The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas
Encyclopedia
"The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas" or "The Duck's Yas Yas Yas" is a hokum
jazz
-blues
song, originally recorded by James "Stump" Johnson
, but the most well known version was recorded by Oliver Cobb and his Rhythm Kings.
The song is perhaps best known for the following lyrics
:
"Mama bought a rooster
She thought it was a duck
She served it at the table with its legs straight up"
in late 1928 or January 1929. He recorded the tune at least three times in his career. Blues singer Tampa Red
and Thomas A. Dorsey
also recorded a version on May 13, 1929.
Oliver Cobb recorded the song on August 16, 1929, before he died suddenly the next year. Eddie Johnson
and The Crackerjacks recorded a cover of the song in 1932. In 1939, Tommy McClennan
used some of the lyrics in his song "Bottle It Up and Go". It has been covered by The Three Peppers and by King Perry
& His Pied Pipers (1951) in a hardly recognizable clean version. The song has also been performed by American folk singer Dave Van Ronk
as "Yas Yas Yas" on his album Van Ronk Sings
(1961).
. "Yas Yas" was a common euphemism
in blues hokum
songs for ass
. The lyrics of the song exist in many variations, so it is not easy to quote from a definitive version. "The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas" tells in most versions how the men in Market Street "all do the Georgia Rub" while women stand in line with their "big washed duck" (although in some versions it is the other way around. And sometimes the "big washed duck" is referenced to as "a big wash tub"). The gravy
or liquor on the duck's yas-yas-yas could be a euphemism
for sweat
or even sperm
. Other lines from the lyrics also clearly reference sex
, prostitutes and brothel
s. Therefore it can be classified as a hokum
or a dirty blues
song.
A major artist from the Bahamas, Blind Blake & his Royal Victoria Hotel Calypso Band, recorded a version of the song under the name "Yes! Yes! Yes!" (released on Miami's Art Records label in 1951). John Lee Hooker used the first lines of the song in several of his interpretations of "Bottle Up and Go
".
quoted the song in his comic strip album Zap Comix
, nr. 0 in 1967. It is quoted in the first panel of a story called "Ducks Yas Yas". He also recorded the tune in 1972 with his band, the Good Tone Banjo Boys, on a transparent red vinyl record that was cut (unusually for that period) at 78rpm; this may have been the only 78rpm record ever released in stereo
.
The Duck's Yas-Yas-Ya is also referenced on Captain Beefheart
's album Trout Mask Replica
(1969), on the track "Old Fart At Play", where Beefheart sings the following lines: "Momma licked 'er lips like uh cat / Pecked the ground like uh rooster / Pivoted like uh duck", featuring all three protagonists from the most famous line of the blues song.
Hokum
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music - a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos...
jazz
Jazz
Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...
-blues
Blues
Blues is the name given to both a musical form and a music genre that originated in African-American communities of primarily the "Deep South" of the United States at the end of the 19th century from spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts and chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads...
song, originally recorded by James "Stump" Johnson
James "Stump" Johnson
James "Stump" Johnson was an American blues pianist and singer from St. Louis.-Biography:James "Stump" Johnson was the brother of Jesse Johnson, "a prominent black business man," who around 1909 had moved the family from Clarksville, Tennessee, to St. Louis, where he ran a music store and was a...
, but the most well known version was recorded by Oliver Cobb and his Rhythm Kings.
The song is perhaps best known for the following lyrics
Lyrics
Lyrics are a set of words that make up a song. The writer of lyrics is a lyricist or lyrist. The meaning of lyrics can either be explicit or implicit. Some lyrics are abstract, almost unintelligible, and, in such cases, their explication emphasizes form, articulation, meter, and symmetry of...
:
"Mama bought a rooster
Rooster
A rooster, also known as a cockerel, cock or chanticleer, is a male chicken with the female being called a hen. Immature male chickens of less than a year's age are called cockerels...
She thought it was a duck
Duck
Duck is the common name for a large number of species in the Anatidae family of birds, which also includes swans and geese. The ducks are divided among several subfamilies in the Anatidae family; they do not represent a monophyletic group but a form taxon, since swans and geese are not considered...
