(Jazz Singer/Dancer) Mabel Lee - "Chicken Shack Shuffle" (1943) - (video & lyrics)

Steve, Nov 18, 2017

Mabel Lee (vo), acc. by unknown (p, g, b & dr)

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Edited  by Azizi Powell

This pancocojams post showcases Jazz singer and dancer Mabel Lee in the 1943 soundie "Chicken Shack Shuffle".

Some information about Mabel Lee is included in this post along with my unofficial transcription of the lyrics to "Chicken Shack Shuffle".

This post also includes some explanations of and/or information about certain words that are found in that song.

The content of this post is presented for historical, cultural, entertainment, and aesthetic purposes.  

All copyrights remain with their owners.

Thanks to Mabel Lee for her cultural legacy. Thanks to all those who are also featured in this soundie and all those who were associated with that soundie, including the unknown composer/s of "Chicken Shake Shuffle". Thanks to all those who are quoted in this post and thanks to the publisher of this video on YouTube.   

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INFORMATION ABOUT MABEL LEE
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mable_Lee
"Mable Lee (August 2, 1921 – February 7, 2019), sometimes spelled Mabel Lee, was an American jazz tap dancer, singer, and entertainer. Lee appeared on Broadway, at the Apollo Theater, and was known as "Queen of the Soundies" due to her numerous performances in the films.

Biography

Born in Atlanta, Georgia to Rosella Moore and Alton Lee, Mable Lee was a child prodigy who began performing when she was 4 years old, at age 9 was performing in local clubs with a big band and as a 12-year-old was appearing at the Top Hat nightclub in Georgia. Neither of her parents were in show business, but they would sing and dance around the house. When she was in grade school, she asked her principal to use the assembly room to put on entertainment shows, putting up posters, and making programs. Lee also sang and danced for her teachers growing up—they were all aware of her talent from an early age.[2]

[...]

She moved to New York City with her mother in 1940 to pursue a career as a singer and dancer, and soon joined the chorus of the Apollo Theater in Harlem.”…

[...]

During World War II, she toured with the USO as a member of their first all-black unit. She traveled and did shows for the Navy, Air Force, and at different camps. She also performed for wounded veterans after the war in hospitals and did a show at Leavenworth.[2] She was known for her dancing in more than 100 soundies in the 1940s. Here she became known as “Queen of the Soundies.”[2]

Lee was featured on the cover of the March 1947 issue of Ebony.[4]

She came back from Europe in 1950 and moved back to Atlanta, where she met her husband (Tony Mansfield). She played theaters and nightclubs in Atlanta again, but this time she was doing her own act.[2] She also appeared on Broadway in multiple productions, including the 1952 revival of the musical Shuffle Along. She traveled to raise money for the show and was a part of raising between $500,000 and $600,000. The show only lasted three days, and all of that money went to nowhere.[2] She also danced in The Hoofers and Bubbling Brown Sugar.[5] She did choreography throughout her career including for the Soundies, though she did not receive credit for it.[2]"...

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LYRICS -CHICKEN SHACK SHUFFLE*

[as sung by Mabel Lee in her 1943 soundie with that title] 

Ah skipple and ah scufflin
Chicken Shack Shuffle
Up on Sugar Hill.
There’s a ripplin and ah rufflin
And a Chicken Shake Shuffle
You do it anyway you will.
 

You jump to the left
and you cross your legs
And you tip along
like you walkin on eggs

Do anything
But a pigeon wing
You can strut like a rooster
But you gotta swing

You gotta skipple and ah scuffle
Chicken Shack Shuffle
Up on Sugar Hill.
Chicken Shack Shuffle
Up on Sugar Hill
In Harlem
Up on Sugar Hill

Ah skipple and ah scufflin
Chicken Shack Shuffle
Chicken Shack Shuffle
Up on Sugar Hill

Ah ripple and a rufflin
Chicken Shack Shuffle
You can do it anyway you will

You jump to the left
And you cross your legs
Then you tip along
Like you walkin on eggs
You can do anything
but the Pigeon wing
You can strut like a rooster
But you gotta swing.

