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Thread: what does "muggled" mean?

  1. #1

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    I think I know what it means, but when I looked in a slang dictionary, it wasnt there at all.
    "all muggled up" or "eyes a muggin" or is it "I'sa Muggin" (the grappelli django tune from paris club)

    so I think old 30's slang for marijuana smoking? but it sounds like they are using it as a "double meaning" under disguise. as if "muggin" is a term for "jazzin or improvising licks"

    am I even close?

  2. #2
    Registered User John Flynn's Avatar
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    This may be no help, but I remember a slang term back in the 50's-60s that seemed to be pretty universal. "Mugging" meant making a particular facial expression or putting on a pose, as in "Mugging for the camera." Of course, "mug" is an old-time slang word for face, as in "I don't want to see your ugly mug around here anymore."




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    Mugging: What mandoJohnny said....Hamming it up, clowning around, acting the fool...sort of implies a public performance of some sort...be it in front of a camera or an audience or a rolling tape in the recording studio. No point in mugging if no one's watching.

    Now "muggle" has a new, post-Harry Potter connotation: a muggle being a non-wizard, or un-magical person...so I suppose now one could say you'd been Muggled if someone or something burst your bubble or brought you back down to earth from some magical place in your mind...kinda like kryptonite completely muggles ol' superman.



    Mike Rickard

  4. #4

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    do you guys know the song(s) #I am talking about?

    specially the django grappelli tune.

    almost forgot. I do know that definition as meaning to pose possibly for a picture or yes, an audience. I am not sure if that fits into context. "django's muggin.. fancy lick... stephen's muggin... violin lick... everybody's muggled out.." so possibly everybody's googin around? I guess that does make some sense, maybe since jazz was considered kinda "clowning around" at least by the "old musical establishment" ( I mean that in the most abstract way) I read a quote from a classical composer, one of the eastern european guys, he said, and I don't agree with him "music cannot be fully expressed when confined to a meter" hmmph. I am trying to find a free online 20's and 30's slang dictionary.




  5. #5

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    Quote Originally Posted by (jeffshuniak @ Dec. 02 2003, 11:18)
    I am trying to find a free online 20's and 30's slang dictionary.
    Jeffshuniak, these two came up in a quick Google search, and I am sure that you could fine many more:

    http://www.allaboutjazz.com/speak.htm

    http://home.earthlink.net/~dlarkins/slang-pg.htm

    The first link confirms the marijuana reference:

    "Muggles --- One nickname for marijuana used by early Jazzmen (Armstrong has a song by this title).
    Hey, Louis, I need to calm down. You got any "muggles?"

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    There's some debate as to whether J.K. Rowling may have derived the word "muggles" from the Muggletonians, a religious sect of reformation England that survived until WWII when its last meetinghouse was lost in Blitz. Leader Lodowick Muggleton seems to have been suspected of having magic powers however, unlike Rowling's "muggles," having been imprisoned for cursing someone who died shortly after. The Muggletonians preached religious tolerance and the uselessness of martyrdom or prayer. Though they did not proselytize, they attracted a sizeable following, possibly due to their idea of ser vices which was to meet at a tavern, read a little bible, sing a couple sacred songs to the tune of drinking ditties, and have a few beers.

    In equally unrelated history, this time from the U.S., mugwumps are Republicans who do not support their majority candidate. While Muggletonians are uncommon today, I hope that we have many mugwumps.

    I suspect the musical reference comes from the marijuana connection, further supported in various sites on a google search.

  7. #7

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    "mugwamps" -- whatta bout the bill burroughs definition?
    some kinda awful creature.

    I always knew the early jazz guys (and probably modern ones too) did that stuff, but grappelli??? he lived to be so so so so old. I saw him play in 96, in his wheelchair. amazing guy.




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    I always heard of a Mugwump as "a bird that sits on the fence with his mug on one side & his wump on the other."

    Kinda supports the "Republicans" reference above.

    May we have many....




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    Hmmmh - the Rebetika musicians in the twenties and thirties (Greece, Pirea, Smyrna etc.) described themselves or a good, trusted person as a "Manga". Which seems to be a Greek, Turkish slang word for Hash-hish smoker. I've heard it pronounced in lyrics as mugga - sounds a lot like a blurred "muggle". Which is probably an appropriate phrase for describing their - ah - curious mind set ...

