Tuesday, January 31, 2006

From Prof. Cab Calloway's Swingformation Bureau, 1939:

Cab Calloway, M.J. (master of jive), stresses the fact that no matter what language you speak, it is necessary to maintain a high standard of manners and customs.  There are a number of situations that arise and require statisfactory replies - all, of course, in our new language of jive [see The New Cab Calloway's Hepsters Dictionary, 1944].  Instructor Calloway has taken a series of situations and solutions.  Before you turn to the answer page, try your hand at deciphering them, and then compare your results to the correct ones.

1.  If you meet a fellow hepster at a bar, what is the proper greeting?
2.  What is the proper way to ask a young lady to go to the movies with you?
3.  If you are invited to someone's home for a visit, what is the proper manner in which to  accept?
4.  How would you compliment a young lady on her new and pretty dress?
5.  What is the best way to ask a friend for some money?
6.  How can you tell someone to stop annoying the young lady you are escorting?
7.  If someone offers you a proposition you do not like, what is the proper way to refuse him?
8.  How should you invite some one to a chicken dinner at a respectable restaurant in Harlem?


[Answers below.]


1.  "Greetings, gate, let's dissipate."
2.  "Wouldst like to con a glimmer with me this early black?"
3.  "Solid, Jack, I'll dig you in your den gradually."
4.  "My solid pigeon, that drape is a killer-killer, an E-flat Dillinger, a bit of a fly thing all on one page."
5.  "Closest to my ticker, could you send a little cabbage my way until my garden starts growing a little."
6.  "Take it slow, loud and wrong, you come on like Gangbusters but you're going out like Wayne King.  That chick is locked up in this direction, so just cut out while your conk is all in one portion."
7.  "I ain't comin' on that tab."
8.  "Would you like to collar some ready chicken at a dicty hash house in the land o' darkness?"