Here‘s a fun three-decade-old piece by Jack Hurst about the name of a long-forgotten minor hit:
Country music’s novelty hit of the year, “My Toot-Toot,” doubtless owes much of its popularity to the obvious question: What is a toot-toot? […]
In French-influenced Cajun Louisiana, where the 47-year-old Simien lives, toot is a corruption of the Gallic word tout, meaning ‘all.’
“From the old Cajun (language), a toot-toot is something special, maybe your best girlfriend, your all, your everything,” Simien says. “I got the idea from hearing my grandmother and the older folks use the word quite a bit. Especially when they saw a newborn baby. They`d pinch the baby on the cheek and say, ‘Isn’t she — or isn’t he — a sweet little toot-toot?’
“And I used to hear older guys call their girlfriends toot-toot. Plus there was an old song — I never really heard the record, but I used to hear different bands play at house parties when I was a kid, and they would sing . . . several songs, really, and put that word in there: ‘Mon chere toot-toot.'” […]
The song’s title and Simien’s widely varied labors in its creation aren`t all “My Toot-Toot” has going for it. It also rides an apparently growing ripple of national urban interest in an accordion-based Louisiana brand of music called “zydeco.” […] Expect, therefore, to hear more in the next few months about zydeco, a term currently about as well known in the mainstream as “toot-toot.” The word zydeco is derived from the French words les haricots, which means green beans.
“Which doesn’t make any sense,” Simien says with a chuckle.
“But we call a dance or a party a zydeco. There was an old record a long time ago called ‘Zydeco Est Pas Sale’ that meant ‘no salt in the beans’ and became very popular. Some people didn’t know the whole title of it, so they just asked radio stations to ‘play that zydeco record,’ and they’d go to the dances and ask for the same thing. That`s how zydeco music got to be called that — or at least that’s my view of it.”
I could have sworn we’d covered zydeco before, but apparently not. Thanks, Eric!
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