    To describe Rebetika or Mourimeka as Jazz is valid - mostly - the Skeezos which the Manga used probably came from overusing the muggles bought in a jook joint in Athens, or New Orleans or Chicago or Paris etc.. See, it's simple - at least after you've got a reliable source.
    Mandola fever is permanent.

  10. #10
    ISO TEKNO delsbrother's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by (jeffshuniak @ Dec. 02 2003,14:37)
    stuff, but grappelli???
    Don't know if he originally wrote it, but I have a recording of Stuff Smith and the Onyx Club boys doing "I'se A Muggin'" along with the B side, "I'se A Muggin' Musical Numbers Game" in 1936. Don't know when the QHCF did theirs, but the arrangements are very similar. The liner notes to the Smith recording say it was a big hit for him at the time..

    Both Smith tunes are masterpieces of Swing fiddle.. though I always mess up the counting on the second one, and no one gets the "naught" joke anymore. LOL I like how in Django's version they call out each of the members - "Django's muggin'! Steven's muggin'!"

    Stuff Smith, Eddie South, Joe Venuti, Svend Asmussen, Michel Warlop, Grappelli... All them fiddlers swung hard!

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    My what a creative, fanciful and abstruse discussion!

    Kudos to jeffshuniak's reference to "Naked Lunch." Jeff probably knows William S. Burrows lived out his last years in Lawrence, Kan., home of none other than the Mandolin Cafe. I don't know that old Bill played the mandolin, but it wouldn't surprise me to know the Paleo Hipster liked to hang out on the top floor at Mass Street Music.

    Burrows is best known for his Beat Generation books about heroin addiction. Which brings this discussion full circle, since the term “muggles” refers to pot. The word dates from at least the 1920s, when my grandfather was frequenting Mississippi River town speakeasies. From what I heard from his friends, smoking dope was what they did as a desperate last measure when they couldn’t buy whiskey or gin.

    A man I know, now deceased, who used to play organ in the Paul Whiteman Orchestra, told me about getting muggled up in the 1930s. They’d exhale to smoke into a punch bowl so that everybody could share. I heard a similar story from the last surviving male relative of jazz-great (and Whiteman Orchestra alumnus) Bix Beiderbecke.

    The things you hear hanging around with musicians!

    There’s nothing new under the sun.

  12. #12

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    <From what I heard from his friends, smoking dope was what they did as a desperate last measure when they couldn’t buy whiskey or gin>
    I heard the story that Mississippi John Hurt on being rediscovered and brought to a northern folk festival, Philadelphia? was offered a hit of pot. He commented that where he came from it was called poorman's whiskey:D

  13. #13
    ISO TEKNO delsbrother's Avatar
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    Somehow I think the reference (!) in the song Jeff's talking about is "Muggin'" and not "Mugglin'" Perhaps it's a corruption of the slang term.. I'm more inclined to believe the muggin' the song is talking about is "showing off", considering the breakout solos..

    Maybe it would help if you could figure out what the "lyrics" were to the song.. In the Hot Club version it goes (help me someone!):

    I'se a muggin (uh, something - sounds like "boom"?)
    We's a muggin (band?)
    I'se a muggin (?)
    Be bop be bop be bop be boo..

    So does that sound like they're smokin' hot licks or smokin' something else?

    The Stuff Smith version shares the first line, but then goes on (and on and on) about working in a railroad station as a Whitecap/Redcap... It's definitely more of a hokum bit. Dunno, maybe the whitecap/redcap is a reference to something else as well. Damn, where's the ethnojazzicologists when we need them!?

    Come to think of it, the "I'se A Muggin' Musical Numbers Game" would be wicked hard to play/sing whilst muggled. I can't do it unmuggled!

  14. #14

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    there's been some interesting ideas here. I think I lean more towards the meaning implied by l. armstrong.. just bc their all jazz guys..
    hey, maybe they didnt even know what they were singing, just another cover tune?
    ok , so who knows grappelli? lets get down to the bottom of this.:D

  15. #15

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    of course he's gone

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    The Django/Stephane "Muggin'" is a cover of Stuff Smith's tune, with Freddie Taylor singing. Its just another tune about fooling around-which I guess is just a by-product of reefer smoking This evolved to singers like Amos Milburn in the 50s who apparently sang only about getting drunk. Other favorite categories were tunes about the "Junk Man" or the "Vegetable man" ie. your friendly neighborhood hemp retailers. Stuff took substance abuse seriously and died in his late 50s from what you might call systemic poisoning.

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