Edited by Azizi Powell
This post focuses on the meaning of the nickname "Bojangles", the nickname of the dancer/actor Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. This post also features two examples of the stair tap dance that Bojangles invented. In addition, this post includes my transcription of and comments about the rhyme that Bojangles recited while performing his stair dance in the 1935 American movie The Littlest Colonel.
The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
INFORMATION ABOUT BILL "BOJANGLES" ROBINSON
From http://black-face.com/Bill-Bojangles-Robinson.htm
"African-American writer Donald Bogle called him “the quintessential Tom” because of his cheerful and shameless subservience to whites in film. But in real life [Bill "Bojangles" Robinson] was the sort of man who, when refused service at an all-white luncheonette, would lay his pearl-handled revolver on the counter and demand to be served.
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was the most famous of all African American tap dancers in the twentieth century. Born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, his parents, Maria and Maxwell Robinson, died in 1885. Young Bill was reared by his grandmother, Bedilia Robinson, who had been a slave. In Richmond, he got the nickname "Bojangles" from "jangler," meaning contentious, and he invented the phrase "Everything's Copasetic," meaning tip-top...
His act was an amalgam of little steps and moves he had taken from others, then stitched together into a sequence that was greater than the sum of its parts. He worked his magic by rehearsing and performing the act so much that he could do it in his sleep, and then “selling it” to an audience through the sheer force of his infectious personality. He would intersperse his routines with little jokes and remarks, such as the famous “Everything’s copasetic!” In 1918, Robinson introduced what was to become his signature bit, “the stair dance.”...
-snip-
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Robinson
"Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949) was an American tap dancer and actor of stage and film...
Toward the end of the vaudeville era, a white impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928, a black revue for white audiences featuring Robinson and other black stars. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world, maintaining a tenuous connection with the black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. Consequently, blacks and whites developed differing opinions of him. To whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the black variety artist Tom Flatcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler"...
-snip-
[Italics added to highlight those words.]
FEATURED VIDEOS
Example #1: bill "bojangles" robinson step dance
7roach, Uploaded on Sep 1, 2007
****
Example #2: Little Colonel Bojangles Dance
mysticmoon1984, Uploaded on Feb 28, 2010
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson teaches Shirley Temple his signature stair dance in this scene from The Little Colonel [1935]
-snip-
Here's the words to the rhyme that Bill "Bojangles"' character recites in that scene:
"I went to the market
for to get some meat.
And the meat so tough
and I couldn’t get none.*
I paid five dollars
for a great big hog.
And the hog so fat
and I couldn’t get back."
[transcription by Azizi Powell from the video. I'm unsure about the word "none", Corrections welcome.]
This rhyme is a version of an adaptation of the "I went to the river/but I couldn't get across" floating lines that are found in a number of African American rhymes/songs. The structure of those rhymes follows a pattern I refer to as "defective exchanges". In that pattern, something that is defective is exchanged for something else which is also found to be defective and so on. Two rhymes with that patten are included in Thomas W. Talley's 1922 collection Negro Folk Rhymes: Wise & Otherwise "Crossing The River" (page 6) and "Gray & Black Horses" (page 45). Here's an excerpt from that second poem:
I went down to de woods an' I couldn' go 'cross,
So I paid five dollars fer an ole gray hoss.
De hoss wouldn' pull, so I sōl' 'im fer a bull.
De bull wouldn' holler, so I sōl' 'im fer a dollar.
De dollar wouldn' pass, so I throwed it in de grass.
Den de grass wouldn' grow. Heigho! Heigho!
From http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27195/27195-h/27195-h.htm
-snip-
African American novelist Richard Wright included a rhyme with this same defective exchange pattern in his 1938 story "Big Boy Leaves Home," from Uncle Tom's Children
Bye 'n' bye, Ah wanna piece of pie.
Pie's too sweet. Ah wanna piece of meat.
Meat's too red. Ah wanna piece of bread.
Bread's too brown. Ah wanna go t' town.
Town's too far. Ah wanna ketch a car.
Car's too fas'. Ah fall 'n' break mah ass.
Ah'll understan' it better bye 'n' bye.
From http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/w_right.html
-snip-
Incidentally, that same story includes a version of the children's insult rhyme "You're Mama Don't Wear No Drawers". The link to a pancocojams post about that rhyme is included in the Related Links section below.
Multiple contemporary versions of "Ooh Aah I Wanna Piece Of Pie" can be found on this page of my Cocojams cultural website:
http://cocojams.com/content/handclap-jump-rope-and-elastics-rhymes-2. "Take A Peach Take A Plum" is another family of children's playground rhymes that is very closely related to "Ooh Aah I Wanna A Piece Of Pie". Multiple contemporary examples of those rhymes are also found on that same Cocojams page.
RELATED LINKS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMcfUjIguSs
Sammy Davis [sings] "Mr Bojangles"
Note this information from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's Wikipedia page which is cited above:
"While Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" is often thought to be about Robinson, it was actually inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBb9hTyLjfM
Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather [includes a routine in which the Nicolas Brothers tap dance on stairs.]
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2011/10/yo-mama-dont-wear-no-drawers.html Yo Mama Don't Wear No Drawers
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND THANKS
Thanks to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson for his dancing legacy. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post, and to the uploaders of these videos.
Thank you for visiting pancocojams.
Viewer comments are welcome
This post focuses on the meaning of the nickname "Bojangles", the nickname of the dancer/actor Bill "Bojangles" Robinson. This post also features two examples of the stair tap dance that Bojangles invented. In addition, this post includes my transcription of and comments about the rhyme that Bojangles recited while performing his stair dance in the 1935 American movie The Littlest Colonel.
The content of this post is presented for historical, folkloric, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.
All copyrights remain with their owners.