You can a ripple and ah rufflle
Chicken Shack shuffle
Up on Sugar Hill
In Harlem
Up on Sugar Hill
-snip-
Besides for YouTube videos of this soundie, I haven't found any linformation or iyrics for "Chicken Shack Shuffle" online. This is my speculative transcription of this song. The words that I'm not sure of are given in italics. Additions and corrections are very welcome. 

I'm intrigued by the similarities between some of the "Chicken Shack Shuffle" lyrics and some of the lyrics to the song "Ballin The Jack" which was first composed in 1913. Here's the portion of "Ballin The Jack" that I'm referring to: 

"First you put your two knees close up tight
Then, you sway it to the left and you sway it to the right
Step around the floor kind of nice and light
Then you twist around, you twist around with all of your might
Stretch your lovin' arms straight out in space
Then you do the Eagle Walk-a with-a style and grace
Swing your foot way 'round and bring it back
Now that's what I call Ballin' the Jack!"

Songwriters: Chris Smith / Luther Henderson / Henry James Burris
-end of quote-
It wouldn't be at all suprised if the unknown composer/s of "Chicken Shack Shuffle" based that song (and not the dance itself) on the Ballin The Jack" song.

Click https://pancocojams.blogspot.com/2021/12/ballin-jack-jazz-dance-three-film-clips.html for a pancocojams post entitled ""Ballin' The Jack" Early 20th Century Jazz Dance (four film clips, information, & song lyrics)". (title change).

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EXPLANATIONS FOR SOME OF THE LYRICS IN THE SONG "CHICKEN SHACK SHUFFLE"

Chicken shack - [in the context of this song], an inexpensive establishment which sells fried chicken (as well as liquor and other items) and where people (primarily African Americans) go to dance and otherwise socialize.
  
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Harlem
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlem
"Harlem is a neighborhood in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It is bounded roughly by the Hudson River on the west; the Harlem River and 155th Street on the north; Fifth Avenue on the east; and Central Park North on the south. The greater Harlem area encompasses several other neighborhoods and extends west to the Hudson River, north to 155th Street, east to the East River, and south to Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Central Park, and East 96th Street.

Originally a Dutch village, formally organized in 1658,[4] it is named after the city of Haarlem in the Netherlands. Harlem's history has been defined by a series of economic boom-and-bust cycles, with significant population shifts accompanying each cycle.[5] Harlem was predominantly occupied by Jewish and Italian Americans in the 19th century, but African-American residents began to arrive in large numbers during the Great Migration in the 20th century. In the 1920s and 1930s, Central and West Harlem were the center of the Harlem Renaissance, a major African-American cultural movement."...

**
Pigeon WIng
from Lynne Fauley Emery's 1989 book Black Dance: From 1619 to Today (page 90) 
"The Pigeon Wing appears to have been performed over a large geographical area. References were made to the Pigeon Wing from South Carolina to Texas, and from Indiana to Mississippi. Horace Overstreet, of Beaumont, Texas, remembered the dance by another name. Overstreet stated that on Christmas and July 4, a big dance would be held on their plantation. '...jus' a reg'lar old breakdown dance. Some was dancin' Swing de Corner, and some in de middle de floor cuttin' de chicken wing.

Fannie Henry described the Pigeon Wing as follows: "Dere was cuttin' de pigeon wings-dat was flippin' yo arms an' legs roun' an' holdin' ya' neck stiff like a bird do."

The Pigeon Wing and the Buck dance appear as authentic dances of the Negro on the plantation, much before they were picked up for the minstrel shows and billed as the "Buck and Wing"."...

**
Shuffle* 
From 
(dance) A dance move in which the foot is scuffed across the floor back and forth.
-snip-
*As I indicated earlier in this post, I'm not sure of my transcriptions of the words "skipple", shufflin, ripple, and ruffle. They may have been made up for this song. However,  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tap_dance_technique#Steps_with_two_sounds  
includes the words "riffle, ripple, scuffle, and shuffle" as terms for certain types of movements in tap dancing.

