[Dixielandjazz] "Struttin With Some Barbecue"

[Don Kirkman]

On Sun, 28 Jul 2002 17:26:57 -0500, Charlie Hooks wrote:

>on 7/28/02 4:50 PM, Stephen Barbone at barbonestreet@earthlink.net wrote:

>> "butter and egg man" (a dairy farmer or bumpkin who fancies himself as
>> an urban high roller)

>...except that this makes no sense at all!  "She wants a dairy farmer who
>fancies himself as an urban high roller..."?  "Don't some dairy farmer or
>bumpkin want her?" 

>    Have heard some silly stuff here and there in my life, but nothing to
>beat this!

>    No, a "big butter and egg man" in this song and among these words
>clearly means some guy who can bring home the bread, the bacon--and the
>butter and eggs--but with overtones of: also a good man to make the butter
>come and fertilize the eggs.  Farmer?  Bumpkin?  Forget it!

>    If the Random House Dictionary of American Slang says things as idiotic
>as this, I'm glad to know I needn't buy it.

When I were a lad my father's brother-in-law was what I always took to
be a butter and egg man sort of guy--he collected eggs and fruit from
surrounding farmers and drove them a hundred or more miles to the market
in Los Angeles.  (Milk/butter/cream were more or less a monopoly of the
creameries of the day, Knudsen's and Challenge in our neck of the
woods.)

So in my still childish mind it's always been a traveling buyer/salesman
of dairy products, a rather important guy in the rural economy.  And
always out of town from somewhere else.

Now that I take time to look in Chapman's "American Slang" I find:

1>  A wealthy business executive or farmer from the provinces.  "The
visiting Butter and Egg Men [making] Whoopee in New York."**  2>  A
person who finances a theatrical production [= angel].

** There might be a usable song title in there somewhere.  :-)
-- 
Don
donkirk@covad.net