Food in blues songs (2)
In this column: jelly roll, squeeze my lemon, all that meat and no potatoes, Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers, Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, Art McKay, Fats Waller, Louis Armstrong, Velma Middleton
JELLY ROLL
A jelly roll is a dessert made of sponge cake that has been spread with jam (or jam mixed with cream) and rolled up into a log, but this is the blues and that's not all it means!
Jelly roll is also one of many evocative culinary euphemisms for female genitals heard in the blues.
Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers – Jelly Roll Blues (1926)
Charley Patton - Skake it and break it
...
You can snatch it, you can grab it,
You can break it, you can twist it,
Any way that I love to get it
I, had my right mind, I, be worried sometime
'Bout a jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Just shake it, you can break it,
You can hang it on the wall
... it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
You can break it, you can hang it on the wall
...it out the window, catch it 'fore it falls
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
I know I been to town, I, I walked around
I, start leavin' town, I, I fool around
My jelly, my roll, sweet mama, don't let it fall
Just shake it, you can break it,
You can hang it on the wall
...
SQUEEZE MY LEMON
Old blues singer code for male masturbation.
The phrase "Squeeze (my lemon) till the juice runs down my leg" appears in Robert Johnson's 1937 song Traveling Riverside Blues". Johnson probably took the lyrics from Arthur McKay's song "She Squeezed My Lemon", recorded earlier that year.
She Squeezed My Lemon - Art McKay
Traveling Riverside Blues - Robert Johnson
ALL THAT MEAT AND NO POTATOES
"All That Meat and No Potatoes" was a phrase used in the 1940s that described a big figured attractive woman with small breasts. Fats Waller liked a female vocalist he was working with, except that she was all that meat and no potatoes. So he wrote a song about it and expressing discontent with cooking that had a lot of meat and no potatoes, as a metaphor for Fats’ feelings towards this woman.
A man works hard then comes on home,
Expects to find stew with that fine ham bone.
He opens the door, then start to lookin',
Says, Woman, what's this stuff you're cookin'?
All that meat and no potatoes
Just ain't right, like green tomatoes.
Here I'm waiting, palpitating,
For all that meat and no potatoes.
...
I don’t think that peas are bad
With meat most anything goes
Yes, I look into the pot
I’m fit to fight
‘Cause, woman, you know that mess just ain’t right
All that meat and no potatoes
...
All That Meat and No Potatoes - Fats Waller
Louis Armstrong and Velma Middleton – All That Meat and No Potatoes
Sources: Talkin' to myself: Blues lyrics, Michael Taft, digitalcitizen.ca, federalcigarjugband.com, pancocojams.blogspot.nl, americanbluesscene.com, YouTube, Wikipedia, Hudson Motors Compagny, Archive Minneapolis, The Cruel Plains, M.H.Price a.o., truewestmagazine.com, The Austin Chronicle, Cambridge Free English Dictionary, Oxford Dictionary, TheSaurus.com, dragonjazz.com/grablue/blues_travel, Encyclopedia of African American Popular Culture, Blues by Paul Breman, Blues by David Harrison, Quora.com, urbandictionary.com, Blogs.loc.gov, The Ballad Hunter by Alan Lomax, Black Pearls: Blues Queens of the 1920th by Daphne Duval Harrison, jopiepopie.blogspot.nl, redhotjazz.com, The Blues Lyrics Formula by Michael Taft, American Ballads and Folk Songs by Alan Lomax and John Avery Lomax, The Past Is Not Dead: Essays from the Southern Quarterly by Douglas B. Chambers, EarlyBlues.com, railroad-line.com, Jason Lee Davis' RailFan Pages , centertruthjustice.org