Hokum

"Hokum", originally a vaudeville term used for a simple performance bordering on vulgarity,[3][4] "old and sure-fire comedy",[5] but hinting at a smart wordplay, was first used to describe the genre of black music in a billing of a race record for Tampa Red's Hokum Jug Band (Tampa Red and Georgia Tom, 1929).

In the words of W. C. Handy, a veteran of a minstrel troupe, "Our hokum hooked 'em"[9] outside the opera house, so that "ticket sellers would go to work".

It can be derived either by analogy withgap-sealing material oakum (the reliable gags of hokum were supposed to fill the deficiencies of the stage act), or a blend of "hocus-pocus" and "bunkum" (nonsense).

Milton Brown and his Musical Brownies, the seminal white Texas swing band, recorded a hokum tune with scat lyrics in the early 1930s, "Garbage Man Blues", which was originally known by the title the jazz composer Luis Russell gave it, "The Call of the Freaks".

Bob Wills, who had performed in blackface as a young man, liberally used comic asides, whoops, and jive talk when directing his famous Texas Playboys.

The Hoosier Hot Shots, Bob Skyles and the Skyrockets, and other novelty song artists concentrated on the comedic aspects, but for many up-and-coming white country musicians, like Emmett Miller, Clayton McMichen and Jimmie Rodgers, the ribald lyrics were beside the point.

Hokum for these white rounders in the South and Southwest was synonymous with jazz, and the "hot" syncopations and blue notes were a naughty pleasure in themselves.

Carlisle wrote and recorded many hokum tunes and gave them titles such as "Tom Cat Blues", "Shanghai Rooster Yodel" and "That Nasty Swing".

White was a veteran of several minstrel troupes, including one organized by William George "Honeyboy" Evans and another led by Al G. Field, who also employed Emmett Miller.

Many country musicians, like Uncle Dave Macon, Bill Monroe, Eddy Arnold, Stringbean and Roy Acuff, toured with the Wilds tent shows from April through Labor Day.

Almost every country band during that time had some guy who dressed funny, wore a goofy hat, and typically played slide guitar.

[23] Some scholars resent hokum as an era of purely commercial blues, when producers pushed the musicians to rehash the same slick songs, resembling the times of Tin Pan Alley.