In 1938, a jazz duo (Slim and Slam) comprised of a pianist and a bass player, wrote a song entitled “Flat Foot Floogie.” Now, in 1938 my favorite music was popular. The big music makers and stars were the big bands, swing bands, and orchestras. Small bands, even two-piece bands, weren’t usually popular on a national level. So, it was a bit of a change to have a song released and become a big hit that was recorded by just two guys. Slim and Slam signed with a record company and submitted the lyrics of the song for approval.
This was the ultra-conservative 1930s. The Great Depression was on.
Here’s the background: This’ll be hard to imagine if you grew up in the modern day with mass media, social media, and television, but in 1938, most slang was local. Very few slang terms became national or international unless they were widely used in a moving picture, or on the fledgling radio, or if the term was included in sheet music (which was very popular at the time) bought at music shops. There was no internet (of course) or any urban dictionaries or slang dictionaries in which you could look up the meaning of slang. Any slang that did get nationally popular was usually clearly understood by the context and had to be disseminated by one of the major outlets that I mentioned.
Slim and Slam’s original title of “Flat Foot Floogie” was “Flat Foot Floozie.” The record company execs in charge of approving lyrics immediately recognized the term “floozie” as a slang term meaning “a loose woman.” But they liked the tune because it was catchy. A “Floozie” was a prostitute, a hooker, or some woman of loose morals. Still means the same today, though it isn’t often used. The record company made Slim and Slam change the title of the song to “Flat Foot Floogie,” a title that the record company believed would just be a nonsense song. Nonsense songs were becoming popular in some jazz circles. So, the song “Flat Foot Floogie” was recorded and released nationwide, and it became a huge hit, going to #2 in the whole country. Played on the radio, at dances, and in homes. But the thing is, since slang was local at the time, almost no one knew what it meant. Americans sang it playing skip-rope or even going to church. The lyrics seemed to be nonsensical:
Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy
Flat Foot Floogie with the Floy Floy
What the record company did not know was that “Floy Floy” was a very limited local slang term meaning “a venereal disease.” So, the lyric repeated throughout the song was:
“A loose woman with a venereal disease.” And this was the #2 hit song in very uptight and conservative America in 1938 and it became a jazz standard. Slim and Slam laughed all the way to the bank. It was subsequently recorded by the Tommy Dorsey Orchestra, Louis Armstrong, the Mills Brothers, and many, many more.
Later, in the 1940s, the term “flat foot” came to be a slang term identifying a “beat cop” or a detective. But people didn’t retroactively interpret that into the Slim and Slam song. So today, the song lyrics would be “A slutty female cop with a venereal disease.”
Now, this is not parallel or comparable to degenerate songs of today that become big hits. Songs that have appeared recently, songs clearly understood by the public and designed to illustrate how degenerated the country and the world has become – because people knew what the songs are saying and revel in it. In fact, the Slim and Slam song was quite the opposite. The fact that the song became a huge hit was BECAUSE it was a masterly troll perpetrated by Slim and Slam and it only became super popular BECAUSE no one really knew what it meant. It was still considered a nonsense song in the 1970s when the super-conservative Jackson 5 sang the song on their national TV show. In fact, you didn’t even know what the song meant until I told you. That’s the difference.
The only other lyrics in the original song were these:
Whenever your cares are chronic
Just tell the world, “go hang,”
You’ll find a greater tonic
If you go on swingin’ with the gang!
Read into that what you will.
This has been your Bunker History Moment.
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Michael Bunker is a local columnist for BrownwoodNews.com whose columns appear periodically on the website.
