Re: "Funky Butt" ~

Mississippi John Hurt played and recorded a version of "Funky Butt Blues" that includes, as the final verse:

I thought I heard Buddy Bolden shout
Open up the windows and let the bad air out
'Cuz I don't like it nohow.

Now, the song "Buddy Bolden's Blues," as performed by any number of traditional-jazz players and bands in New Orleans, includes the musical phrase that consitiutes each verse of the John Hurt version, but also includes an additional few lines of melody per verse.

(I taught myself the MJH song last year during evacuation for Hurricane Gustav; when I'm playing that song ~ that abbreviated version ~ it's hard for me to think of the other phrase that is included in the trad-jazz song. Someday, I'd like to incorporate "the rest of the song" into my guitar arrangement.)

I'm pretty sure there was a "Funky Butt Hall" in New Orleans back in the 1880s/90s, a place where some of the very first jazz was played. (You could look it up in the various early-jazz history books.) The name of the venue seems to have been derived from the human stink emanating from a crowded floor of enthusisatic dancers, sweating in the New Orleans heat back in those pre-air-conditioning days. However, the lyrics to the song seem to be about, er, um, flatulence. Maybe the management served red beans and the dancers were sweating and farting...

More recently, a contemporary nightclub called the Funky Butt was operating on North Rampart Street,on the edge of the French Quarter and just across the street from Congo Square/Armstrong Park. The club reopened for a while after Katrina, but has gone out of business since then.