See what a ham Jerry Lee Lewis was when he was young! I was not yet born when this video was made, but he reminds me of certain students from Baton Rouge and points north. And I think that radio announcer keeps saying “cotton pickin'” so as not to say “fuckin’.” Then again, my mother used to say it too, as in get your cotton pickin’ fingers away from that meat grinder, so it may have been in fashion. And I would like to know the origins of this term cotton pickin’, which I find suspicious.
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There is a lot of quiet drug addiction, alcoholism, and a great deal of unquiet enmeshment out here in Maringouin, I discern. I would rather not know. I would rather read, via Undine, these interesting comments on how to write a book. I really like the methodology.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
My grandfather, from Tangipahoa and therebouts, used to say “cotton pickin'” all of the time, too. The image seemed odd, but I wasn’t ever suspicious of it. Until now.
Oh, “cotton pickin” is definitely pejorative & refers to people who pick cotton—not necessarily Blacks, could be poor whites—but field workers, people who don’t own their own land. It spread well beyond cotton territory, though, so I think it lost some of its implications as it moved north and west.
DEH – yes, this was what struck me. I hadn’t heard the expression since my mother said it in the sixties, when it just seemed odd and I didn’t have enough information to contextualize it on my own. She may not have understood its content. But hearing it on this video, I realized instantly what the implications must be.
“There is a lot of quiet drug addiction, alcoholism, and a great deal of unquiet enmeshment out here in Maringouin, I discern.”
On this I am fit to be tied — when I wrote it, it was about some sad information I had gotten, but it didn’t involve any actual interaction I had had. But then I ended up having actual, if unplanned and unforeseen contact with a drunk and her enablers. “I am not dealing with you,” said I. “You are intolerant,” said they. “That is right,” said I.
[GOD. More than I hate drunks, I hate sophistry. And New Agers and self helpers are full of sophistry and manipulation — even moreso than drunks. I want a recipe for a gris gris bag to protect me from all such entities.]
Let us not forget that classic of children’s music in kindergarten classes:
Jump down, turn around, pick a bale o’cotton
Jump down, turn around, pick a bale o’hay
Oh, Lordy, pick a bale o’cotton
Oh, Lordy, pick a bale o’hay.
At least, that was how we sung it in the white North, where hay bales were more familiar to us. Googling suggests that the words were slightly different originally (pick a bale a day instead of pick a bale of hay), and that it was originally a work song for slaves.
As an addendum, my parents also said “cotton pickin,” but I suspect that the satisfaction of all of those consonants played a role.
Yes, it’s fun to say “cotton pickin’.”
We didn’t sing it in school — the song being what it is, can you imagine making Black kindergarteners sing it?, or Mexican children whose parents were in the fields in real time? — but Leadbelly sang it on records and it was “pick a bale a day.”
My Danish sister used to sing it as a soulful American song. Still under the influence of my elementary school teachers I thought her exoticism was a bit misplaced. It ain’t about no cotton pickin’ fun.