She served it at the table with its legs straight up"
Origins
"The Duck's Yas Yas Yas" was originally recorded in the origin of St. Louis by pianist James "Stump" JohnsonJames "Stump" Johnson
James "Stump" Johnson was an American blues pianist and singer from St. Louis.-Biography:James "Stump" Johnson was the brother of Jesse Johnson, "a prominent black business man," who around 1909 had moved the family from Clarksville, Tennessee, to St. Louis, where he ran a music store and was a...
in late 1928 or January 1929. He recorded the tune at least three times in his career. Blues singer Tampa Red
Tampa Red
Tampa Red , born Hudson Woodbridge but known from childhood as Hudson Whittaker, was an American Chicago blues musician....
and Thomas A. Dorsey
Thomas A. Dorsey
Thomas Andrew Dorsey was known as "the father of black gospel music" and was at one time so closely associated with the field that songs written in the new style were sometimes known as "dorseys." Earlier in his life he was a leading blues pianist known as Georgia Tom.As formulated by Dorsey,...
also recorded a version on May 13, 1929.
Oliver Cobb recorded the song on August 16, 1929, before he died suddenly the next year. Eddie Johnson
Eddie Johnson (musician)
Edwin Lawrence "Eddie" Johnson was an American jazz and blues tenor saxophonist. He was born in Napoleonville, Louisiana, United States....
and The Crackerjacks recorded a cover of the song in 1932. In 1939, Tommy McClennan
Tommy McClennan
Tommy McClennan was an American Delta blues singer and guitarist.-Life and career:McClennan was born on a farm near Yazoo City, Mississippi, United States, and grew up in the town...
used some of the lyrics in his song "Bottle It Up and Go". It has been covered by The Three Peppers and by King Perry
King Perry
Oliver Hazard "King" Perry was an American jazz saxophonist, clarinetist, arranger, and bandleader....
& His Pied Pipers (1951) in a hardly recognizable clean version. The song has also been performed by American folk singer Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk
Dave Van Ronk was an American folk singer, born in Brooklyn, New York, who settled in Greenwich Village, New York, and was eventually nicknamed the "Mayor of MacDougal Street" ....
as "Yas Yas Yas" on his album Van Ronk Sings
Van Ronk Sings
Van Ronk Sings was an album by American folksinger Dave Van Ronk, released in 1961.It was also released on LP as Dave Van Ronk Sings the Blues and Dave Van Ronk Sings Earthy Ballads and Blues...
(1961).
Content
The song was very popular in whorehouses before it was recorded and has a strong sexual innuendoInnuendo
An innuendo is a baseless invention of thoughts or ideas. It can also be a remark or question, typically disparaging , that works obliquely by allusion...
. "Yas Yas" was a common euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
in blues hokum
Hokum
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music - a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos...
songs for ass
Buttocks
The buttocks are two rounded portions of the anatomy, located on the posterior of the pelvic region of apes and humans, and many other bipeds or quadrupeds, and comprise a layer of fat superimposed on the gluteus maximus and gluteus medius muscles. Physiologically, the buttocks enable weight to...
. The lyrics of the song exist in many variations, so it is not easy to quote from a definitive version. "The Duck's Yas-Yas-Yas" tells in most versions how the men in Market Street "all do the Georgia Rub" while women stand in line with their "big washed duck" (although in some versions it is the other way around. And sometimes the "big washed duck" is referenced to as "a big wash tub"). The gravy
Gravy
Gravy is a sauce made often from the juices that run naturally from meat or vegetables during cooking. In North America the term can refer to a wider variety of sauces and gravy is often thicker than in Britain...
or liquor on the duck's yas-yas-yas could be a euphemism
Euphemism
A euphemism is the substitution of a mild, inoffensive, relatively uncontroversial phrase for another more frank expression that might offend or otherwise suggest something unpleasant to the audience...
for sweat
SWEAT
SWEAT is an OLN/TSN show hosted by Julie Zwillich that aired in 2003-2004.Each of the 13 half-hour episodes of SWEAT features a different outdoor sport: kayaking, mountain biking, ice hockey, beach volleyball, soccer, windsurfing, rowing, Ultimate, triathlon, wakeboarding, snowboarding, telemark...
or even sperm
Sperm
The term sperm is derived from the Greek word sperma and refers to the male reproductive cells. In the types of sexual reproduction known as anisogamy and oogamy, there is a marked difference in the size of the gametes with the smaller one being termed the "male" or sperm cell...