INFORMATION ABOUT BILL "BOJANGLES" ROBINSON
From http://black-face.com/Bill-Bojangles-Robinson.htm
"African-American writer Donald Bogle called him “the quintessential Tom” because of his cheerful and shameless subservience to whites in film. But in real life [Bill "Bojangles" Robinson] was the sort of man who, when refused service at an all-white luncheonette, would lay his pearl-handled revolver on the counter and demand to be served.
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson was the most famous of all African American tap dancers in the twentieth century. Born Luther Robinson in Richmond, Virginia, his parents, Maria and Maxwell Robinson, died in 1885. Young Bill was reared by his grandmother, Bedilia Robinson, who had been a slave. In Richmond, he got the nickname "Bojangles" from "jangler," meaning contentious, and he invented the phrase "Everything's Copasetic," meaning tip-top...
His act was an amalgam of little steps and moves he had taken from others, then stitched together into a sequence that was greater than the sum of its parts. He worked his magic by rehearsing and performing the act so much that he could do it in his sleep, and then “selling it” to an audience through the sheer force of his infectious personality. He would intersperse his routines with little jokes and remarks, such as the famous “Everything’s copasetic!” In 1918, Robinson introduced what was to become his signature bit, “the stair dance.”...
-snip-
From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Robinson
"Bill "Bojangles" Robinson (May 25, 1878 – November 25, 1949) was an American tap dancer and actor of stage and film...
Toward the end of the vaudeville era, a white impresario, Lew Leslie, produced Blackbirds of 1928, a black revue for white audiences featuring Robinson and other black stars. From then on, Robinson's public role was that of a dapper, smiling, plaid-suited ambassador to the white world, maintaining a tenuous connection with the black show-business circles through his continuing patronage of the Hoofers Club, an entertainer's haven in Harlem. Consequently, blacks and whites developed differing opinions of him. To whites, for example, his nickname "Bojangles" meant happy-go-lucky, while the black variety artist Tom Flatcher claimed it was slang for "squabbler"...
-snip-
[Italics added to highlight those words.]
FEATURED VIDEOS
Example #1: bill "bojangles" robinson step dance
7roach, Uploaded on Sep 1, 2007
****
Example #2: Little Colonel Bojangles Dance
mysticmoon1984, Uploaded on Feb 28, 2010
Bill "Bojangles" Robinson teaches Shirley Temple his signature stair dance in this scene from The Little Colonel [1935]
-snip-
Here's the words to the rhyme that Bill "Bojangles"' character recites in that scene:
"I went to the market
for to get some meat.
And the meat so tough
and I couldn’t get none.*
I paid five dollars
for a great big hog.
And the hog so fat
and I couldn’t get back."
[transcription by Azizi Powell from the video. I'm unsure about the word "none", Corrections welcome.]
This rhyme is a version of an adaptation of the "I went to the river/but I couldn't get across" floating lines that are found in a number of African American rhymes/songs. The structure of those rhymes follows a pattern I refer to as "defective exchanges". In that pattern, something that is defective is exchanged for something else which is also found to be defective and so on. Two rhymes with that patten are included in Thomas W. Talley's 1922 collection Negro Folk Rhymes: Wise & Otherwise "Crossing The River" (page 6) and "Gray & Black Horses" (page 45). Here's an excerpt from that second poem:
I went down to de woods an' I couldn' go 'cross,
So I paid five dollars fer an ole gray hoss.
De hoss wouldn' pull, so I sōl' 'im fer a bull.
De bull wouldn' holler, so I sōl' 'im fer a dollar.
De dollar wouldn' pass, so I throwed it in de grass.
Den de grass wouldn' grow. Heigho! Heigho!
From http://www.gutenberg.org/files/27195/27195-h/27195-h.htm
-snip-
African American novelist Richard Wright included a rhyme with this same defective exchange pattern in his 1938 story "Big Boy Leaves Home," from Uncle Tom's Children
Bye 'n' bye, Ah wanna piece of pie.
Pie's too sweet. Ah wanna piece of meat.
Meat's too red. Ah wanna piece of bread.
Bread's too brown. Ah wanna go t' town.
Town's too far. Ah wanna ketch a car.
Car's too fas'. Ah fall 'n' break mah ass.
Ah'll understan' it better bye 'n' bye.
From http://xroads.virginia.edu/~drbr/w_right.html
-snip-
Incidentally, that same story includes a version of the children's insult rhyme "You're Mama Don't Wear No Drawers". The link to a pancocojams post about that rhyme is included in the Related Links section below.
Multiple contemporary versions of "Ooh Aah I Wanna Piece Of Pie" can be found on this page of my Cocojams cultural website:
http://cocojams.com/content/handclap-jump-rope-and-elastics-rhymes-2. "Take A Peach Take A Plum" is another family of children's playground rhymes that is very closely related to "Ooh Aah I Wanna A Piece Of Pie". Multiple contemporary examples of those rhymes are also found on that same Cocojams page.
RELATED LINKS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMcfUjIguSs
Sammy Davis [sings] "Mr Bojangles"
Note this information from Bill "Bojangles" Robinson's Wikipedia page which is cited above:
"While Jerry Jeff Walker's 1968 folk song "Mr. Bojangles" is often thought to be about Robinson, it was actually inspired by Walker's encounter with a street performer in the New Orleans first precinct jail."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zBb9hTyLjfM
Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather [includes a routine in which the Nicolas Brothers tap dance on stairs.]
http://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2011/10/yo-mama-dont-wear-no-drawers.html Yo Mama Don't Wear No Drawers
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT AND THANKS
Thanks to Bill "Bojangles" Robinson for his dancing legacy. Thanks also to all those who are quoted in this post, and to the uploaders of these videos.
Thank you for visiting pancocojams.
Viewer comments are welcome
