TRICKERATION
Cab Calloway, Cotton Club (1931)
Rhythm, look what you went and done.
Rhythm, you are the guilty one.
The sneaky one, the snaky one,
The breakneck one, the hellbent one.
Rhythm, you are the guilty one.
Rhythm, you are a loaded gun.
Rhythm, you’ve left me all undone.
Rhythm, you are the slinky one,
The funky one, the freaky one,
The harum one, the scarum one.
Rhythm, I took you one on one.
Now look at what you’ve gone and done.
Rhythm, you are the righteous one,
The badass one, the brass-balls one.
Rhythm, you are the one who’s won.
Rhythm, I am the broken one,
The token done-in chosen one.
Rhythm, you are the golden one
To everyone, the only one
Who showed me how it should be done.
Rhythm, you call us and we run
To something new under the sun.
Rhythm, you are the dodgy one,
The deadly one, the guilty one.
Rhythm, look what you’ve gone and done.
from Secret History by David Barber (Northwestern University Press, 2020). Photo: Cab Calloway.
Author's note:
The jive dance song “Trickeration” was recorded by Cab Calloway and His Orchestra in New York in October 1931, the same year Calloway’s band was hired by the Cotton Club as a replacement for the touring Duke Ellington Orchestra. In short order, the Calloway and Ellington ensembles were installed as the club’s two house bands. The poem draws on both the lyrics of “Trickeration” and Calloway’s 1938 book Hepster’s Dictionary: The Language of Jive.
Editor's note:
David Barber is a maestro of the music of poetry, as this poem and others in his new book ("Aria." for instance) demonstrate. His control of the forms and techniques of verse is exemplary and makes Secret History a delight. Barber, who has appeared twice in The Best American Poetry series, is the author of two previous books and is the poetry editor of The Atlantic. He teaches writing at Harvard University.
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