12: Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron's Memoir 1934-1969, Timme Rosenkrantz

An English re-working of Timme Rosenkrantz's "Dus med Jazzen". Fantastic reading. This is an anecdotal autobiography filled with inaccuracies and mistakes, no doubt, but also with the flavour of the times. It's filled with passages worth re-reading, but this I found particularly interesting. It's the most insistent and (seemingly) precise of the etymologies of "jitterbug" I've yet seen.

And to Harry White goes the honor of coining a word that jives the world: jitterbug. Ed Swayzee held the trumpet seat next to Harry in Cab's band for years. Ed was known as "King Swayzee," a terrific soloist, as you can hear in quick bites on records with Chick Webb, Jelly Roll Morton ("Deep Creek"), and Cab Calloway. ("Weakness," Ed's own tune and arrangement, is a little gem.) The men were, as Harry put it, "boon coons," and naturally they shared their bottles, which they referred to as "jugs." Harry called all his intimate friends his jug-buddies. There was a pretty strong brew called King Kong—many called it Panther Piss—and it was strong enough to make strawberries grow. [...] Harry called it his "jitter juice" because he needed it every morning to cure his "shakes." [...] When very thirsty Harlem musicians form a friendship, they call each other "bug." That's what Harry called his closest friends. One morning, Harry had a solo spot in the Paramount Theater show with Cab. He had hidden his bottle behind a curtain in the wings, so he could take a steadying swig to front the band and play his first solo of the day. [...] When he got there, much to this consternation, the bottle had been taken away. In sheer panic, he shouted to Cab, on stage, "Keep playin', man! I can't find my jitter, bug! Where's my sauce? Get me my jitter, bug, or I can't play." Cab Calloway grabbed the words right out of Harry's mouth, insisting that Harry write a song titled "Jitterbug." He did, with Ed Swayzee. It scored a big hit at the Cotton Club. Already popular in Harlem, a new dance, the Lindy Hop (named in honor of Charles Lindbergh's transatlantic hop), was rechristened the Jitterbug.

I'm sure Norma would not be happy to read that.