Talk:Hokum

Sexual innendos?

How does the term hokum, then, apply to the music of... C.W. Stoneking, for example? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Freshmaniac (talk • contribs) 09:33, 21 April 2009 (UTC)

Fair use rationale for Image:Bob Wills.jpg

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Shouldn't links go to the actual wiki-artical and not disambiguation pages?

Robert Johnson's link for example. 192.88.158.211 14:54, 14 June 2007 (UTC)

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Shouldn't there be the Blues template on the article page?

As a genre within the blues, I think that a template should belong on the page like this, for Blues-rock: [1]. It gives a sense of both authenticity and shows where hokum belongs in relation of the other approaches to the blues. --Leahtwosaints (talk) 00:38, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

Insufficient citations

There’s some good in this article, but all in all the article is weakened by insufficient inline citations. For just one instance, songs are claimed to be “American classics”, when they are not nearly unambiguously so. There are many titles in the bibliography to look at. Triplingual (talk) 17:13, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

There’s also been a “footnotes needed” template on the page for nigh on 11 years now, but it’s not merely adding footnotes. Triplingual (talk) 17:24, 23 August 2021 (UTC)

Dirty blues

The dirty blues are apparently extremely close to hokum, some songs (cf. King Size Papa) are classified by different sources either way. At the very least, a reference to dirty blues deserves to be in the lead, not hidden at the bottom. It would be even better to explain the difference. Викидим (talk) 21:29, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

[2] considers "hokum", "dirty blues", "bawdy blues" to be synonimous, see also [3]. Pinging @Derek R Bullamore: who might know the background of the two articles. Викидим (talk) 21:39, 18 May 2023 (UTC)

I do know the background of the dirty blues article, largely because I have been one of two main contributors (along with User:Ghmyrtle) since 2010. I do not wish to brag or boast, but that article is very well referenced, both in terms of the main text, and the list of associated 'notable' songs. If anyone cares to explore those references further, they make copious mention of 'dirty blues' and extremely rarely 'bawdy blues' or even 'hokum'. The hokum article on the other hand, has few inline citations, although there is a list of 'sources', which are mainly publications or liner notes. That lack of directly attributable references is presumably why there are two 'original research' tags in the article. I have made few edits to that article, and do seriously question the validity of much of the text. One of the few edits I have made (in August 2019) noted "NB. Various music historians describe many of these songs as dirty blues". Perhaps a decent starting off point would be to look at a couple of dictionary definitions of both terms, to ascertain how near or far they are apart. There is considerable overlap, for sure, as there so often is when music genres are concerned. - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 13:05, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

I have started with a list of sources (below). A very long work on the subject (it is just a master's thesis, but a really comprehensive one) nicely distinguish the two (#4, #5 below). Some authors clearly treat the terms as synonyms, but their works are also not very authoritative. A robust source (#1) is ambivalent. So, unless someone objects, I am going to put some text about the links between hokum and dirty blues into into the lead of this article. My Portuguese is at the Google-translate level, unfortunately, but I might also try to rewrite the portions of the Hokum using Rocha as a source. Викидим (talk) 14:36, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

Two weeks had expired with nobody objecting, so I am putting the gears into motion. Викидим (talk) 21:43, 4 June 2023 (UTC)

Yes, a lengthy enough timespan for objectors to have commented. Frankly I think hokum is of minimal interest to almost all contributors, but it deserves a better article than the present one. I will watch with interest, for my real work is elsewhere. - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 13:13, 5 June 2023 (UTC)

I have started. I do not pretend to understand the subject well (I have very tangential interest here due mostly to Julia Lee (musician)), so feel free to fix my interpretation of the sources without any discussion. Викидим (talk) 03:53, 6 June 2023 (UTC)

List of sources

This section is intended to serve as a list of sources on the commonalities / differences between hokum and dirty blues. Everyone is invited to contribute. --Викидим (talk) 13:43, 19 May 2023 (UTC)

