This idiosyncratic, discursive dictionary was assembled to unravel the most unusual, obscure, and curious words, expressions, and proper or place names found on race records, the music industry trade term for recordings intended for blacks. As a special category, such records were promoted between 1923 and 1949, when the term was replaced inBillboardby its own clumsy confection, “rhythm and blues,” put forth in the interests of appearing less racist, and to retire a term that was associated with musical smut.

Most race recordings consisted of blues songs, which served as the popular music of black Americans from around...

Now you take these young folks, that goes to high school

They sometimes really, do act the fool.

—Scrapper Blackwell, “Be-Da-Da-Bum,” 1929

To behave foolishly or idiotically in a conspicuous manner; a still-current black colloquialism, synonymous withto clown.

His ways an’ actions is hard to beat

For he’s the sheik, of Desplaines Street.

—Papa Charlie Jackson, “Sheik Of Desplaines Street,” 1927

Conduct; a colloquialism embodied in the now-proverbial 19th-century American saying “Actions speak louder than words,” and found in Stephen Crane’sMaggie: A Girl Of The Streets(1893): “‘Anybody what had eyes could see dat dere was somethin’ wrong...