Here comes the judge meme
I almost entitled this post “I discovered the first rap song” as a bombastic attempt to get some new readers over here while poking some regulars in the eye. Cooler heads prevailed, but it still seems a benign bit of bluster compared to say, James Chance/White’s claim to have “invented rap”. Certainly, titling a blog post something like, “I discovered the first rap song” pales in comparison – even if its just as big a fib. But its just too misleading for too many reasons. The truth is that I just want to share a song that my friend Wayne shared with me that he described (with a wink) as “the first rap song”. I think what he meant was, “here’s a tune where someone rhymes over an open breakbeat that most people don’t know about.” Needless to say, he got my attention (as usual).
Just to be clear, I don’t actually believe there was a “first” rap song. The first one that most people heard was certainly Sugarhill’s Rapper’s Delight in 1979. It was definitely the first one I heard. But others in the know were obviously aware of Fatback’s King Tim III which barely beat Sugarhill to the presses (but was far less well known in the end). But of course, these were just the first “recorded” rap songs. There were obviously countless earlier versions being performed at parties and less formal settings way back into the 1970s. Still think there was a first rap song?
At this point, academic approaches start to trace sources of the practices and things get dicey. Of course, there seem to be similarities among things like Jamaican toasting, the blues tradition of the dozens, the rhythmic vocal talkovers of R&B radio jocks, the slick street talk of pimps, jazz scat singing and even the musical storytelling of West African griots. But we need to be careful about holding these too closely. In particular, that last turn toward the motherland is particularly tricky as it gets you pretty close to reaffirming some ugly old stereotypes about racial origins of “the funk”. So looking for the first rap song is at best quixotic quest and at worst an affirmation of old racialist stereotypes. In fact, all of these practices probably played some role in creating the cultural foundations for the song form that would eventually come to be called (and more importantly marketed as) rap.
All I am really doing here is tracing the history of a song that is less often mentioned as one of these many potential sources. Specifically, the tune/routine “Here Comes the Judge”.
Pigmeat Markham – Here Comes the Judge
While it was “discovered” by the mass market when it appeared in the late 1960s as a skit on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In in the 1960s, this routine had already been circulating around for some time in the “chitlin circuit”. Specifically, it was a signature routine for Pigmeat Markham, an African American comedian and performer who had been active since the 1930s and eventually became one of the most regular performers at the famed Apollo Theater. While Pigmeat was apparently annoyed that his routine had been appropriated by Sammy Davis Jr. for use on Laugh In, this exposure led to increased national recognition for Markham. In a strange twist, a novelty version of the song was recorded by Shorty Long and reached number-four on the R&B charts and number-eight on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1968. Later that same year, Pigmeat himself hit the Billboard charts with a “cover” of the Shorty Long version of his stage routine (which had itself become popular through being “stolen” by Sammy Davis Jr. on Laugh In). If these layers of appropriation and commercialization are not complicated enough, it gets a good bit deeper friends.
While Pigmeat seems to have claimed the routine as his own, research suggests that he may have borrowed it himself. I think most will agree that its hard not to hear strains of old minstrel tropes in the Pigmeat version of the song (and certainly in the Laugh In routine). Knowing that this tradition included some fairly standard routines that were widely versioned (for example, Louis Armostrong’s versioning of the Bert Williams’ Elder Eatmore routine). It got me wondering if there was an even earlier version of this routine lurking in the history of minstrelsy.
Sure enough. A little digging uncovered an old routine by Bert Williams called “Twenty Years” in which he plays cruel judge Grimes who doles out unreasonable punishments for non-crimes like “slipping on a banana peel”. Not only are there similarities in the content of these routines, they are both done in rhyme. While the 1917 Bert Williams routine does not use a funky breakbeat as an intro, it does feature a similar rhyming pattern. Pretty cool. Not only that, apparently Bert Williams was an early mentor to Pigmeat Marhkham. It seems likely that he would have known this routine.
Apparently, the courtroom skit was one of the scenes used in minstrel shows as early as the middle 1800s as part of a larger set of parodies of professional occupations. Willaim Mahar’s Behind the Cork Mask (p. 75) suggests that the Christy Minstrels had a judge routine for example. Given the extent of standardization in minstrel routines, it seems likely that the judge skit has a long history indeed.
OK. To recap. Here is a song that was described to me as “the first rap song” that starts with a funky breakbeat and a rhythmic rhyming vocal that likely traces its origins directly to a routine done by one of the most famous early African American performers, Bert Williams. Phew. But imagine this, it gets deeper still.
Some googling and crowd sourcing found examples of the “here comes the judge meme” in reggae as well. Specifically, in 1967, the year before the Shorty Long and Pigmeat versions, Prince Buster did a tune with a very similar theme called Judge Dread. However, in this version, the judge is now a righteous force judging real world rude boys for crimes like killing other black people. Finally, there is the Wailers version which continues to transform the message to one of righteous judgment of all oppressors. This version flips the silly and cruel judge of minstelsy into a divine and righteous judge sentencing a long list of oppressors including Francis Drake, Alexander the “so called” Great and in an interesting similarity with the minstrel tradition of ironic lyrical inversions, Christopher Crumbulous.
And around it goes.