Sunday, August 11, 2013

The Jives of Dr. Hepcat

Dr. Hepcat" -- real name Lavada Durst -- was a highly successful DJ on KVET out of Austin, Texas in the 1940's and 1950's. He spun platters (played music), called Negro League baseball games, and mastered his own brand of "jive," to which he published this guide in 1953. The best parts of this little booklet are the 'lessons' that come before the word-list -- in one dialogue, when a college professor asks his students 'What are the major problems that confront us in community welfare and organization?" they are to reply "Prof, we must definitely pick upon a head knock to manipulate the controls, one that's in the know, one that all the squares and ickies believe that his knowledge-box is hitting on all eight cylinders." Hopefully, the Prof had a copy of Durst's guide handy -- you can get yours here.

2 comments:

  1. Do you have a working link to that pdf? The books utterly out of print.

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  2. The link given in the last line of the post still works -- just tested it.

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