Stephen Calt, Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary (University of Illinos Press, $26.95). An amazingly thorough, dryly witty glossary of the argot used by blues singers who recorded between 1923 and 1949. If you ever scratched your head over the meaning of such phrases as “alley baby” or “monkey woman,” scratch no more–the answers are here (TT).
Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
An ArtsJournal Blog