Language of the Blues - Edmonton Blues Society

`
played it with the neck off a half-pint whisky bottle. 36 Harmonica players also used
bailing wire to make neck racks for their harps so they could play guitar and harmonica
at the same time.
B A L L IN G T H E JA C K
When a conductor got a locomotive steaming at top speed, he was said to be balling the
-
-
edal to the
popular lexicon as an expression for any wild, all-out effort--from dancing to sex to, for
to mean having a wild time in and out of bed.
The phrase was given a push by the Balling the Jack fad, which reportedly began as a
sexy juke joint dance involving plenty of bumping and grinding. It evolved into a group
From
Juba to Jive by Clarence Major. 37
A variation was performed in 1913 at the Lafayette Theater in Harlem in a play called
The Darktown Follies. Theatrical producer Florence Ziegfeld caught the play and liked
the dance so much that he bought the rights to it for his Follies of 1913. 38 Chris Smith
the African American ragtime tune. The Balling the Jack craze swept white America,
eventually getting mixed in with the Lindy Hop to become a popular swing step.
Judy Garland and Gene Kelly performed the Smith/Burris vers
in the 1942 film Me and My Gal:
Then you twist around and twist around with all your might
Then you do the Eagle Rock with style and grace
e up for a lot by being a
good dancer:
He can be ugly, he can be black
So long as he can eagle rock and ball the jack
27