Shake That Thing


"Shake That Thing" is a song recorded by Papa Charlie Jackson in 1925, one of the earliest blues standards and a forerunner of hokum. Paramount Records issued it on the B-side of the then standard 10-inch 78 rpm shellac record on July 11, 1925. The song is also known as a first hit record where the male singer accompanies himself. The title of the song contains double entendre: at the time "shake it" was a vulgar euphemism for coitus.

Song

The song is written in a twelve-bar verse-and-refrain format with two-line, four-bar verse and three-line, eight-bar chorus. Like the other best Jackson's songs, "Shake That Thing" is an uptempo dance blues.
The lyrics tells the story of Jackson visiting Georgia where young and old participate in a new kind of dance that requires dancers to "shake that thing". Jackson plays a novel stop-time solo on his banjo. and sings:
On its own the lyrics is pretty tame, but it was made salacious by Jackson's "leering delivery".

Release

Jackson was recording with Paramount since 1924.
In 1926 the publishing rights were sold to Shapiro and Bernstein with a piano version printed in the same year.

Recognition

The song is the most influential piece by Jackson and arguably also the most influential in the history of race records. J. Mayo Williams stated that "Shake That Thing" was so hot that it "helped put the roar in the roaring ’20s". In less than a year it was covered by Clarence Williams's Blue Five, Ethel Waters, Billy Wirges and his Orchestra, Viola McCoy,
Viola Bartlette and Jimmie O’Bryant's Famous Original Washboard Band, Abe Lyman and his Californians, even Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five joined with a music arrangement by Spencer Williams under the name "Georgia Grind" that included a bit of additional lyrics. The Paramount record by Jackson was referred to as an "original" early in 1926, a rarity for the times.

Later developments

The music was reworked in 1928 by Georgia Tom for his song "It's Tight Like That" that started a new subgenre that was later named hokum blues.
The lyrics triggered a brief copyright controversy: in 1926 Carl Van Vechten copied it verbatim into his "Nigger Heaven"; to avoid a lawsuit Langston Hughes, a student at the time, was commissioned to write alternative lines that would exactly fit into the already-made printing plates. This is a rare case of a poet guided by the typesetting rules.

Discography