1. Elijah Wald (3 August 2010). The Blues: A Very Short Introduction. Oxford University Press. p. 43. ISBN 978-0-19-975079-5. OCLC 1014220088. flood of hokum songs established blues as a medium for [...] comic smut. There had always been dirty blues [...]
2. Clair DeLune (21 September 2015). South Carolina Blues. Arcadia Publishing. p. 87. ISBN 978-1-4396-5327-2. OCLC 936538023. hokum, which is also called "bawdy" or "dirty" blues
3. Cunningham, Alexandria (2018). "Make It Nasty: Black Women's Sexual Anthems and the Evolution of the Erotic Stage". Journal of Black Sexuality and Relationships. 5 (1): 63–89. doi:10.1353/bsr.2018.0015. eISSN 2376-7510. (page 78): dirty blues was a subgenre [...] also referenced as hokum
4. Rocha, Alexandre Eleutério (2022). Hokum Blues: erotismo e humor em uma vertente musical silenciada (PDF) (Mestre em Música) (in Portuguese). Universidade de Brasília. p. 96. A deliberada alegria, atrevimento e bom humor diferenciava o hokum do dirty blues, cuja temática do amor sexual era chocantemente madura e direta, apesar de que muitas vezes essa vertente era confundida com o hokum blues nos seus contornos e limites (que, ao fim e ao cabo, são percepções e categorizações arbitrárias e subjetivas). (English: The deliberate gaiety, sass and good humor set hokum apart from dirty blues, whose theme of sexual love was shockingly mature and straightforward, despite the fact that it often was confused with hokum blues in its outlines)
5. Ibid., p. 94: Portuguese: Se o amor sexual no dirty blues era por vezes chocantemente maduro e direto e propício para se dançar o slow drag, o animadamente dançante hokum blues, muito popular sobretudo nas décadas de 1920 e 30 e com discos vendidos às centenas de milhares, celebrizou-se como um significativo exemplo de “vertente maliciosa”, termo emprestado de Mônica Leme (2003), quando trata de manifestações em que os aspectos rítmicos possuem grande papel na forte integração de texto, músicas e dança. English: If sexual love in the dirty blues was sometimes shockingly mature and direct and conducive to dancing the slow drag, the lively dancing hokum blues, very popular especially in the 1920s and 30s and with records sold in the hundreds of thousands, became famous as a significant example of the “mischievous branch” of music, a term borrowed from Mônica Leme (2003) [used to describe lundu, maxixe, xote, samba], when dealing with situations where the rhythmic aspects have big role in the tight integration of text, songs and dance.
6. Stephen Calt (1 October 2010). Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary. University of Illinois Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-252-09071-4. OCLC 1156337352. hokum: A vaudeville term [...] fun bordering on vulgarity and quite obvious [...] descriptive of material by [...] Hokum Boys [...] musical approach [...] fostered by Papa Charlie Jackson
7. Gunther Schuller (1989). The Swing Era: The Development of Jazz, 1930-1945. Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-507140-5. OCLC 1002068544. uses "hokum" for vaudeville-style jazz/talk/song pieces, both good or bad (page 16: moronic "barnyard hokum", page 215: fantastic bit of musical hokum).
8. Larkin, Colin (30 September 2013). The Virgin Encyclopedia of The Blues. Random House. ISBN 978-1-4481-3274-4. 'Hokum, with its connotations of verbal cleverness, was first applied to black music [...] in billing of 'Tampa Red's Hokum Jazz Band' [ Tampa Red and Georgia Tom]

Remove minstrel show sections?

