Author: Debra Devi

This is the latest installment of our series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining, award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. The shimmy was a popular dance in Harlem’s Cotton Club in the 1920s. To dance the shimmy, women wiggled their shoulders back and forth to get their breasts moving from side to side. Eventually, the entire body would…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. Sharecropping is the working of a piece of land by a tenant in exchange for a share of the revenue that the tenant’s crops earn when the landowner sells them. Sharecropping or tenant farming kept European…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. In the 1800s, shank referred to the long shaft of the metal keys that were common at the time. When sharpened to a point, a key shank made a nasty weapon. Linguists speculate that this may…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. Depending on the decade, there are many different meanings in the blues for shake, including a rent party (1920s), an erotic dance (1930s), or to extort or “shake down” someone (1940s). Shake is also slang for…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. Second line is the famously funky marching groove that musicians call “the big four,” for its drum accent on every four count. Second line originated in New Orleans, where “the second line” refers to the people…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. Saltwater is slang for alcohol. It shows up in the Charlie Patton song “Revenue Man Blues”: My doney loves saltwater, she always wants a drink If they see you with a bottle, they’ll almost break your…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining, award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. In French Creole, salté means “dirty.” To jouer en salté means to play a dirty trick on someone. In Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary, salty appears to have an Old English meaning similar to “horny.” It was used…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. A rounder is a professional gambler who travels around looking for high-stakes poker games. A rounder takes big risks for big money…and sometimes loses big. Gambling poker games weren’t allowed in the United States until the…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. Like the word “rock,” roll was originally associated with manual labor in the Delta, specifically the rolling of heavy bales of cotton onto a ship–a job that took three men per bale and was often accompanied…

This is the latest installment of our weekly series The Language of the Blues, in which author and rock musician Debra Devi explores the meaning of a word or phrase found in the blues. Grab a signed copy of Devi’s entertaining & award-winning glossary The Language of the Blues: From Alcorub to Zuzu (Foreword by Dr. John) at Bluescentric.com. Also available as an eBook. *All quotes are from the author’s interviews with the artists. By the 1940s, the term rock’n’roll was well established in Southern juke joints as meaning “to have sex.” Rock ’n’ roll didn’t emerge as a distinct…