Translation: This language excites me!
Jive's murky history begins with the African American slave experience in which people of different languages and dialects strove to communicate in a hostile, foreign environment. Simmered like a gumbo in New Orleans, it absorbed creole phrasing and inflections. Early Jazz musicians added their riffs and carried it up the Mississippi to Chicago and finally New York. During this journey, jive assimilated nuances from the nefarious world of criminals, the imagery of poets and the sundry input of ne'er-do-wells. Never stagnant, jive constantly changed meanings and revised words, so even the cognoscente struggled to stay hip.
As an example, take the word for someone who understands jive, or in the patois "has their boots on" - Originally a hepster, then a hep-cat, then a hipster, then transformed into an adjective "to be hip", and by the 1960s had morphed into the iconic hippie.
To experience the vibrancy of this colorful language, I recommend three sources: Cab Calloway's The New Hepster's Dictionary, the Language of Jive, Milton "Mezz" Messrow's Really the Blues and any of the brilliant monologues from comic stylist Lord Buckley which are now available as MP3s - as ever - BB
"Hipsters, flipsters and finger-poppin' daddies, knock me your lobes!" - Lord Buckley's jive rendition of "Friends, Romans and countrymen, lend me your ears." from Shakespeare's Julius Caesar.
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