Amy:
The song from Wonderful Town is called "Swing" and in it, Ruth is
forced to use some of the slang heard in New York at the time the show
is set, i.e., the 30's.
The wonderful song by Frank Loesser and Jimmy McHugh, "Murder, He
Says" - I often suggest dames put it in their audition books - was
written more than a decade earlier. And makes fun of contem****ary
slang.
I found a Time Magazine item from 1941, about slang, using Solid,
Jackson as its title.
Comden & Green (with Bernstein) were writing a show about 1930's New
York, so, naturally, the colloquialisms of the time were a subject.
The song doesn't reference Murder He Says but it bares more than a few
similarities to the Fats Waller (and, later, Andrews Sisters) hit,
Hold Tight. A couple of lines from different parts of that one:
"When I come home from work at night, I get my favorite dish - fish!"
"Hold tight, hold tight...I want some seafood mamma!"
I leave it to you to decipher what Fats was singing about...
>
> I was listening to the Village Vortex song today (can't recall the
> title - but it's the one where Ruth is barking for the club). The part
> where the song goes into all the slang was really amusing me - and I
> noticed they used the words "jackson" and "solid," two slang words
> used often in Betty Hutton's "Murder, He Says."
>
> I gather that "jackson" and "solid" were fairly common slang at the
> time...but do you think
> either of these songs is directly referencing the other as something
> of an in-joke? I am not sure which song was written first.
>
> Can you name any other songs that use these words as "hep" slang?
>
> Cheers!
> Amy :)
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