Green’s Dictionary of Slang

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Beale Black & Blue choose

Quotation Text

[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 9: [T]he park [...] was used mainly by down-and-outers.
at down-and-outer, n.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 28: [A] posse that swept down on a black desperado [...] in a South Memphis ‘ark,’ a Memphis name for a black dive.
at ark, n.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 137: Well there was fighting [...] And one would stick one with a knife, and you’d find him over there in the corner, gone away from here.
at go away (v.) under away, adj.
[US] Roosevelt Sykes q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 173: When I started to making records in 1929, I was playing at a little barrelhouse joint over in East St. Louis.
at barrelhouse, n.
[US] Lillie May Glover q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 152: Now, sometimes things come over that TV, dances and things I used to do, and I lay here and just boohoo.
at boohoo, v.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 140: I had one say to me, he say, ‘I’m dark and you bright and wonder what happened?’.
at bright, adj.1
[US] John ‘Piano ed’ Williams q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 137: [A] fellow stayed in his place, else them bouncers would carry him out of there and give him a good brushing up.
at brush-up (n.) under brush, v.3
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 147: ‘The sheriff told us that if we didn’t get out of town, why, he was going to throw us in jail, on account of all that phony stuff [i.e. selling patent medicines] we put down’.
at put down (v.) under down, adv.2
[US] A. Luandrew q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 224: ‘Back then they didn’t call it a piano player, what they used to call it down South was a ‘dudlow picker’’.
at dudlow picker, n.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 6: [E]asy riders in their boxback suits, stetson hats, and silk shirts, with diamond stickpins and gold chains, glittering symbols of Beale’s glamorous wickedness.
at easy rider, n.1
[US] (con. c.1910) Bukka White q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 122: His father gave him a guitar, and by age nine he was playing at country frolics and suppers.
at frolic, n.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 163: [H]e got mad and jumped up to make the go out the door and stepped over the steps.
at make the go (v.) under go, n.1
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 7: Soon all three were jiving, clapping hands, hamboning, scatting—making music out of nothing.
at hambone, v.2
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 138: Now about the baddest and low-downest little place was on Beale Street was the Hole in the Ground. That was a honey down there, sure was.
at honey, n.1
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 7: Soon all three were jiving, clapping hands, hamboning, scatting—making music out of nothing.
at jive, v.1
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 116: Some of his Memphis friends were afraid he’d tell the one about why he had broken off a long-standing relationship with a woman friend: ‘My key,’ he would say impishly, ‘don’t fit her keyhole no more.’.
at key, n.1
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 116: Some of his Memphis friends were afraid he’d tell the one about why he had broken off a long-standing relationship with a woman friend: ‘My key,’ he would say impishly, ‘don’t fit her keyhole no more.’.
at keyhole, n.
[US] John ‘Piano ed’ Williams q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 136: Sometimes would be some old fellow come by, and you give him a drink, he’d go take a lick or two for you.
at lick, n.2
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 16: Many a Beale Streeter lived out his life without setting foot in Beale’s saloons and gambling dens. Still, early on, the sporting life in the tenderloin area held particular fascination.
at sporting life, n.1
[US] A. King q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 252: ‘[T]his friend was a little shadetree mechanic; I would help him around’.
at shadetree mechanic, n.
[US] Bukka White q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 122: My daddy was a big performer. He played guitar, mandolin, saxophone, piano; and man, could he dance—outta sight.
at out of sight, adv.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 27: The Beale Street beat was a plum for policemen on the take.
at plum, n.2
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 173: ‘Course I didn’t have nothing to bother about ‘cause everything was cheap. [...] So I could take in six dollars and raise a lot of sand.
at raise sand (v.) under sand, n.1
[US] Lillie May Glover q. in McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 156: We were a quarter-mile off Highway 70, the straight shoot to Memphis that was to West Tennessee blues musicians what Highway 61 was to those in the Mississippi Delta.
at straight shoot (n.) under shoot, n.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 14: [He] built an elaborate thirteen-room house just off Beale in a silk-stocking neighborhood where most of the residents were white.
at silk stocking, adj.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 6: [B]lack men under the watchful eyes of white straw bosses had wielded the iron wrecking balls that tore down the framework of Beale.
at straw boss (n.) under straw, n.
[US] McKee & Chisenhall Beale Black & Blue 163: And then one of the girls, she didn’t talk like John thought she was going to talk, and so he got mad.
at talk, v.
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