. Other lines from the lyrics also clearly reference sex
Sex
In biology, sex is a process of combining and mixing genetic traits, often resulting in the specialization of organisms into a male or female variety . Sexual reproduction involves combining specialized cells to form offspring that inherit traits from both parents...
, prostitutes and brothel
Brothel
Brothels are business establishments where patrons can engage in sexual activities with prostitutes. Brothels are known under a variety of names, including bordello, cathouse, knocking shop, whorehouse, strumpet house, sporting house, house of ill repute, house of prostitution, and bawdy house...
s. Therefore it can be classified as a hokum
Hokum
Hokum is a particular song type of American blues music - a humorous song which uses extended analogies or euphemistic terms to make sexual innuendos...
or a dirty blues
Dirty blues
Dirty blues encompasses forms of blues music that deal with topics that are sometimes considered taboo in society, including sexual metaphors and/or references to drug use of some kind. Due to the sometimes graphic subject matter, such music was often banned from radio and only available on a jukebox...
song.
A major artist from the Bahamas, Blind Blake & his Royal Victoria Hotel Calypso Band, recorded a version of the song under the name "Yes! Yes! Yes!" (released on Miami's Art Records label in 1951). John Lee Hooker used the first lines of the song in several of his interpretations of "Bottle Up and Go
Bottle Up and Go
"Bottle Up and Go" or "Bottle It Up and Go" is a song that is a standard of the blues. Based on earlier songs, Delta bluesman Tommy McClennan recorded "Bottle It Up and Go" in 1939. The song has been interpreted and recorded by numerous artists, sometimes using alternate titles, such as "Step It...
".
In popular culture
Underground cartoonist Robert CrumbRobert Crumb
Robert Dennis Crumb —known as Robert Crumb and R. Crumb—is an American artist, illustrator, and musician recognized for the distinctive style of his drawings and his critical, satirical, subversive view of the American mainstream.Crumb was a founder of the underground comix movement and is regarded...
quoted the song in his comic strip album Zap Comix
Zap Comix
Zap Comix is the best-known and one of the most popular of the underground comics that emerged as part of the youth counterculture of the late 1960s. While not believed to be the first underground comic to have been published, Zap is considered to mark the beginning of the "underground comix"...
, nr. 0 in 1967. It is quoted in the first panel of a story called "Ducks Yas Yas". He also recorded the tune in 1972 with his band, the Good Tone Banjo Boys, on a transparent red vinyl record that was cut (unusually for that period) at 78rpm; this may have been the only 78rpm record ever released in stereo
STEREO
STEREO is a solar observation mission. Two nearly identical spacecraft were launched into orbits that cause them to respectively pull farther ahead of and fall gradually behind the Earth...
.
The Duck's Yas-Yas-Ya is also referenced on Captain Beefheart
Captain Beefheart
Don Van Vliet January 15, 1941 December 17, 2010) was an American musician, singer-songwriter and artist best known by the stage name Captain Beefheart. His musical work was conducted with a rotating ensemble of musicians called The Magic Band, active between 1965 and 1982, with whom he recorded 12...
's album Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica
Trout Mask Replica is the third album by Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band, released in June 1969. Produced by Beefheart's friend and former schoolmate Frank Zappa, it was originally released as a double album on Zappa's Straight Records label...
(1969), on the track "Old Fart At Play", where Beefheart sings the following lines: "Momma licked 'er lips like uh cat / Pecked the ground like uh rooster / Pivoted like uh duck", featuring all three protagonists from the most famous line of the blues song.
External links
- About the origins of the song (http://blog.allmusic.com/2007/12/03/the-ducks-yas-yas-yas-a-song-for-a-poverty-stricken-holiday-season/)
- A YouTube video of the song, performed by Eddie Johnson's Crackerjacks, set to scenes from the Oswald the Lucky RabbitOswald the Lucky RabbitOswald the Lucky Rabbit is an anthropomorphic rabbit and animated cartoon character created by Ub Iwerks and Walt Disney for films distributed by Universal Pictures in the 1920s and 1930s...
cartoon "Alaska" (1930). (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q6KGE4bMB5g)