The (unsourced) sections "Technique", "Minstrel show origins", "Subversion and confrontation", "Artistic dilemma" mostly discuss the Minstrel shows - but we have another article for that. The sheer weight of information seems to be out of proportion (cf. WP:UNDUE). Hokum is not a generic term for the blues songs with innuendo, it appears to be a specific style of "bouncy" songs popular in 1930s. Beaumont (see the source below) derives the blues humor from minstrel shows, vaudeville, medicine shows. Inside the blues genre Beaumont traces humor through classic blues, country blues, hokum in the 1930s, rhythm and blues in 1940s, Chicago blues in 1950s and 1960s. While undoubtedly minstrel shows are at the root of the hokum music, there are many other influences, and hokum is somewhat distanced from the minstrel shows. Therefore, I propose to delete the abovementioned sections altogether (if there is minstrel material there that is not duplicative in Minstrel shows, perhaps, it should be moved there) and replace it with a brief history section along the lines proposed by Beaumont and Rocha. Pinging the major contributor @Wlashley:.

• Beaumont, Daniel (2004). "Humor". In Komara, E.; Lee, P. (eds.). The Blues Encyclopedia. Taylor & Francis. pp. 476–479. ISBN 978-1-135-95832-9. Retrieved 2023-06-09.

Викидим (talk) 17:45, 9 June 2023 (UTC)

Two weeks passed without an objection, I am starting the pruning. Викидим (talk) 18:22, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

Hokum in early blues

I plan to rewrite this section roughly along the lines "Sex and Booze" or "Dirty Humor" (I am hereby requesting suggestions for the new section name, as the current one does not fit well, IMHO). It should describe the non-musical aspect of what is called hokum subgenre. I will first collect the sources below, everyone is welcome to help edit this section. Викидим (talk) 19:17, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

• With no objections, I had started the rewrite. All the sources point to the influence in the opposite direction: early blues > hokum. --Викидим (talk) 09:21, 18 November 2023 (UTC)

Examples of hokum

This section includes some songs that do not fit the hokum definition at all (for example, the end of the list is all-country music and classic dirty blues). Some source for the list would be very nice. Викидим (talk) 20:50, 27 June 2023 (UTC)

A list of songs is available in Rocha's work, starting with p. 268. A lot of them are not hokum either, but they are all mentioned in the text and thus can be classified. Викидим (talk) 05:40, 28 June 2023 (UTC)

Found a better song list: a discography in the Appendix to the Schwartz's work (see the sources). I am going to change the list according to this source. Викидим (talk) 21:55, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Sounds good. I'm glad you are making this a better article. Brianyoumans (talk) 23:43, 8 July 2023 (UTC)

Done. Due to particular interest of Schwartz in “It's Tight Like That” and, by extension. in "Shake That Thing", the list is overloaded with multiple recording of both. Some of the songs are definitely non-nokum, even though influenced by it. Feel free to trim, or suggest me where to trim. Викидим (talk) 22:45, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

Collections

The sections on hokum music collections contain no sources. Without WP:RS, these list are not useful, as there are literally hundreds of such albums. Викидим (talk) 05:51, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

I would suggest either the section(s) are removed completely, or that it is made clear that there are numerous compilations that contain hokum songs; stating something like 'a few examples being' followed by a small number of those currently mentioned such as

• Please Warm My Weiner, Yazoo L-1043 (cover art by Robert Crumb) (1992)
• Hokum: Blues and Rags (1929–1930), Document 5392 (1995)
• Hokum Blues: 1924–1929, Document 5370 (1995)
• Take It Out Too Deep: Rufus & Ben Quillian (Blue Harmony Boys) (1929–30).

That should ensure we are including genuine hokum collections, rather than those containing raunchy material better falling under the dirty blues descriptions. Over to you. - Derek R Bullamore (talk) 22:47, 21 November 2023 (UTC)

Few months without objections.  Done Викидим (talk) 03:33, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

Hokum in early country music

The "Hokum#Hokum in early country music" section has no sources, tagged as such for a very long time. Whatever I was able to source is already in the Hokum#Legacy. I am planning to simply remove the Hokum in early country music altogether. Викидим (talk) 04:22, 7 March 2024 (UTC)