**
Sugar Hill:
From https://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/realestate/sugar-hill-rich-in-culture-and-affordable.html Sugar Hill, Rich in Culture, and Affordable

Harlem’s Sugar Hill neighborhood, often considered part of Hamilton Heights, is almost entirely residential, and much of it falls within the rowhouse-laden historic districts. The neighborhood is on a bluff, here seen rising over Jackie Robinson Park.

 By Alison Gregor. April 8, 2015
"The section of Upper Manhattan known as Sugar Hill, poised on a bluff overlooking the Harlem Plain and distinguished by graceful rowhouses and elegant apartment buildings, achieved renown in the 1930s and 1940s, when it was home to prominent African-American professionals, political leaders, artists, musicians and writers. The song “Take the ‘A’ Train,” written by Billy Strayhorn and popularized by Duke Ellington, commemorated the neighborhood, where both lived. Nowadays, though, some newcomers say they had not heard the name Sugar Hill before they arrived..

[...]

Sugar Hill [was] likely named for the sweet life its affluent residents were thought to enjoy in its heyday.

[...] 

According to the Landmarks Preservation Commission, the rocky plateau that later became known as Sugar Hill was the setting for grand estates in the late 1700s and 1800s. By the mid-1890s, the area was home to white middle- and upper-middle-class residents, joined by immigrants from Italy, Ireland and Germany. In the early 1920s blacks began to move in, and Sugar Hill reached its prime as an African-American neighborhood in the 1940s. It began to decline in the 1950s, and many prominent black residents began moving to places like Riverside Drive or St. Albans, Queens.”…

**
Swing
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swing_music
"Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis of the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Django Reinhardt.

[…]

Hot swing music is strongly associated with the jitterbug dancing that became a national craze accompanying the swing craze. Swing dancing originated in the late 1920s as the "Lindy Hop," and would later incorporate other styles including The Suzie Q, Truckin', Peckin' Jive, The Big Apple, and The Shag in various combinations of moves. A subculture of jitterbuggers, sometimes growing quite competitive, congregated around ballrooms that featured hot swing music. A dance floor full of jitterbuggers had cinematic appeal; they were sometimes featured in newsreels and movies. Some of the top jitterbuggers gathered in professional dance troupes such as Whitey's Lindy Hoppers (featured in A Day At the Races, Everybody Dance, and Hellzapoppin'). Swing dancing would outlive the swing era, becoming associated with R&B and early Rock&Roll."...
-snip-
Here's a definition for the word "soundies"
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soundies
"Soundies are three-minute American musical films, produced between 1940 and 1947, each displaying a song, dance, and/or band or orchestral number. Produced professionally on 35 mm black-and-white film, like theatrical motion pictures, they were printed on the more portable and economical 16 mm film.

The films were shown in a coin-operated "movie jukebox" named the Panoram, manufactured by the Mills Novelty Company of Chicago. Each Panoram housed a 16 mm RCA film projector, with eight Soundies films threaded in an endless-loop arrangement. A system of mirrors flashed the image from the lower half of the cabinet onto a front-facing screen in the top half. Each film cost 10 cents to play, with no choice of song; the patron saw whatever film was next in the queue. Panorams could be found in public amusement centers, nightclubs, taverns, restaurants, and factory lounges, and the films were changed weekly. The completed Soundies were generally made available within a few weeks of their filming, by the Soundies Distributing Corporation of America.

Several production companies filmed the Soundies shorts in New York City, Hollywood, and Chicago: James Roosevelt's Globe Productions (1940–41), Cinemasters (1940–41), Minoco Productions (owned by Mills Novelty, 1941–43),[1][2] RCM Productions (1941–46), LOL Productions (1943), Glamourettes (1943), Filmcraft Productions (1943–46), and Alexander Productions (1946) led by William D. Alexander).[3] The performers recorded the music in advance, and mimed to the soundtrack during filming."...

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