After hearing Lewis say that there was a side of Leadbelly songs categorized as "sookey jumps" I decided to dig around some slang dictionaries to find the meaning of the word. Most of the comprehensive modern slang dictionaries in print form list "sookie" as being an Australian slang term for a puny and faint-hearted man, or a "mama's boy". Also, the smaller pop-culture dictionaries didn't really help any, and nearly all of the ones online, even in Temple's research databases, were generally unhelpful.
I decided to go to the Paley Library (the main library) at Temple, and found a more interesting definition in a slang dictionary that dates back to 1914. Check out the entire title:
Farmer, John S. and W.E. Henley. Slang and its Analogues, Past and Present: A dictionary historical and comparative of the heterodox speech of all classes of society for more than three hundred years, with synonyms in English, French, German, Italian, etc. Printed for subscribers only. 1914.
The dictionary is enormous--it includes 7 volumes. Volume 7, p.25 has the following entry:
Sukey, subs. (common). -- 1. A kettle. 2. A common name for a general servant or "slavey". Sukey-tawdry = a slatternly female in fine tawdry. [I think that this is the same term--"oo" is often interchangeable with "u" in slang, such as "jook joint" and "juke joint".]
The dictionary defines "tawdry" as a rustic equivalent of an elegant necklace or girdle.
The authors appear to be British, but depending on how old the term "sukey" is, it could very well have been in use in the American South, given that the majority of white folks in the Deep South are of Angl0-Saxon heritage.
There was no entry for "sukey jump", but knowing that a jump was a type of vernacular dance in the early 20th Century (think "One o'clock Jump", "Jumpin' at the Woodside", "Detroit Jump" etc.), and given other examples of sections of the African-American community wrestling ownership of derogatory terms (the n-word; referring to others as "man" instead of "boy", etc.), turning negative phrases into positive ones ("bad", "dope", etc.), and rebranding words completely for metaphorical effect ("juke" was Gullah for "wicked", but was turned into a term for a popular rural dance hall/watering hole), I would guess that "sookey jump" is a type of regional dance that is a play on words involving the above definition. (Sorry for the long sentence.)
Thoughts? Maybe this would be a good question for Elijah or Alan.
"Sukey Tawdry" is in the the lyrics of the famous Kurt Weill song "Mack the Knife"!! After reading your info, I doubt that any of the many people who sang this song knew what that meant!
ReplyDeleteThere is a standard dictionary of slang--it's by the late Partridge--two volumes, 4,000 pages, published 5 years ago:
http://books.google.com/books/about/The_New_Partridge_Dictionary_of_Slang_an.html?id=mAdUqLrKw4YC
When you "search inside" only the spelling "sooky" gets a hit, and it means "cries easily; crybaby"--and again, it's British/Australian, not US.
Lewis