waters, Howlin’ Wolf, Elmore James).^[18]

Hokum in early country music

While hokum surfaces in early blues music most frequently, there was some significant crossover culturally. When the Chattanooga-based "brother duet" the Allen Brothers recorded a hit version of "Salty Dog Blues", refashioned as "Bow Wow Blues" in 1927 for Columbia's 15,000-numbered "Old Time" series the label rushed out several new releases to capitalize on their success, but mistakenly issued them on the 14,000 series instead.

In fact, the Allen Brothers were so adept at performing white blues that in 1927, Columbia mistakenly released their "Laughin' and Cryin' Blues" in the "race" series instead of the "old-time" series. (Not seeing the humor in it, the Allens sued and promptly moved to the Victor label.) ^[20]

An early black string band, the Dallas String Band with Coley Jones, recorded the song "Hokum Blues" on December 8, 1928, in Dallas, Texas, featuring mandolin instrumentation. They have been identified both as proto bluesmen and as an early Texas country band and were likely to have been selling to both black and white audiences. Blind Lemon Jefferson and T-Bone Walker played in the Dallas String Band at various times. Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, the seminal white Texas swing band, recorded a hokum tune with scat lyrics in the early 1930s, "Garbage Man Blues", which was originally known by the title the jazz composer Luis Russell gave it, "The Call of the Freaks". Bob Wills, who had performed in blackface as a young man, liberally used comic asides, whoops, and jive talk when directing his famous Texas Playboys. The Hoosier Hot Shots, Bob Skyles and the Skyrockets, and other novelty song artists concentrated on the comedic aspects, but for many up-and-coming white country musicians, like Emmett Miller, Clayton McMichen and Jimmie Rodgers, the ribald lyrics were beside the point. Hokum for these white rounders in the South and Southwest was synonymous with jazz, and the "hot" syncopations and blue notes were a naughty pleasure in themselves. The lap steel guitar player Cliff Carlisle, who was half of another "brother duet", is credited with refining the blue yodel song style after Jimmie Rodgers became the first country music superstar by recording over a dozen blue yodels. Carlisle wrote and recorded many hokum tunes and gave them titles such as "Tom Cat Blues", "Shanghai Rooster Yodel" and "That Nasty Swing". He marketed himself as a "hillbilly", a "cowboy", a "Hawaiian" or a "straight" bluesman (meaning presumably, black), depending on the audience for whom he was playing and where he played.

The radio "barn dances" of the 1920s and 1930s interspersed hokum in their variety show broadcasts. The first blackface comedians at the WSM Grand Ole Opry were Lee Roy "Lasses" White and his partner, Lee Davis "Honey" Wilds, starring in the Friday night shows. White was a veteran of several minstrel troupes, including one organized by William George "Honeyboy" Evans and another led by Al G. Field, who also employed Emmett Miller. By 1920, White was leading his own outfit, the All Star Minstrels. Lasses and Honey joined the Grand Ole Opry cast in 1932. When Lasses moved on to Hollywood in 1936 to play the role of a silver-screen cowboy sidekick, Wilds stayed on in Nashville, corking up and playing blues on his ukulele with his new partner Jam-Up (first played by Tom Woods and subsequently by Bunny Biggs). Wilds organized the first Grand Ole Opry–endorsed tent show in 1940. For the next decade, he ran the touring show, with Jam-Up and Honey as the headliners. Pulling a forty-foot trailer behind a four-door Pontiac and followed by eight to ten trucks, Wilds took the tent show from town to town, hurrying back to Nashville on Saturdays for his Opry radio appearances. Many country musicians, like Uncle Dave Macon, Bill Monroe, Eddy Arnold, Stringbean and Roy Acuff, toured with the Wilds tent shows from April through Labor Day. As Wilds's son David said in an interview,

Music was a part of their act, but they were comedians. They would sing comedic songs, a la Homer and Jethro. They would add odd lyrics to existing songs, or write songs that were intended to be comedic. They were out there to come onstage, do five minutes of jokes, sing a song, do five minutes of jokes, sing another song and say, "Thank you, good night", as their segment of the Grand Ole Opry. Almost every country band during that time had some guy who dressed funny, wore a goofy hat, and typically played slide guitar.^[21]

Legacy

By the mid-1930s the hokum bands were fading out. Georgia Tom got religious and switched to black gospel music by 1932, leaving Tampa Red to perform solo blues and hokum, Big Bill Broonzy from 1930 occasionally joined the Hokum Boys and the Famous Hokum Boys for their recordings with the last one in 1936. Leroy Carr made few hokum recordings with very mild lyrics, but moved to blues again with his rendition of "Sloppy Drunk Blues", originally by Lucille Bogan, becoming a blues standard.^[19]

Some hokum songs got absorbed into the mainline jazz:^[19]

• "It's Tight Like That" was recorded by Jimmie Noone, McKinney's Cotton Pickers, Jimmy Bracken's Toe Ticklers (with Jack Teagarden and Benny Goodman);
• Louis Armstrong recorded "Tight Like This" in December of 1928 that sounds like a response to the hokum song with his famous trumpet solo improvisation;
• Duke Ellington joined the chorus with his "Who said 'It's Tight Like That'?" in March 1929.

Country music also use the hokum material:^[22]

• Luis Russell, one of the main figures behind the New Orleans jazz transition to swing, recorded "It's Tight Like That" in January of 1929, with "The Call of The Freaks" on the other of the single. In the hands of Milton Brown the latter one turned into the "Garbage Man Blues";
• In 1936 Brown also recorded a version of "Keep A Knockin'", in May 1938 Bob Willis recorded "Keep Knocking (But You Can't Come In)".

The popularity of hokum rubbed off onto jive talk, with the latter eventually lasting longer than hokum and reaching wider audiences.^[23]

Critique

Some scholars resent hokum as an era of purely commercial blues, when producers pushed the musicians to rehash the same slick songs, resembling the times of Tin Pan Alley.^[24]

Examples of hokum

Schwartz^[25] lists the following examples of hokum in the discography section:

Hokum compilations

There are a lot of hokum compilations. Some examples include:

• Please Warm My Weiner, Yazoo L-1043 (cover art by Robert Crumb) (1992)
• Hokum: Blues and Rags (1929–1930), Document 5392 (1995)
• Hokum Blues: 1924–1929, Document 5370 (1995)
• Take It Out Too Deep: Rufus & Ben Quillian (Blue Harmony Boys) (1929–30).